Adults in silky pink suits, pirate paraphernalia, and fake hair of assorted varieties. Children in striped tights, fairy wings, capes, cowboy boots, and leopard print pants. A rat puppet and a pixie-punk woman with tattooed arms and a short, black and silver dress that shines underneath the TV lights. Indie rock, punk, hip hop, cha-cha – whatever plays, they dance.
Arts
SiCKO
Americans are no strangers to the financial debilitations of sickness – or more specifically, of being trapped in a system that exploits patients and widely denies health coverage to nearly anyone with any sort of preexisting ailment.
So it should come as no surprise that controversial filmmaker Michael Moore had little trouble finding victims of said system for his latest work, Sicko, and presenting stories and testimony that cast little doubt on the intentions of health care executives.
Di Rosa Preserve
When you live in the Bay Area, you are solicited for advice on the regular from faraway friends and family on what to see when visiting your part of the Golden State. Nine times out of ten, when you tell them about the cutty little “not-in-the-guidebook” spots that will give them a true taste of Boca de California, they proceed to ignore that advice and spend large blocks of time at heinous Fisherman’s Wharf tourist traps.
Tara McPherson Takes on Hellboy
With just over a year until the release of the highly anticipated sequel to Hellboy, the movie successfully adapted from the Dark Horse comic book of the same name, artistic cross-promotion is already being ramped up in the form of limited-edition toys.
David Lynch Builds Snowmen
Present-day renaissance man David Lynch is set to release a companion collection of photographs as a retrospective of latest – and largest – exhibition, The Air is On Fire, at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.
Stelios Faitakis
Stelios Faitakis comes up with some pretty odd characters. A Japanese goth in kabuki-style make-up plays keyboard above a unruly group of onlookers who are perched on a life-sized chessboard; an anguished military man gnaws on his own hand amongst the brambles and piles of sand in an otherworldly desert.
All are eerie and vaguely unsettling, but the artist makes each of them somewhat divine by washing them in liquid gold.
Colette Fu
Dynamic and dangerous, Colette Fu’s pop-up books are anything but child-like. These shifting, stretching collages mark her professional maturation from an amateur photographer to a skilled artist.
You Kill Me Both Misfires and Hits Target
You Kill Me, a predictable but at times clever black comedy from director John Dahl (Rounders), seems to go through the motions while providing a few amusing moments along the way.
Album Art: Sean McCabe
In an age of iTunes, Sean McCabe considers album art a lost artistic medium.
“It’s a craft that’s dying and not celebrated anymore,” he explains. “It’s assumed that everyone with a computer can be a designer.”
Awake Zion (DVD)
After watching Monica Haim’s documentary Awake Zion, a question bounced around in my head like a dub track echo effect: Why don’t more countries have a Minister of Culture? As Haim’s movie so adroitly points out, culture- in this case, music – brings people together like nothing else known to humankind.
Pirate Radio USA (DVD)
Those interested in fighting for their right to microbroadcast over the radio airwaves should take some pointers from Frank Luntz.
Mundane Journeys
Pick up the phone. Dial (415) 364-1465. Wait for instructions. “Walk, bike, or take public transit to the northeast corner of Liberty Street and Dolores. Listen to the sound of the first tree along Liberty Street. Stand here for a bit and think about rattlesnakes.”
Got it? Now do it. Sound mundane? It’s supposed to be.