Do you sometimes feel there’s a hole inside of you? Do you wish sometimes there was something big to fill it? Well, there is. It’s call “50 Shades! The Musical.” The show, a parody of the bestselling mom’s guide to masturbating “50 Shades of Grey,” came to San Francisco a Read More…
“Women in television” — and, particularly, the “Can women be funny?” question — is a very tired conversation now. It’s been done and dissected, and now, it should be put in the kitchen, where it can keep silent and make me sandwiches. And yet it keeps cropping up because, joking Read More…
The facts are these. On the night of Tuesday, August 13, 2013, I went to a Jonas Brothers concert. I am 23 years old. I have seen every Jonas Brothers music video, I have (with one of my best friends) watched every episode of their short-lived Disney Channel sitcom and, Read More…
On the evening of May 11, 1960, a man walked off a bus in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was immediately captured, drugged and flown to Israel, where he would be tried for 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity. The man was Adolf Eichmann — a former Nazi SS lieutenant Read More…
In the heart of downtown San Francisco, at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre, you can hear a pouty, rotund Asian man rhyme “jizz on your belly” with “Ghirardelli.” Wait a few moments, and you can hear him sing — in a ’70s soul style — the geographically and anatomically explicit line, Read More…
Few directors have attained the kind of monolithic status that surrounds Pedro Almodovar. Since his feature debut in 1980, the Spanish auteur has come to be associated with an exaggerated style, kitsch melodrama, social satire and female heroism all his own. In truth, it’s almost formulaic. You see loud colors Read More…
Two best friends sit in bed together. One gingerly asks the other to “tell the story of us.” In scenes before and after, we’ve seen them laugh, drink, cry and play-fight. They are inseparable, vibrant and dynamic. “Only the young have such moments,” wrote Joseph Conrad in his 1917 novella Read More…
Last week, Disney’s “Mary Poppins” musical premiered at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre. The Daily Californian spoke with Madeline Trumble — a native of Berkeley and the star of the touring production — about growing up in the Bay Area, the struggles of working on a touring show and the magic Read More…
Near the middle of director Olivier Assayas’ new film, “Something in the Air,” we are treated to a film screening in Italy. The year is 1971, three years after the turbulent unrest of the French May 1968 protests. The movement, which was begun by university students, has broadened. In this Read More…
Some kind of congratulations should be in order for Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.” Somehow, Luhrmann has managed to turn F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic 1920s novel of wealth, excess and the death of the American Dream into something I never thought possible — dull. Yes, despite the extravagant Read More…