Arts & Events

Arts Calendar

Tuesday March 11, 2008

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 -more-


The Theater: ‘What Do the Women Say?’ at La Peña

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Tuesday March 11, 2008

Golden Thread Productions, the Bay Area troupe that specializes in expressions of Middle Eastern culture and identity, will present What Do The Women Say?—five pieces ranging stylistically from theater to performed poetry—at La Pena Cultural Center Friday at 8 p.m. to celebrate International Women’s Day. -more-


Concert Marks Anniversaries for Chanticleer and Shanghai Quartet

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Tuesday March 11, 2008

Chanticleer, San Francisco’s famed choral group, and the Shanghai Quartet, one of China’s original chamber music ensembles, will be featuring “From the Path of the Beautiful,” a seven-part piece written for them by composer Chen Yi in celebration of their anniversaries (30 years for Chanticleer, 25 for the Shanghai Quartet) when they perform this Friday evening at 8 p.m. at the First Congregational Church on Durant. -more-


Wild Neighbors: Mourning Cloak Mysteries: The Butterfly that Hibernates

By Joe Eaton
Tuesday March 11, 2008
An elderly mourning cloak basks in the late winter sun.

We were out at Lafayette Reservoir a couple of weeks ago, looking for the bald eagle that wasn’t there. But there was a fair amount of butterfly action: a probable echo blue, some small hyperactive orange jobs, and three or four mourning cloaks, sparring or courting—it’s hard to tell with butterflies. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Tuesday March 11, 2008

TUESDAY, MARCH 11 -more-


Arts Calendar

Friday March 07, 2008

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 -more-


Berlin Film Festival: From the Stones to Abu Ghraib

By Lewis Dolinsky, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008
A scene from Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris’ film on Abu Ghraib, was part of the Berlin Film Festival.

How big is big? At the 58th annual Berlin Film Festival, or Berlinale, in February, 387 movies were shown in 11 days on 38 screens in 15 theaters operating from 9 a.m. to past midnight. -more-


Moving Pictures: Pacific Film Archive Presents the Magic of Orson Welles

By Justin DeFreitas
Friday March 07, 2008

The myth of Orson Welles has outlived its usefulness. The man has long since passed on, as have those who sought to undermine his achievements. He was jealously branded by Hollywood as the wunderkind-turned-enfant terrible of the cinema, the man who took on a media titan, and Hollywood itself, in Citizen Kane and then squandered his own career with his proclivity for self-destruction and artistic excess. The standard line on Welles was that he created just that single masterpiece before embarking on a long downward slide. -more-


The Theater: Cave and Gwinn’s ‘Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets’

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008

“For Romeo & Juliet we're playing with no language, so we call it 'according to Shakespeare,’” said Jim Cave of his show with Deborah Gwinn, Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets, which just opened at The Marsh in San Francisco. “For The Chairs, it’s ‘after Ionesco.’ There are maybe a couple pages of text; the rest went out the window. We tell both of these stories in our own peculiar way. And as the run develops, we may add other little pieces.” -more-


The Theater: ‘Jukebox Tales’ at La Val’s

By Ken Bullock, Special to the Planet
Friday March 07, 2008

Jukebox Tales: The Case of the Creamy Foam puts the team of Prince Gomovilas and Brandon Patten back together, alternating story and song on a messy set in the basement of La Val's Pizza, a bedroom strewn with the domestic wreckage of young bachelorhood. Sometimes Brandon, after capping off a tune, slips under the sheets and asks Prince for a bedtime story—a funny request before a roomful of spectators. -more-


East Bay Then and Now: Telegraph and Durant: From Ritzy Enclave to Commercial Hub

By Daniella Thompson
Friday March 07, 2008
Hotel Carlton was built in 1906-07 on the site previously occupied by the Knowles mansion.

Teeming with pizza, bagel, and t-shirt outlets, surrounded by ethnic-food courts and cheap retail arcades, the intersection of Telegraph and Durant Avenues is inconceivable as an exclusive residential enclave reserved for millionaires' mansions set amidst spacious gardens and fronted by orderly rows of palm trees. -more-


About the House: Why My Floors Are Sloped

By Matt Cantor
Friday March 07, 2008

I live in a slide zone. As I understand it, the land my house is bobbing about on is a colloid of tumbled rock and Cuisinarted soil, the remains of an avalanche, hundreds of years now past. Since this material isn’t “consolidated” or compressed by time into a hard cake, it tends to amble downhill as gravity would have it. (I’m turning 50 and, as my friend Joann would say, my local gravity is also increasing so I know how the house feels). -more-


Garden Variety: Surviving Oaks Still Shade Alden Lane Nursery

By Ron Sullivan
Friday March 07, 2008
Whimsical sculpture at Alden Lane Nursery.

I’ve liked Alden Lane Nursery ‘way out in Livermore since I first set foot in it over ten years ago. The big valley oaks that shade parts of the place won my splintery old heart immediately, and I saw evidence of real community involvement along with the more concrete stuff: primo nursery stock, interesting ornaments, good tools, less-toxic pest controls. -more-


Berkeley This Week

Friday March 07, 2008

FRIDAY, MARCH 7 -more-