Arts & Events

Opens February 19 at San Francisco's Embarcadero Cinema and February 26 at Berkeley's Landmark Shattuck

Director/writer Tobias Lindholm's Academy-Award-Nominated Best Foreign Language Film, A War, captures both the rigors of war and the mundane, crippling consequences for war's survivors. Filmed in the outlands of Turkey, Lindholm serves up scenes that duplicate the Afghanistan we have glimpsed in nightly news reports. But the film goes beyond the battlefield to show a war's impacts—both domestic and political—back home. Like A Few Good Men and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, Lindholm's tale starts in a soldier's dirty world and ends in a sterile courtroom.

This may be the slowest-moving war film in the history of cinema. Which is a good thing. Most war films focus on the frantic scramble of combat when a good part of a soldier's experience involves downtime—sitting, waiting, pondering, fearing, regretting. Lindholm's pacing provides viewers with sufficient time for inward reflection and evaluation about a soldier's life—line of work that is often little more than a demanding form of drudgery, but one that carries the risk of sudden, life-changing injury or violent, bloody death.

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The Berkeley City Club Conservancy, with the generous support of the Ross Valley Players, will present playwright Mary Spletter's "Arches, Balance, and Light," Sunday, February 28. Spletter imagines famed architect Julia Morgan as an older woman examining her life and choices and whose regrets, triumphs and accomplishments that may surprise you. -more-

When I heard the Cypress String Quartet play Beethoven’s Op. 130 Quartet last October in the Maybeck Studio (formerly the Maybeck Recital Hall), I experienced one of the finest chamber music concerts I’ve ever attended. I was impressed not only by the tightly integrated musicianship of the Cypress Quartet but also by the acoustic and sightline intimacy of the Maybeck Studio. In fact, I declared the Maybeck Studio the perfect venue for chamber music, outranking even the nearby Hillside Club. Well, perhaps I was too hasty in this judgment. Last night, Friday, February 12, 2016, I again heard the Cypress Quartet at Maybeck Studio, only this time the group was augmented by two more instrumentalists – Zuill Bailey on cello and Barry Shiffman on viola. The program consisted of two String Sextets by Johannes Brahms -- the Op. 18 in B-flat Major and the Op. 36 in G Major. -more-