The 25th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival opens today with well-advertised major offerings, such as "Dark Matter" and "Mistress of Spices." Here are just four recommendations from among the other 124 films being screened during the festival's 11 days. (Screenings are in Berkeley and San Jose as well as San Francisco.)
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Art that makes you feel stupid is not a good thing. Of course, it’s possible that you just don’t understand it because you’re not very bright in the first place. But how would you know that Wayne McGregor’s "Eden/Eden" is art? The circumstantial evidence is indisputable: This 30-minute work, which had its U.S. premiere in the War Memorial Tuesday night danced in white heat by nine members of the San Francisco Ballet, cannot be anything but "art" — and yet how is one to understand it?
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Mischa Barton was really partying like a rock star last Thursday night in NYC. Reportedly, the former "O.C." actress got so carried away that she ended up upchucking on the street — but went right on carousing.Fellow scene queens Kirsten Dunst and Jamie-Lynn Sigler were hanging with the Keds model at the Anchor in NYC. A witness described the scene to Us magazine’s Web site: "They were partying, going crazy. At one point, Mischa suddenly ran out the door and threw up outside. Jamie-Lynn ran outside after her, but it wasn’t a big deal. They were laughing."
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After a decade of delivering world-beat Afro-Brazilian grooves, Santa Cruz’s SambaDa realized it was time to up the musical ante and create a sound that truly defined the collective as whole. The septet, which was formed by native Brazilian Papiba Godinho, had conquered the club and festival circuit with its wildly explosive Carnaval-like performances but had yet to carve a sound for itself that didn’t say, well, cover band.
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Once every so often, a band releases a record that is so radically different from its previous efforts that comparison is unavoidable. "A Weekend in the City," last month’s sophomore release from London rockers Bloc Party, is unmistakably such a record.Fueled by the powerfully pleading vocals of singer/guitarist Kele Okereke, "Weekend in the City" combines the driving momentum of the band’s debut, "Silent Alarm," with an assault of computer-generated sounds, resulting in an album infinitely richer in atmospheric and emotional depth than its predecessor.
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Rarely has an American filmmaker recounted the horrors of war from the perspective of a onetime enemy, but here is Clint Eastwood’s "Letters From Iwo Jima," the stirring companion-piece to "Flags of Our Fathers," re-imagining one of World War II’s most harrowing campaigns from the standpoint of the Japanese.
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Strains of chamber music from hidden speakers guide customers from a parking lot to peaceful little Kaygetsu. Though one would not expect to find a Japanese restaurant that specializes in $95 kaiseki meals next to Safeway and Long's Drugs, Kaygetsu is positioned in a small enclave of Asian shops on the perimeter of the Sharon Heights Shopping Center. Once inside, a different sensibility takes over. Kaygetsu's esthetic closes off the outside and focuses attention inward, on the poetry of a ritualized meal.
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Each week The Examiner pairs dinner at a San Francisco restaurant with a movie that complements it perfectly — right in the same neighborhood. (Occasionally the "neighborhood" may be your living room and we'll suggest fabulous take-out food to go with and afavorite DVD.) For the week of Thursday, March 8 through Wednesday March 16, 2007, we recommend ...
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The rift between Tori Spelling and her mother, Candy, was widened by the death of her father, Aaron Spelling — but now the birth of her son may reunite them. Tori gave birth to Liam Aaron McDermott at a Los Angeles hospital yesterday.As Tori prepared for the delivery of her first child with husband Dean McDermott, she reportedly had been making overtures toward her estranged mama.
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If one harp is good, three harps will send you right to Tir na nOg! (For non-Irish, that’s the mythical Irish land of eternal youth.) Harp Trio Trillium, joined by fiddler Sue Draheim, appears this week in a special St. Patrick’s Day show presented by Seventh Avenue Performances. The ladies bring together expertise from many traditions: Maureen Brennan’s Irish roots and early classical offerings, Patrice Haan’s jazz sensibilities and Diana Rowan’s Balkan/Middle Eastern and Western classical influences. The concert promises to showcase harp and Irish music in a whole new way.
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