Arts & Events

Worth Noting:

I think I caught all the city meetings and city related webinars, but my email inbox is filling faster with campaign ads and donation pleas faster than I can delete them. Do not forget to check https://berkeleyca.gov/ for meetings posted on short notice. The November 15 Council 6 pm meeting agenda is posted - see additional comments at the end of the list of meetings by day of the week.

Sunday – Daylight Savings Ends

Monday – The Personnel Board and Peace and Justice Commission meet at 7 pm.

Tuesday – Election with the City on a reduced schedule and no meetings

Wednesday – The discount program for Solar and Battery Storage is at 6 pm and the Financial incentive program for EVs for lower income individuals and households is at 7 pm. The Parks Commission, Police Accountability Board and Housing Advisory Commission all meet at 7 pm.

Thursday – The Budget Committee meets at 10 am – the mid fiscal year additional budget allocation process is starting. The e-Bike webinar is at 6 pm.

The go to meeting of the week are the presentations from the four developer candidates for the North Berkeley BART housing project at 7 pm Thursday. The meeting is hybrid and can be attended in person at the BUSD Board room or on zoom. (links below) BART will be moderating the presentations. This meeting will likely be very well attended. I am going to attend on zoom since I am concerned that if room capacity is exceeded I will miss too much in trying to get back home and online.

Friday is the Veterans Day Holiday

Saturday is the Berkeley Neighborhoods Council (BNC) at 10 am. Note that BNC has a new zoom login. BNC is my other go to meeting of the week.

Sunday, November 6, 2022 – DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME ENDS

Monday, November 7, 2022

PERSONNEL BOARD MEETING at 7 pm -more-

Drector Park Chan-Wook rightly shares for DECISION TO LEAVE, his just-released homage to Hollywood film noir, with his art director Ryu Seomg-hee. ”We scout locations…sometimes a setting gives the idea for a scene”. Among many pleasures, the film offers a dazzling tour of Seoul’s staggered roofs and zigzag streets and its surrounding landscape, a lot like northern California: cold rocky coast with granite mountains close by. These make scaling cliffs a favorite pastime of the newly rich , and an opportunity for murder. Did the victim fall or was he pushed and if so why? These are the questions for one half of this detective story/love story. The other half asks ‘Will they or won’t they, if she turns out to be the killer?’ -more-

Is she guilty or isn’t she: Is TÁR a Me Too story with a female predator? That is only one of the mysteries left behind by Todd Field’s study of a world-class conductor as she crashes and burns—a backstage drama set in the rarified precincts of classical music. Who sings the unaccompanied solo that we heard at the beginning? And what language is that? What makes those random sounds that haunt the character’s solitary moments? What southeast Asian county is she hiding out in at the end, Why is the crowd in the last scene all dressed in sci-fi costumes? And does any of this really matter? (Note: the only bedroom scene shows her with her wife.) What matters beyond a doubt , is that writer/director Field and actor Cate Blanchett together have created a character you will not forget. -more-

For all the glib talk around the Opera House about glimpsing the sublime in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, including a note with that title by the company’s general director Matthew Shilvock at the back of the program for this opera, I find this a troubled work and a troubling one. Based in part on a true story of Carmelite nuns guillotined during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the story was picked up by 20th century French writer Georges Bernanos who embellished the tale with a fictional young overly sensitive woman, Blanche de la Force, who occupies the center of the screenplay Bernanos created for a film, and his Dialogues des Carmélites was later published posthumously as a play in 1953. Georges Bernanos, who is often called “the most distinguished Catholic French writer of his generation,” larded his Dialogues des Carmélites with heavy doses of Catholic mysticism, abnegation, the desire (and dangers) of a wish for martyrdom in imitation of Christ, and fears of both death and life. From the Bernanos play, Francis Poulenc, himself a troubled Catholic, created his opera in 1957. -more-

A Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New International Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council added their powerful voices to the growing crisis in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. At least 120 Palestinians have been killed so far this year, including many children. Decades of unconditional U.S. support to Israel’s apartheid policies and occupation have contributed to the deteriorating situation which allows the raids to go on with complete impunity. -more-