Arts & Events

FRIDAY, OCT. 20 -more-

A veiled woman enters a long chamber by the near door, kneels in a patch of light, tosses back her veil and mutters some kind of devotional, eyes heavenward. Another veiled woman hurries in and spirits the first away through the far door. A robed man enters, goes to the far door, but falls to the floor in tears, crying out “Andromache!” A sword-bearing man enters, whispers to the prostrate man, and they leave. A young man in a tattered robe enters. -more-

So-called “indie” cinema is supposed to break away from the tired formulas of Hollywood filmmaking. Yet indie films themselves have lapsed into their own formulas, generating just as many clichés as the Hollywood blockbusters at which they so haughtily sneer. Unfortunately, Michael Kang’s The Motel embraces far too many of them. -more-

One film that did not make it on the fall film festival circuit this year is The Life and Times of John Sinclair. A documentary with plenty of smoke that mirrors the protest movement, it’s the story of the man who jump started John Lennon’s political career, John Sinclair. -more-

Editor’s note: The preview for the 24th Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival which ran in the Oct. 17 issue of the Berkeley Daily Planet gave the wrong lineup. It repeated the list of last year’s festival performers. Below is the corrected information about the kick-off of this year’s festival. The preview of the rest of the festival will run next week. -more-

Soprano Alaine Rodin, Berkeley native, a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory and the Juilliard School, has made an international career for herself as an opera singer. -more-

Killing yourself isn’t as easy as it used to be. You used to be able to get in your 8,000 pound Buick, pull into the garage, tune in KNBR and slowly pass into unconsciousness to the strains of “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” as the disappointments of the world faded softly into nothingness. Wow, that was dark. But it’s a reality that carbon monoxide has been widely used to end it all for many decades, maybe a hundred years. -more-

How’s Your Earthquake Knowledge ? (Part 2) -more-

Here’s another field trip, in case you’re not busy enough with all the October nursery sales and native-plant fests. Morningsun Herb Farm has a few natives, but its focus is garden herbs in the vernacular sense of the word: useful culinary, medicinal, and fragrant plants. -more-

The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials announced this week that the Oakland Housing Agency has won a national award for its Mandela Gateway Mixed-Use Housing Development. -more-

FRIDAY, OCT. 20 -more-

TUESDAY, OCT. 17 -more-

The 24th annual SF Jazz Festival begins this Friday, Oct. 20 with tenor saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins and continues for another 31 events through the Nov. 12 concert of Latin percussion great John Santos and the Machete Ensemble. This will be the most concentrated amount of great jazz available in the Bay Area all year. -more-

Playwright and producer Lisa Marie Rollins was adopted as an infant and grew up in a white community on a three-acre organic farm in Washington state. In her new one-woman show, Ungrateful Daughter, directed by W. Kamau Bell, she stands on a bare stage, then tells us her parents are not the “hippie, pot-smoking” type of an organic farmer. They are white church-going Republicans. While the agency that placed Rollins had indicated to her parents that they were getting an “Asian-mix” baby, it is doubtful that with her kinky hair and cinnamon skin her parents got what they were expecting. Rollins thinks the agency “packaged” her without acknowledging the African American blood that clearly runs through her veins. -more-

It will surprise no one, I’m sure, that the unofficial tree maven of the Berkeley Daily Planet is coming out against the clearcutting of a grove of senior live oaks in the city to make way for the construction of a yet another new University Sportspalast. I’ll even add that quite a few of the trees slated for destruction look sturdy enough to sit in. Oaks tend to be trustworthy to bear the weight of a human being. -more-

TUESDAY, OCT. 17 -more-