Tomorrow evening at the Clay Theatre, the San Francisco Film Society will kick off their new fall series, French Cinema Now. The ten films comprising the series will be presented over five days, and together they provide a comprehensive picture of what’s going on right now in the French cinema, with just a touch of history included.

Three of the ten films are by a single director, Arnaud Desplechin, including the opening night presentation of A Christmas Tale (Un conte de Noel). This was one of the most important French films of 2008. It was nominated for a Palme d’Or at Cannes, and it’s easy to see why: it explores the story of a family who have reunited for Christmas under difficult circumstances, and it stars Desplechin regulars Mathieu Almaric and Emmanuelle Devos, along with Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, and others. I’ve agreed to keep mum about the details until theatrical release, but I saw it this morning and can attest that the film is wonderful. The director himself will be present at this screening, presumably for a Q&A session. Other films in this series by Desplechin are his classics My Sex Life and Life of the Dead; the latter makes for a fascinating comparison with A Christmas Tale.

A bit of historical perspective is provided by Six in Paris, a 1965 film comprised of vignettes by Godard, Rouch, Chabrol, Rohmer, and the lesser-known Jean Douchet and Jean-Daniel Pollet. In a lot of ways the description reminds me of Paris, Je T’Aime from the other year: it’s an anthology of Paris stories of a particular time.

As for the other six films, check out the full schedule here, and I’ll be posting articles and interviews regarding some of them in the days ahead.

[Image via.]

Well, the 44th annual Big Book Sale hosted by the Friends of the Public Library started yesterday, but have no fear — the sale will continue today and tomorrow from 10 to 8, and on Sunday from 10 to 6. All books on Sunday will be priced down to $1 or less! The Friends contend that it’s the largest book sale on the West Coast, and I’d believe it. It’s being held, as usual, at lovely Fort Mason, in the Festival Pavillion. Just go to Fort Mason — you can’t miss it!

This sale is truly staggering, by the way. The picture above is of last year’s sale, and it nicely conveys the scope. (It comes from this great post on the anonymous blog, Tea & Cookies.) You could easily pick up a year’s reading for less than $50. Normally I’m such a restrained person in bookstores: because of the relatively high cost of new books, I almost never purchase one unless I’m certain I will benefit from it. Fifteen bucks per paperback adds up, never mind hardcovers! But at library book sales, all prudence goes out the window. Not only are the books cheap, but according to the Friends page, all the proceeds “fund education programs that promote literacy for children, teens and adults. Last year, over $250,000 was raised for San Francisco’s libraries.” How can you resist that? It’s a license to splurge. Last year my wife and I took public transportation specifically to limit the amount we could bring home, and we still ended up staggering up the big hill to our house with a huge bag stuffed with books. But it was worth it, I think. I’d be more certain of that if I could still remember what we bought.

Residents and shopkepers of the Castro district are getting tired of tour buses full of “gawkers,” reports the Chronicle’s C.W. Nevius. It wouuld be one thing if they bought lunch, but a deli owner reported:

They come in here, 15 or 20 at a time. They look around, take a picture, and then they walk out. In the last three months I’ve sold one bottle of water. It is not worth having so much traffic.

Supervisor Bevan Dufty says the plague can be exorcised by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. But let’s not forget the famous response of the Summer of Love hippies on Haight St, as recalled by Mick Sinclair in his book San Francisco: A Cultural and Literary History:

On Haight St. some hippies responded to the busloads of gawping tourists by holding up mirrors, inviting the “straights” to look at themselves.

At the Renegade Craft Fair at Fort Mason recently I came across Campfire Goods, an Ohio-based company graphic design trio that prints typographic city-themed T-shirts. It’s not an earth-shattering concept, but their simple use of illustration makes the wares interesting. Personal favorites of the Bay Area variety include “City of the Sunny Side/Oakland” and an iconic Alcatraz cutout (although “I Got My Burrito In San Francisco” feels less than fresh). It seems unclear how the company plans to keep a location-based fashion idea novel, but it makes for an easy summer birthday gift for now.

While the idea of getting on the Treasure Island shuttle kept me away last year (who would want to go to a place that doesn’t even have a grocery store when there is so much wonder cityside?), I was excited to see the lineup for this year’s music festival. September will bring Justice, my favorite Canadians Tegan & Sara, and the somewhat dark sounding and delicious Okkervil River. Consider me in line at AT&T park.

THIS is one of the things I LOVE about living in San Francisco!

Right when I’m in a debate that has included some of the following items:

A) Public Health issues
B) Germs Spread by Humans
C) The EXTRA dirty things that happen IN San Francisco
D) Breaking the Law in San Francisco
E) Flyers posted on utility poles being illegal

…I’m walking to work… and while I’m following THE LAW (which is suddenly so important to some SFers) waiting for the light to change, I SEE THIS FLYER, POSTED TO A UTILITY POLE, illegally; detailing a beautiful example of the germ-spreading habits of humans.

In this case, someone else’s germs will be on someone else’s FACE for charity…

Ahh…. I love it…

** NOTE: For the record, I love that people are giving away their dirty jock straps for charity and have no problem with them posting their flyer. It is merely an absolutely perfectly placed example of some of the highlights of a previously posted blog. ***

The Lee Miller exhibition at the SF Museum of Modern Art, which was due to open July 1, has opened early, and I toured it today. Beautiful stuff, with material from her career as a mid-1920s fashion model through her work in Europe and Egypt in the 1930s, her wartime work in the 1940s, and her postwar slowdown.

Overheard at the exhibit:

One woman to another:
      “I never hear of something… and then it’s everywhere.”

A couple standing before a Miller portrait of her mentor and lover Man Ray (pictured above, though not the picture they were looking at):
      Her: “He was no cutie.”
      Him: “Well, that’s why you become an artist.”

The exhibit remains through Sept. 14.

[Click the image for a larger version. Photo by Jeremy Hatch.]

The picture above is of a moment in the sun in Union Square Tuesday afternoon, as seen from out in front of Macy’s.

One of my favorite cafes was located in the Sir Francis Drake Hotel at the corner of Sutter and Powell. I never learned its name, but it was a European-style cafe, good for a salad, sandwich, or pasta, with espresso, tea, or a glass of wine. When I was new in town I went there all the time. For no particular reason I stopped going earlier this year, and sometime between my last visit and yesterday afternoon, they replaced it with a Starbucks. Damn. You look away for a second, and there goes another one.

So I satisfied myself with Cafe Fresco at Hotel 480, which will probably be my future Union Square hangout. It definitely deserves better than this Yelp review. (But what do I know, I only had a Pellegrino Limonata.) Once I was inside, I realized that I’d actually been there before, years earlier. It was a cold rainy day, and I was playing hooky from high school in a town about a hundred miles to the south. (Gas was cheap back then.) I got a double espresso, and sat down next to two guys a little older than me; maybe they’d just graduated from college and had gotten jobs downtown. In their black raincoats and ties and fashionable glasses, they looked so damn sharp, and I have to admit I felt a little intimidated. It seemed that I could never live up to that level of effortless cool, and that possibly I’d never really “make it” in San Francisco. That was some fifteen years ago. By now those once-intimidatingly cool guys are probably thickening into sedate middle age, and I learned a long time ago that San Francisco is not all like Union Square. Thankfully. I can “make it” here; in fact, it seems likely that I couldn’t anywhere else.

On the positive side of change: the Disney Store at Powell and is going away for good. I really, really hated that store — and my hatred intensified whenever I had to wait on that corner for the light. This Yelp review pretty much sums it up, if you’ve never had the displeasure.

The cool air returned to San Francisco last night. When I took this picture this morning about 8:00 a.m., fog masked the skyline and Twin Peaks, but a ray of sun illuminated the inner Mission District. Taken from Bernal Heights.

Meanwhile, more than 100 fires were caused by lightning last night in counties north of the city, and inland areas still expect 100-degree temperatures, though cooling is expected to help firefighters in Napa and Solano counties.

[Image via SFgate.com.]

Through June 1st, the good old Curran Theater is presenting a Bollywood-inflected version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which has been translated into a mixture of seven Indian languages, plus English. Created in 2005 in India and later performed at Stratford-upon-Avon (and across the UK), the show includes, at a minimum, the following:

• Singing!
• Dancing!
• A man magically transformed into a donkey!

So what’s not to like? Here’s the Examiner review that originally clued me in. And here’s the SFGate.com review, where I got that picture. Even more information is available here, where you can also buy advance tickets. Finally, here’s the official website of the show.

Performances are at 8:00 PM Thursday through Sunday. There are also two matinee performances remaining at 2:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $35-$80.