With the storm clouds of revolution apparently gathering just beyond their gates, and the doldrums of decorum weighing heavily on their souls, a fictional British royal family goes slumming among life-loving commoners and comes home feeling inspired. This 1935 divertissement, conceived by playwright... Full Story »
The scenery at Warm Water Cove isn't what it used to be. The aging industrial buildings that front San Francisco Bay along this bleak patch of shoreline north of Hunters Point once teemed with bulging, bright graffiti letters. Now their only distinction is large rectangles of cream-colored paint ... Full Story »
People love to blame Equality California for losing the gay marriage battle in California last year. But amidst the finger-pointing, the gay-rights group seems to have gotten one thing right: Voters aren't ready to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage in 2010. Equality California had said ... Full Story »
San Francisco is enmeshed in a $14.4 million legal battle with the Catholic Church over whether the local archdiocese can sell property without paying transfer taxes. What are some of the dramatic turns the case has taken? • So far, Jesus refuses to testify • Assessor Ph... Full Story »
Rent Control Equals No Control Monkey business: As a retired real estate broker, I was amazed at your story, " Screwed " [Peter Jamison, Feature, 11/25]. Rule one in real estate: If ... Full Story »
As with any San Francisco dogfight, myriad organizations have piled on to the civic battle to pressure Sutter Health to rebuild St. Luke's Hospital at César Chávez and Valencia streets. There's the California Nurses Association (CNA), the union pushing to compel Sutter Healt... Full Story »
Though Dutch-born, Fedde Le Grand made his name with "Put Your Hands Up for Detroit," a 2006 funky electrohouse anthem. Admittedly, anyone who knows electronic music knows that track isn't even remotely related to Detroit's techno heritage, save for some juddering bleeps perhaps. Instead, ... Full Story »
You'd think DJ and producer AC Slater is campaigning for a Vicks VapoRub sponsorship, the way this New Yorker (born Aaron Clevenger) brings back the sensory overload that accompanied the glorious early-'90s rave era. Plinky piano, reverb-saturated breaks, growling chords, and insatiable vo... Full Story »
Lady Gaga 's ear for pop hooks and eye for unsettling imagery have landed her atop the creatively moribund U.S. pop scene like a queen stalking a smoldering battlefield. Shrugging her off as a mere magpie assembling a momentarily diverting spectacle from borrowed images is short-sighted. He... Full Story »
Mew crafts arty pop songs that never want for drama. The Danish outfit, whose sound is much bigger than its fanbase, has been around since the mid-'90s, but didn't get an album released in the States until 2006's monumental sonic achievement, And the Glass Handed Kites . The group, l... Full Story »
What good is a holiday present without colorful wrapping? No, I mean the other kind of rapping, with mikes, MCs, and turntables. At Thursday's How the Grouch Stole Christmas date, the audience gets the gift of gab with sets by prolific Living Legends member the Grouch , hyphy king Mistah... Full Story »
It's easy to forget that Sierra Frost, the leader of the Downer Party, is only 19. That is, until she asks who Gram Parsons is, begins assigning best friend status to multiple people, and explains that the title of the song "Being a Teenager (Is Free Palestine)" doesn't really mean anything befor... Full Story »
"This music helps us express something we can't quite articulate," says Luke Top of Fool's Gold, the Los Angeles collective he founded with Lewis Pesacov. It sounds a bit vague, but he's describing the benefit of his bandmates' far-flung backgrounds. Besides three members of SoCal indie rockers F... Full Story »
Music historians position the Slits as British punk pioneers alongside the Sex Pistols and the Clash. In the 30 years since the Slits broke up, they've been recognized as the proto–riot grrrl band that played punk and reggae. But with their reformation and new album, Trapped Animal , ... Full Story »
For some folks, December is insufferable, a month packed with blinking, twinkling reminders of just how commercially focused, environmentally callous, and falsely cheerful this country can get. But I'll admit it — I love every last bit of Christmas crap. Giant, light-up flakes covering Mark... Full Story »
Guests at the Ruby Skye nightclub on the last night of this year will dine on herb-crusted filet mignon with mustard sauce, curried crab with sliced almonds on brioche, and rum-raisin truffles as they shimmy to world-renowned Chicago house DJs under the glimmer of one million pieces of confetti r... Full Story »
Baker and Banker: 1701 Octavia (at Bush), 321-2500, www.bakerandbanker.com . Pacific Heights . New American. Bruno's: 2389 Mission (at 19th St.), 643-5200, www.... Full Story »
'Tis the season for comfort food, for bountiful platters of rich, soul-stirring grub brimming with fresh veggies and juicy cuts of meat and hillocks of pasta and potato and polenta, of fruit crumbles and spirit-lifting cocktails and the sort of warm ambience that encourages the festive spirit to ... Full Story »
Aside from Morgan Freeman, who makes a fabulous Nelson Mandela, there's this to savor about Invictus , a rosy tale of racial reconciliation neatly wrapped in a triumphalist sports movie: The film is blessedly free of Barack Obama parallels. Also, we could use a happy global moment, and dire... Full Story »
Rebecca Miller's fourth feature may be the only film you'll ever see with Cornel West and Monica Bellucci in minor roles. But it is also immediately recognizable as the millionth iteration of a sheltered, middle-aged suburban housewife who has a slight crack-up and decides she better get her ya-y... Full Story »
The most significant American artist before Andy Warhol to take "the media" as his medium, Orson Welles lives on not only in posthumously restored director's cuts of his rereleased movies but also as a character in other people's novels, plays, and movies — notably Richard Linklater's deft,... Full Story »
Too much is never enough for fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford, whose debut feature flaunts its capital-A Artiness the way some Napoleonic gym rats flaunt their overdeveloped musculature. Unlike his fellow arthouse Michael Bays — Julie Taymor, Julian Schnabel, and Baz Luhrmann &mda... Full Story »
Six decades after unleashing persistent NAACP bugaboo Song of the South (1946), and two after firmly suppressing it, that peculiar cultural institution known as the Walt Disney Company has made a symbolic reparation by creating its first African-American princess — and plunking her d... Full Story »
To submit a listing, e-mail film@sfweekly.com . Artists' Television Access. "Video Games": New work by SFSU students. Thu., Dec. 10, 8 p.m. $6. "ATA 25: Quarter Century of Alternative Work": Screening accompanying "Underground — Ex... Full Story »
Recent American films about families, like Rachel Getting Married , all too often pierce eardrums with shrieks of dysfunction. Amid the din, French filmmaker Claire Denis’s sublime 35 Shots of Rum stands out all the more for its soothing quiet, conveying the easy, frequently... Full Story »
Christmas decorations illuminate Berlin's main shopping streets. AP Photo/Franka Bruns
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