Film - Queer accent
on Asian American lives
by David Lamble
The 28th edition of the SF International Asian American Film Festival features a queer accent, highlighted by the return of Quentin Lee and a four-film tribute to Philippine cinema master Lino Brocka. Here's a salute to retiring Festival Director Chi-hui Yang after a fabulous 12-year run. (read more)
Dance - Slain in the spirit
by Paul Parish
One of the finest ballets on American themes ever made would be Alvin Ailey's Revelations, which plays this week in Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall and has been danced all over the world. Revelations drives audiences out of their minds with joy, and is universally regarded as the greatest ballet on African American themes ever created – and you guessed it, Ailey was gay, died in 1989 of AIDS, which, to spare his mother the shame of it, he asked his doctor to call something else.
The Ailey company still dances Revelations on almost every program, 20 years now after Ailey's death, and almost 50 years after he made it out of the church experiences he grew up amidst in Texas. (read more)
Out There - Dreaming impossible
Oscar dreams
Truth be told, our hopes were always with impeccable British thespian Colin Firth for the Best Actor Oscar (very quixotic of us, we know). (read more)
Theatre -
Jesus has risen!
It's been 12 years since Corpus Christi created a theatrical firestorm – even before anyone had seen it – which included threats of violence by religious forces against the theater that was producing it, and threats of boycotts by theater notables against the theater when it cancelled the production. (read more)
DVD - Castro classic returns
Whatever Happened to Susan Jane? began filming on the very day Ronald Reagan became President, according to the director Marc Huestis. By the time the film opened, we were experiencing the first wave of AIDS. (read more)
Books - Disconnected
from reality
Mae West was director/writer Billy Wilder's first choice for Norma Desmond in his darkly comic masterpiece about Hollywood stardom, Sunset Boulevard. (read more)
Theatre - Eccentricities
of a Southern clan
Playwright Nathan Sanders displays a delightful propensity for twinkling weirdness in The Sugar Witch, first seen in San Jose in 2007 and now being staged at New Conservatory Theatre Center (read more)
Theatre - Photographic memories
As playwright Naomi Iizuka suggests in the intriguing Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West, the darkroom has long been an accomplice in duplicitous exposures. (read more)
Film - Tales of the rich & powerful
One of the cheeky pleasures of biting into The Ghost Writer is to appreciate how Roman Polanski has concocted a surface tale of brazenly self-serving professional liars as mere foreplay for the truly cold-blooded story of how top-dog nations are governed. (read more)
Out & About - Stand-up
gays & gals
Comedy with a queer twist nestles its way into your funny bone this week. Arts events listings. (read more)
Nightlife -
Making fun
What's funny about being from a country whose dictator denies you even exist? For gay Iranian-American comic Mehran Khaghani, humor is the best weapon. (read more)
Books - Dimly lit
Celebrated Slovenian gay writer Boris Pinter's bracing new collection of short fiction Family Parables is like a breath of fresh air for fiction-lovers who enjoy a stark, alternate point of view, and one not so brightly lit. (read more)
Music - Plunging into the deep
The young French pianist David Fray has become known almost as much for his onstage "antics" as for his sublime playing. (read more)
Music - Realism
& magnetism
Putting aside the fuzzy Jesus and Mary Chain homage of Distortion for a more folksy and cuddly acoustic sound, The Magnetic Fields get real on Realism (Nonesuch). (read more)
Music - Soul sisters, version 2010
Since it took eight years between the release of 1992's Love Deluxe and 2000's Lovers Rock, the arrival of a new Sade disc has been treated as something akin to Halley's comet crossing the sky. (read more)
Leather Events - Traditions,
old & new
The 15 Association celebrates its 30th anniversary; a new Mr. San Francisco Leather is crowned. (read more)
In the Bars - Bar & Nightclub Events,
March 11–18
Got Leche? Get it at Trigger; St. Patrick's Day pours on the green; Anna Conda at Kimo's; SF Boylesque at Infusion Lounge. (read more)
Karrnal Knowledge - Man holes
Everybody knows I like to see guys put things up their butts. Titan's Tool Box does just that, in abundance. (read more)
