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Feature

Movie Marathon

The S.F. International Film Fest starts this week and keeps going year-round.

By Meredith Brody

Published: April 23, 2008

There are probably as many ways of approaching the 51st San Francisco International Film Festival — which will unspool (as Variety would have it) from April 24 to May 8 — as there...

Matt Smith

Fall Into the Cash

Let's hope the Fishers use it to clean up the messes they've created.

By Matt Smith

Published: April 23, 2008

Don Fisher, the iconic founder of the Gap stores, is known for the messes he and his sons step into. A few years ago, he invited a boycott of his company by bringing his sons into the side...

Feature

Asia Rising

No flesh in the pan, Argento plays prominently in two featured movies at the Film Fest this year.

By Nathan Lee

Published: April 23, 2008

Audiences at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival might have been less surprised by a glimpse of Asia Argento's anus — the sole body part she has yet to bare onscreen — than by the revelation...

Sucka Free City

DA takes the blame, but feds mismanaged the money

By Benjamin Wachs

Published: April 23, 2008

The feds have been pointing a lot of fingers at San Francisco since an audit determined that the D.A.'s office accepted $5.4 million in U.S. Department of Justice funds that it probably wasn't...

Feature

Best of the Fest

Our critics' recommendations from this year's films.

By J. Hoberman, Frako Loden, Nathan Lee, Michael Fox, Ezra Gale, Ella Taylor, Gregg Rickman, Nick Pinkerton

Published: April 23, 2008

Alexandra (Alexander Sokurov, Russia) Spare yet tactile, a mysterious mixture of lightness and gravity, Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra is founded on contradiction. Musing on war in...

Sucka Free City

Print is dying, but Chron gets glossy new press

By Brad Kava

Published: April 23, 2008

The San Francisco Chronicle has been bleeding money for so long at a rate of $1 million a week that some analysts speculated that the paper on the edge of Silicon Valley would be the first to...

Letters

SF Weekly Letters

Published: April 23, 2008

In Defense of Bernie Ward innocent until proven pervy: I read Brad Kava's interesting piece about KGO's open slot [" The Race to Replace Bernie Ward on KGO ," Sucka Free City, 4/16], but...

Feature

Q&A; with Medicine for Melancholy Director Barry Jenkins

Local film director gives this town a dose of its own Medicine.

By Michael Fox

Published: April 23, 2008

Barry Jenkins' terrific debut feature, Medicine for Melancholy , is an intimate and sociologically astute study of a young African-American couple spending a day together kicking around San...

Feature

Glass, Jazz, and Black Francis

Music takes the stage at the Film Fest.

By Ezra Gale

Published: April 23, 2008

That was an unusual one, because we were really equals," composer Philip Glass says of his collaboration with director Godfrey Reggio on the landmark 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi. "Normally it's not...

Reviewed

Goldfrapp

Seventh Tree (Mute)

By Michael Alan Goldberg

Published: April 23, 2008

Eight years ago, English electronic act Goldfrapp (singer Alison Goldfrapp and composer Will Gregory) introduced themselves with Felt Mountain , a collection of moody, John Barry–inspired...

Music

Hot Chip’s lyric sheet reveals its cultural obsessions

By Doug Wallen

Published: April 23, 2008

Hot Chip is a bunch of geeks. Over the course of three albums — 2004's Coming On Strong , 2006's The Warning , and the new Made in the Dark — the British five-piece has been...

Hear This

Desire, Regret

By Tony Ware

Published: April 23, 2008

Energy is constant, but not always instant. The same goes for the composure of singer-songwriter Mark Kozelek . The San Francisco musician has perfected the slow-release — first through six...

Reviewed

Fuck Buttons

Street Horrrsing (ATP Recordings)

By Ryan Foley

Published: April 23, 2008

Technology is slowly conquering the human race. The march toward the inevitable, Skynet-level annihilation includes the subjugation of our art. Example A : Street Horrrsing , 50 minutes of...

Music

The Breeders synthesizes the Deal sisters' symbiotic relationship

By Rob Trucks

Published: April 23, 2008

The Breeders release albums so infrequently (this month's Mountain Battles is just the fourth in 18 years), guitarist Kelley Deal may be better known for playing caretaker to her twin, Pixies...

Hear This

Death Cab for Cojones

By Michael Alan Goldberg

Published: April 23, 2008

I Will Possess Your Heart," the lead single from Death Cab for Cutie's carefully guarded forthcoming album, Narrow Stairs, offers many of the Seattle quartet's usual hallmarks. Aside from some...

Reviewed

Excepter

Debt Dept. (Paw Tracks)

Published: April 23, 2008

Not exactly a noise band, Excepter makes records out of prolonged death rattles. Debt Dept., its first album for Paw Tracks, finds the band intuitively fucking around over backdrops that...

Music

Shelby Lynne digs into Dusty Springfield’s archives

By Jewly Hight

Published: April 23, 2008

Shelby Lynne has strong opinions when it comes to new technology, although many of her arguments boil down to her belief that turntables are vastly superior to iPods. Her philosophy is based on...

Hear This

Kimya Dawson

By Maya Kroth

Published: April 23, 2008

Barbara Walters admittedly doesn't "get" Kimya Dawson , which is quite possibly the best reason to pay 20 bones to see a songwriter who just a few years ago was commanding a fraction as much at a...

Hear This

John Reis Loses the Brutality

By Hannah Levin

Published: April 23, 2008

John Reis has more than earned his lauded status among forward-thinking punks, via the benchmarks set by his early postpunk project Drive Like Jehu, the hard-rock swing that defined Rocket from...

Let's Get Killed

Luie Luie stands out as a genuine oddball in a world of faux freaks

By Jennifer Maerz

Published: April 23, 2008

Today's home-baked weirdos are so commonplace it's harder to filter out the DIY savants than it is to find them. I'm regularly sent hand-painted CD booklets tied in twine, or e-mailed videos of,...