The film follows the finalists in the National Grocers Association Best Bagger Championship, which is exactly what it sounds like, I guess. Also on the program is a short, Leonardo, by Pixar animator Jim Capobianco.

Speaking of the Food Bank, VISA is doubling donations to the group right now. So go to their website and give ‘em some money. The Food Bank is a great community organization.

On my way back from a run I noticed about 5 really attractive people sitting outside Kennedy’s. Not to harsh on Kennedy’s, but these people were Tall and Skinny. I thought it was appropriate that they were dressed in brown and black.

“They call us down and then we have to wait 7 hours. It’s like this each time.” And a lot more grumbling from the extras and staff. Note: a little bird told me they’re not getting carried over into another session, so feelings may be low.

Some neighbors have been complaining, and from what they’ve seen on TV, it hasn’t lived up to the hype. Most of us are just shocked at the money that Hollywood is paying in location fees. For some reason I think it’s 10K/day per spot, but not including the cost of cops, actors, etc. of course.

But anyways, what do you *think* about the miniseries? Well I’ve watched it far too many times, and here are my thoughts.

Episode 2: All’s Fair

First off, the guy from Friday Night Lights is sitting with another guy at Fort Point. Then, they respond to a call at the projects in Bay View. Estimated storytime? 2 minutes. Yep. There are a lot of problems like this one.

They don’t give The White Guy enough lines and time, which is interesting in this series, if you think that most of media gives a lot of time to The White Guys. But the problem is he’s a great actor and it’s kind of wasted, since he has no time to show us he is edgy and crazy. “Don’t kill the white guy,” was perhaps my favorite line in this- when he’s dealing with gang crime over in Bay View.

I really liked that a Caffe Trieste scene was within the first 10 minutes. I don’t really care about the love interest stuff. Can I say that The White Girl looks like a younger Jenna Elfman, and that would be the second time a SF story (Ed TV) featured a Jenna Elfman-ish woman in uniform? Hm. I think I revealed more about myself than any Hollywood plot.

OK this scene has caused the biggest talk amongst neighbors: the hot new guy and The White Girl respond to a call on Maccharini steps (pronounced correctly!) where an old man is halfway up, with a heart attack. Where is he going? The only thing up there is the Green Tortoise hostel, home of crabs and scabies. And young Euro tourists. Anyways, White Girl craftily attempts to give him oxygen and he refuses, he’s really just trying to get some morphine. Those wily EMTs! The funny bit is that the vehicle is parked halfway up. Um, how exactly did it get there? There was a random driving sequence that made no sense. And homeless old drug addict guys do not climb stairs. You’re relatively safe from homeless people on hills. Points to the actors for huffing and puffing their way through the lines. That was real.

Hospital scene, some kind of Grey’s Anatomy. I’ve decided this is St. Francis on Nob Hill. And why, oh why, are there only 5 people who work in this hospital? Having visited the emergency room there (sadly) there was a lot of registration staff, and a few seconds of a doctor, oh, and a lot more EMTs and orderlies.

Just to keep track, 2 calls so far. The next one is a blow-out, a car careens into Embarcadero Street Fair. My question with so much of this is- why make it up? There’s vendors there every day, as well as weird promotions. You don’t have to make it a real fair. Nobody calls it anything, either. It’s just … Embarcadero. I would have preferred the Farmer’s Market myself, but hey.

This happened in another city, and the whole “ripped from the headlines” thing is cute, but in all, at this point watching it the first time, I was done with the violence. It’s just pretty stark and random. I guess they’re trying to get some feeling going for the adrenalin rush and randomness of safety work, but for me as a veiwer, it was stressful. Oh, and note, The White Guy and his partner drove from Washington Square Park to Embarcadero in a realistic story-time (5 mins?).

There are more kids in this show already than per capital in SF. Just sayin’, the kid-acting wasn’t that hot, and the whole subplot of Rabbit and his aversion to kids didn’t work for me. Most of the sentimental subplots aren’t working, not sure why yet. Perhaps because they don’t have enough time or interest to engage? The lines are quick and sappy? The macho stuff doesn’t hold?

The White Guy again got me with a good line- as they’re leaving the Embarcadero Street Fair, his partner says he’s hungry and The White Guy goes, “Noodles?” I have low standards.

My final note that I wrote while watching: “the number of crimes in this show is apocalyptic. Can’t they give some love to Oakland, Richmond or Fremont?”

Previously: Book on A’s GM to lens; Brad Pitt will play Billy Beane

My most recent post is a review of Anvil! The Story of Anvil!, a really great doc that’s opening tonight at the Bridge Theater over on Geary. The upcoming reviews and interviews include Enlighten Up! (the yoga doc), Tyson, and Tulpan; along with those, I’ll be reviewing a batch of upcoming Landmark films and other stuff showing at SFIFF52 in the next two weeks, so stay tuned if you’re interested in all that!

Okay, I’ll stop with the blatant self-promotion now; thanks for indulging me. And huge props to Metblogs for letting me obsess about film here for the past twelve months! I’ll be sticking around here for the foreseeable future, but posting quite a bit less about film, and more about stuff like Muni and the weather. You know, news!

In a Dream, which screens at the Roxie starting Friday night, is a film about the mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, who has become an icon in South Philadelphia due to his long, intensely local career and the massive scale and extent of the mosaics he has created there. They include, by his description, about “a hundred murals” and “seven buildings, top to bottom, inside and out.” His best-known work is Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, which represents the transformation of two derelict buildings into a labyrinthine complex that covers half a city block with winding mosaic-covered passageways and sculptures.

Zagar’s mosaics are bright, colorful, and complex, rich with a celebratory spirit towards physicality and sensuality. But the surface cheerfulness of these mosaics belies the deeper obsession and the narcissism that makes such vast, intricate works possible in the first place, and Jeremiah Zagar — the director of the film and the artist’s younger son — uncovers that darkness here with unrelenting economy. All the father’s past secrets rapidly come out in the open, culminating when one of his most shameful episodes plays out right in front of the camera: his self-centered pursuit of “passion” with his assistant, which ends with a brief separation from his wife Julia, right when their oldest son is separated from his own wife and having drug problems.

Jeremiah describes the moment: “I went home to film my parents as they picked my brother up from rehab. The stress from the situation boiled over, and my father suddenly admitted [the affair] to my mother and me … that same night, my parents separated for the first time in 43 years.” Isaiah’s admission is made directly into the camera, and it’s a moment of remarkable drama. Amazingly, Jeremiah retains his composure — he coughs and the handheld camera shakes for an instant, but that is all — and he goes on to capture every instant of what ensues. “I shot 16 hours that day and hated myself for every minute of it,” he writes. What happens next is unsurprising but not predictable, and the film ends with a brief epilogue, highly effective in its simplicity, that shows how the family continues on into the next adventure.

For all the darkness that Jeremiah reveals, it’s an affectionate film. He shot his footage over the course of seven years, filming “whenever something significant happened,” and he describes the result like this: “what started as an exploration of my father’s life has exposed the secrets of our entire family. But I don’t think that’s a bad thing. … We know now how imperfect we really are, but also how much we need and love each other.”

The film is highly recommended. In a Dream screens at the Roxie starting Friday night. [This review was originally published, in somewhat different form, on October 25th, 2008.]

[Peter Sarsgaard & Jon Foster contemplate The Cloud Factory. Courtesy Peace Arch Films.]

Michael Chabon’s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, has been made into a feature film (website here) opening this Friday evening at the Embarcadero Center Cinema. It stars Jon Foster as Art Bechstein and Nick Nolte as his gangster dad, Sienna Miller as the love interest, and Peter Sarsgaard as the jealous semi-ex boyfriend. To quote the plot summary from the ticket page:

A coming-of-age story set in the faded glory of early 1980s-era Pittsburgh … the story opens with Art Bechstein (Foster) floundering in his new-found post-college freedom, opting to take the job with the least amount of responsibility he can find (at the appropriately titled Book Barn), while sleep walking through the Series Seven prep courses that will speed him into a job chosen for him by his father (Nolte), far away from the security of his childhood Pittsburgh. Art’s fortunes begin to change when a chance encounter with freshman roommate and part-time drug dealer Mohammed (Omid Abtahi) lands him at a swanky summer party where he falls for the beautifully tipsy Jane Bellwether (Miller). The two quickly connect over a late-night plate of pie, but Jane’s on-again off-again boyfriend Cleveland (Sarsgaard) has other plans for the pair. Taking Art hostage from the dreary Book Barn, Cleveland threatens to throw Art off the top of an abandoned steel mill, a hide-out that Cleveland romantically calls “The Cloud Factory.” Suspended high above Pittsburgh, Art realizes that his summer has finally begun, what would become the last true summer of his life.

Superfans of the book should know that the director and screenwriter, Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball) has substantially reworked the material to make it more cinematic; you may already have noticed that one major character is entirely gone from the summary above, and a lot of other stuff has been dropped, added, or otherwise changed. But in spite of all that, it really captures the essence of the book — which isn’t surprising, as Michael Chabon himself was intimately involved with the development of the film, giving a great deal of support to Thurber and feedback on his script, and he has approved of the final product.

Incidentally, last year I wrote about how Oakley Hall prompted Chabon to turn that dad into a gangster, so in a way, we have Oakley Hall to thank for this nice movie.

Tickets available here; engagement begins Friday night at the Embarcadero Center Cinema.

[Above, Marina Abramovic and her posse dare the ocean to hit them with its best shot.]

Our City Dreams chronicles the careers and lives of five female artists, now based in New York City, who have been drawn there by everything the city represents — all its chaos, romance, and the advantages of being at the center of the art world. It opens with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge — from a car driving on it, presumably into Manhattan — a jazz soundtrack, and an apt epigraph from Susan Sontag, whose own career was inextricably bound up with the city: “I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.” The words well suggest what is to follow: a documentary about five women who have each been able to realize their “dreams,” by which is meant both their ambitions and their artistic visions.

Director Chiara Clemente (herself the daughter of a famous painter, Franciso Clemente) followed each of these artists for a year, documenting some key moments in their lives. One artist opens her first solo show and another opens a 25–year retrospective. The women are profiled in order of age, so that in the course of the film you develop a sense of what an entire lifetime in art might mean for a woman. But since each artist started her career about a decade earlier than the one previously interviewed, we also get a brief history of contemporary art in reverse order, a series of personal views into some of the major currents in art over the past half-century, starting with street art and moving backwards through performance art, art explicitly informed by feminist criticism, and Expressionist art.

More than that, though, we get a clear insight into what it means to be a female artist in our society after the feminist movement — and something of what it meant to be one before. Near the end of the film, the painter Nancy Spero (born 1926) celebrates her eightieth birthday, and recalls, of the 1950s and early 1960s: “I was dying for people to ask me what I was working on,” as it didn’t happen much in those years. That memory makes for a sharp contrast with the first woman profiled, the street artist Swoon (born 1977; incidentally, you might have gone to this recent event) who seems to have the world before her: she says she feels lucky to be working “at a moment when women are being really encouraged” to be artists — and as if to prove the point, we’re shown footage of her first solo show, given when she was twenty-eight, at Deitch Projects. In between these two, we get studio visits and some time spent with Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, and the self-described “grandmother of performance art” Marina Abramovic.

Altogether it’s a fascinating film and a good introduction to five of the most significant artists of our time.

The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is presenting this film at 7:30 on four evenings starting on April 9^th and continuing through the 12th. Tickets and trailer available here.

[Note: When originally published, this article incorrectly stated the opening night as April 8th.]

Meanwhile, the Belgian brewer Stella Artois launched a new ad campaign in which one ad spoofs Godard’s work circa Le Mépris and Pierrot le fou. It has that wonderful ability of European ads to be chic and tacky at the same time. 7.