Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is finally here, rocking the sold-out seats of Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall with its vigorous choreographic holler. In six local shows presented by Cal Performances, the New York company offers three delicious, diverse programs.
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About this series: In a saloon town such as San Francisco, the bartender plays a crucial role. Confessor, friend, sounding board — the man or woman behind the plank sees to it that our needs are met with elegance, grace and often wit. They see humanity at its best and most convivial, but also offer a nod and a welcome to the lonely. But what do they see when they look at us? What are the tricks of their trade? And what lessons have they learned along the way? In this new Examiner weekly feature, we talk to some of our local bartenders to find out.
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The obvious: One of the most charming, delightful and altogether sunniest singles in ages belongs to a 23-year-old, Beirut-born Londoner named Mica Penniman, who performs under the moniker Mika.Already a No. 1 hit overseas, "Grace Kelly" melds barrelhouse piano and a campy vaudevillian melody with the singer’s soaring Freddie Mercury acrobatics (even name-checking Mercury in the lyrics), and frappes it all into the most sugary confection on the air waves. But the truth behind the track is anything but sweet.
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There’s one scene in Adele Edling Shank’s adaptation of that seemingly most unadaptable of literary works, Virginia Woolf’s 1927 modernist novel "To the Lighthouse," that’s exquisite. The Ramsay family (eccentric father; secretly unhappy but outwardly gracious mother; two of their eight kids) and their houseguests gather for dinner. They mime polite chit-chat as a spotlight moves from character to character, each breaking away to confide to the audience what they’re actually thinking.
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Nobody was more surprised to hear "Who’s Sorry Now?" on American Bandstand for the first time than Connie Francis. After 16 flop records, the singer had given up her dreams of musical stardom. Six monthsinto her college studies, Francis tuned into the popular television program and got the shock of her life. On New Year’s Day 1958, Dick Clark not only played the cover of the 1923 hit Francis recorded at the insistence of her father, he declared she was "heading straight for the No. 1 spot."
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So revved up and so dim. Lackluster adventures and immature gags dominate "Wild Hogs," a comedy about four midlife buddies who hit the highway on their Harleys, aching to revive their flagging vigor. In an early scene, one of the guys rebels against his diet regimen and wolfs down a stick of butter. That’s about as funny as this movie gets.
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Anna Nicole Smith’s body is finally set to be laid to rest. And the late model’s funeral will be an appropriately "over-the-top" affair befitting her larger-than-life personality, a friend involved in planning the service told the Associated Press. "It will be a very beautiful Anna Nicole send-off," Anna pal Patrik Simpson said. "Of course it will be over the top because it’s Anna Nicole."The burial is set for today at 10:30 a.m. in the Bahamas. In keeping with what a Miami judge determined to be Anna’s wishes, she will be buried next to her son, Daniel.
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Having given us a woman-friendly pimp in "Hustle and Flow," writer-director Craig Brewer further challenges the belief system with his new melodrama, "Black Snake Moan," which asks us to embrace a protagonist who aims to cure nymphomania with a Bible and a chain. Fortunately, Brewer’s fantasyland is a humanist one, and its characters are emotionally true. If you’re willing to immerse yourself in the swamp, what transpires therein can be affecting as well as ridiculous.
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It was perhaps only a matter of time before David Fincher moved on from sensationalist fantasy like "Se7en" and "Fight Club" to true-crime thrillers like "Zodiac," the new film studiously based on a pair of best-sellers by controversial author Robert Graysmith. In truth, "Zodiac" is as much about Graysmith, a self-proclaimed expert on the series of unsolved murders that rocked Northern California during the 1960s and early ’70s, as about the killings themselves.
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Thirty-nine years after the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen sparked the investigation into what would come to be known as the Zodiac murders, the case remains unsolved. Despite a wealth of evidence, including the cryptic letters sent by the killer to reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle and The Examiner, the identity of the Zodiac is a mystery that, to this day, baffles the authorities and amateur sleuths.
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