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right after I moved to the Bay Area: “I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but public transportation really works here.” That, as it turned out, was a load of horse shit. But that’s a rant for another day.

What I’m writing about today is that, despite the fact that public transportation here does not work very well at all, riding it has become one of my favorite activities in recent weeks.

You may have seen me mention before that we’ve instituted a rotating office at work, and the three full-timers at my company (of which I am one) switch off hosting work at each of our places every week. So two out of every three weeks, I commute to work, almost always by taking public transportation.

Now, I live on what I consider to be one of the prettiest Muni routes in the city: between the Caltrain station and the Embarcadero station in the Financial District. It runs along the Embarcadero, next to the bay, past the ballpark and the Bay Bridge. And three times a week, two out of every three weeks, I ride that route to begin my commute to work.

It’s stunning. And the never-tiring beauty of that view, combined with the warmth of the morning sunlight, makes me feel like I’m in a Hou Hsiao Hsien film every morning. Not a bad way to start the day.

you may not have heard about the city health care program mini-fracas: the city’s mandate that companies with 20-49 employees either provide or help pay for their employees’ health care, and some restaurant owners’ frankly childish reaction to it.

I’m really not too exercised about it—in an area of the nation where, every day, somebody is protesting something, it’s hard to get worked up about every one—but some people, like my friend citrusboy, do feel strongly about it, and I gotta say I kind of agree with him.

Restaurants on the blacklist so far:

• Delfina
• Pizzeria Delfina
• Weird Fish

And I’m sure those are just the tip of the iceberg.

The festival is now over, and overall was one of the best ones I’ve seen.

• Desert Dream – 3 stars
  Low 3. At first I thought I liked this movie better than director Zhang Lu’s previous offering, Grain in Ear, but now I’m not so sure. I wasn’t a big fan of that movie, and I wasn’t a big fan of this one, and I think it’s to do with Lu’s directorial style.

  He has his actors deliver their lines with almost no expression or inflection, preferring to let the viewer guess at the undertones through the context. In that sense, Dream did a better job than Grain, was in fact more engaging overall, but some confusing plotting and some incomprehensible (well, at least to someone who is not Chinese or Mongolian) symbology just left me cold.

  In general, while what Lu attempts could potentially be very successful and is certainly intriguing, I don’t really think he’s gotten there yet; in order for his methodology to work, I think that the situation the characters are in needs to be so emotionally fraught, so distressing, that the deadpan actors serve as a soothing counterpoint as well as adding a fine tension to the story, of control barely leashed over powerful emotions. Far better than Grain in Ear, this film shows that potential, but as I said, I don’t think Lu’s there yet.

• Flight of the Red Balloon – 4 stars

  What a great way to end the festival! Acclaimed Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien’s latest offering, this movie was beautifully realized, with the gratifyingly high production value I’ve come to expect from him.

  Hou is a master of light, and this movie was the fruition of the potential in 2003′s Café Lumière, capturing the warm, magical quality of afternoon light in Paris. Lead actress and French cinematic darling Juliette Binoche acted the quietly emotional storyline (Hou’s tensest by far) with typical aplomb and undeniable skill; she is a master in her own right. Hou and Binoche together are a formidable combination, and the result is a gorgeous, warm film that I will definitely be looking for on DVD when it is released. Very highly recommended.

Coming soon: SFIFF 51!

• Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara – 5 stars

  This is probably my favorite movie of the festival thus far, though it wasn’t quite as tightly produced as Planet B-Boy. A dreamy and contemplative look at the inner life of acclaimed artist Yoshitomo Nara, this documentary followed him to his exhibitions in various cities around the world, culminating in the magical AtoZ exhibit in Hirosaki, Japan, his hometown. Tragically, the exhibit is now closed, preventing me from ever exploring it in person, which saddens me more than I can say.

  The movie was bittersweet and beautiful, and gave me a deep appreciation for an artist whom I might never otherwise have taken the time to notice. Wonderful.

• Always Be Boyz – 2 stars

  I probably would have been—a bit, though not much—more sympathetic to this movie had I not seen it so very soon after Planet B-Boy, to which it paled in comparison. While I will grant that the acting and script weren’t actually that bad (a hell of a lot better than the similarly pop-culture-underworld-themed Quattro Noza, heretofore the third worst film festival movie I’ve ever seen, after Sorry, Haters and Blackout), infantile plotting, extremely low production value (think Powerpoint-style transitions and iMovie effects, not to mention the use of the abominable Comic Sans as the subtitle font) and severe projection problems (the sound kept cutting out; I can’t tell whether this was the fault of a bad DVD print or the projectionist at theater itself) fairly ruined this movie experience for me.

  If you really want to learn about Korean b-boy culture, watch Planet B-Boy instead; it has more intelligence, drama and pathos than this fictional drama ever could.

• A Gentle Breeze in the Village – 4 stars

  I will admit I was expecting a lot from this movie, considering it was directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita, the same man who directed Linda Linda Linda, one of my favorite movies of the last few years. I will also admit that I was a bit disappointed; it’s not as good as Linda³, but has its own charm.

  Gently humorous and relaxingly paced, this movie was strongly reminiscent of Shunji Iwai’s Hana and Alice, though not ultimately as good. Yamashita possesses a measure of Iwai’s skill at working with young actors, and it shows in this movie, but while it possessed charm in abundance, it lacked the brilliant hilarity of its predecessor. Very good, but not awesome.

• Yasukuni – 3 stars

  This documentary was by far the most thought-provoking one of the festival, exposing as it did the festering wound under Japan’s serene exterior, centered at Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, the simultaneous symbol of the nation’s pride and its shame. Director Li Ying took a very interesting approach to this film, using long, unedited takes that started out serene and almost boring (I fell asleep a couple of times), and then exploded into conflict.

  The film was profoundly disturbing, and had the most impact of any movie I’ve seen in a good long while, but had two big drawbacks for me: the cheesily-scored montage of Japanese wartime brutality near the end of the film, and the unnecessarily shaky camerawork (I had to look away to keep from losing my dinner more than once).

• Amal – 4 stars

  This is the best Indian movie I’ve seen in the last 5 years, and it was directed by an Indian who was born and raised in Canada (Richie Mehta, whose brother, Shaun, wrote the short story upon which it was based). Astonishingly well made for a debut film, if a trifle predictable, Amal boasted some powerhouse acting talent, including Naseeruddin Shah and Roshan Seth, and painted a sympathetic and painfully accurate picture of modern India.

  You may have heard me say before that I generally am disappointed by director Q&As at film festivals, because the directors are invariably less interesting than their films, and tend to express themselves best in that medium rather than in speech, which has the unfortunate effect of removing some of the lustre from the film itself. Not so with Amal. Mehta is intelligent and well-spoken, and his commentary about the film and its production really enhanced the experience for me; I look forward to the extras on the DVD. He is definitely a director to watch.

Just two more movies to go!

It has begun. SFIAAFF 2008 has gotten off to an excellent but at the same time rocky start; excellent because each of the three features I’ve seen so far has been better than the last, and rocky because they just don’t seem to be very organized.

First, the movies:

• Wings of Defeat – 3 stars

  We’re seeing an unprecedented number of documentaries—almost half of our planned 12 showings—this year, and this was the first. A documentary about the Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII, as told by those of them still living, the subject matter was fascinating and given a delicate, sure-handed treatment by filmmakers Risa Morimoto and Linda Hoaglund. Employing a scrupulously nonjudgmental stance and skillful filmmaking, this documentary struck just the right chord in telling the story without any of the histrionics that could so easily have accompanied the emotionally-fraught narrative.

  So why didn’t I give this movie a higher rating? The first half was a bit weak, frankly a trifle boring—I fell asleep through some of it—and the narration was poorly scripted. The highlight of the experience? Three of the WWII vets interviewed in the film—two former Kamikaze pilots and one survivor of the sinking of the USS Drexler—came to the Q&A following the screening and showed every evidence of a lovely camaraderie.

• Borderlines – 2 stars

  One word: meh. This shorts program was aggressively mediocre, with me not liking 3 of the 4 selections very much at all. The one I did like, about a North Korean boy who defects to the South in order to pursue his dream of being a rock musician, was very good until about the last 30 seconds, and then it got stupid.

• The Killing of a Chinese Cookie – 4 stars

  This documentary about the history of the fortune cookie was magnificently entertaining and at times flat-out hilarious. Some simply masterful editing and an at-first confusing but ultimately well-executed narrative structure really made this documentary stand out. The tongue-firmly-in-cheek sensibility of the story made for an interesting, informative experience. The only drawback was that they used some unnecessary footage that was, though entertaining, not really relevant to the story, and which made the focus meander a bit.

• Planet B-Boy – 5 stars

  This movie was awesome, just about the perfect documentary: a interesting, little-known subject—B-boying, more commonly known as breakdancing (but don’t call it that; they don’t like it)—portrayed flawlessly. And I mean flawlessly. Director Benson Lee did a wonderful job of selecting and cutting together 102 minutes of his 400+ hours of source footage, constructing a tightly woven narrative around the Battle of the Year, the annual international B-boy competition held in Germany.

  As engaging as Air Guitar Nation and as beautifully put together as Tales of an Osaka Love Thief, this movie is one of the best documentaries I’ve seen, put together with energy, pathos and style. Bravo!

About the rocky start: starting with them sending our tickets to the wrong address, the festival staff just seems to be amateurish and disorganized this year. Their crowd control, never very skillful, has broken down altogether, and though each volunteer is sporting a Secret Service-style headset and walkie-talkie kit, they seem, if it’s possible, to be less informed and more confused than if they weren’t talking to each other at all. Yeesh.

doing something a bit odd: I went to a concert. By myself. But before I get into that story, let me give you a bit of background.

Even if you know me, you may not know that I’m a big fan of Latin jazz/mambo music, while at the same time being a complete neophyte. I don’t own much of it, but I love it, and know just enough about the genre to recognize the big names in the field: Tito Puente and Celia Cruz, to name a couple.

Another luminary in Latin jazz, Arturo Sandoval is an enormously talented trumpeter, one often mentioned in the same breath with such greats as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. And when I found out that he and his band were playing a week-long engagement at Yoshi’s Jazz Club here in San Francisco, I flipped out. I’d been looking for an excuse to go to Yoshi’s here or in in Oakland for a while, and this was the perfect one.

Unfortunately, of the six friends I asked to join me, all were either uninterested (?!) or unavailable. But as I wasn’t about to let a little thing like that cheat me out of the chance to go see a living legend in person, I decided to go anyway. And the show was worth. Every. Penny.

Live music is always better than recorded music, but the improvisational nature of jazz lends itself uniquely to the truly great live music experience, which this was. Sandoval was spectacular, and was playing with a truly gifted group of musicians—each backup trumpeter was a master in his own right, and the saxophonist! There are no words.

Now, I knew going in that Sandoval was a great—some would argue the greatest—trumpeter, but what I didn’t know was that he’s a hell of a pianist as well. Other than his final number, a gorgeous rendition of Mambo Caliente, which he composed for the Mambo Kings soundtrack (the record that seriously got me into all this), the highlight of the evening was him sitting at the piano performing a piece he wrote and dedicated to recently deceased piano legend Oscar Peterson. If I hadn’t heard him bring the room to its feet with his trumpet just minutes before, I would have thought he’d devoted his whole life to studying the piano—he was that good.

The show was just phenomenal. Loved it loved it loved it.

SFIAAFF, or the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival, for short, has quietly been becoming one of the best film festivals of those I regularly attend. This year, happily, looks to be no different.

The festival will run this year between March 13 and 23 here in San Francisco (with different dates in Berkeley and San Jose), and has an interesting lineup again, featuring the latest films from Hou Hsiao-hsien (Café Lumiere) and Nobuhiro Yamashita (of Linda Linda Linda fame). Exciting indeed!

to blog about this before, but has anyone else seen this? I was out shopping with my sister a couple of weekends ago (she has now, alas, gone back to SLC, her three-month stint in SF over, and I miss her terribly), and we saw the strangest thing. Some stores in the mall (Westfield, in downtown San Francisco) were using real live people to model their clothes instead of mannequins. I am not making this up. There were two female models—of the rail-thin, supermodel variety—in cocktail dresses standing next to Ladies’ Shoes at Nordstrom, and Abercrombie & Fitch sported a muscular, shirtless, jeans-clad specimen standing in the entrance, complete with awestruck flirting shoppers hovering nearby. Weird, but brilliant.

300 – 4 stars

Had I known this movie was based on a Frank Miller graphic novel, I would have seen it a hell of a lot sooner; I have a thing for comic book movies. When done well, they are just beautiful, and capture the gorgeous visuals comic books are known for. This movie was done very well.

Packed with stunningly composed shots, intelligent dialogue, and enough gratuitous violence to make my little action-movie-loving heart go pitty-pat, this movie is a worthy addition to the pantheon of great comic book adaptations. Awesome.

Zodiac – 4 stars

Understated and chilling, this retelling of the true crime story of the serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area in the 60s and 70s was right on. Director David Fincher sensibly took a low-key approach to the movie, and Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal’s quiet but powerful performances humanized a huge and complicated story. Very nicely done. I’m anxious for the director’s cut of this movie to come out early next year; it promises to have a lot of interesting extras, including interviews with the people actually involved.

So one of my roommates and I have been going through a bit of a peanut butter phase recently—we both like it on our morning toast. And, tragically, we recently ran out of it. No big deal, you say. Just go out and buy more. Not that simple, bub.

Where I happen to live in San Francisco, I’m about equidistant from two fancy-schmancy gourmet markets, Bi-Rite (Bi-Me Rite Out of House and Home) and Whole Foods (Whole Salary Foods). And normally, I love this; I have, at my fingertips, gourmet (and expensive!) chocolates, more fresh (and expensive!) cheeses than you can shake a stick at, imported (and expensive!) French lemonade, exotic handmade (and expensive!) fruit preserves, and some beautiful organic (read: expensive) vegetables, among other (expensive!) things.

So a few days ago I went to B-MROoHaH on a grocery run, where one of the items on my list was a replacement jar of peanut butter. Between the various jars of soy butter and other nut butters, there was one type of 100% organic, freshly ground, non-hydrogenated, lightly salted creamy peanut butter. Ok, sure, I thought, and brought it home.

I learned my lesson the next morning when I put it on my toast. It was…not good. I mean, it was certainly peanutty. Too peanutty. It was like distilled essence of peanut, mixed with ground peanuts, with some peanut oil added in for flavor. I mean, if I had wanted to eat peanuts, I would have dumped a handful of Planters on my toast. No, I wanted to eat peanut butter. And the texture was all wrong! I’m used to peanut butter with the consistency of spackle. This stuff kind of sloshed around when you tilted the jar…<shudder>.

After I choked down that single piece of toast, I decided that the only way the rest of that jar would be palatable would be in a PB&J sandwich with some really sweet jelly. It would not do solo, on a piece of toast. So today, I went down to WSF to see if I’d have better luck.

But I should have known better. I went in, walked up and down the aisles a bit, finally found the peanut butter. And stood there dumbfounded. Between the cashew butter and the soy butter, what should I find but more of that 100% organic, non-hydrogenated bullshit? I want my hydrogenation, dammit! Say what you will about the stuff that choosy moms choose, but it tastes good.

Why is it so hard to find a simple jar of peanut butter? Now I’m going to have to get in my car (which I rarely have to use these days), and drive all the way to my nearest mega-mart in order to get some good old Jif. Yeesh.