Art, San Francisco

Silent Winter @ The Castro 2013

Shhhhh… Silent Winter

I volunteered at the Castro Theater last weekend for a free ticket to “Silent Winter” the one day silent film festival. While I was there I met a number of silent film geeks who were not lacking in enthusiasm. When I asked “Which film are you seeing?” a few of them answered “ALL OF THEM.” Whaaaaa? It turns out that they were volunteering for the entire day, and watching all 5 movies! If I had known, I would have signed up too! 🙂

Since I’d only committed to working one shift, I chose tickets to “My Best Girl” which was Mary Pickford’s last silent film. I didn’t know much about Mary Pickford,but she was apparently THE silent film IT girl. She had control over her productions and image, which was pretty wild for a woman back then. To have money, power and beauty? Sheesh.

The movie was your basic poor girl meets rich boy who is pretending to not be rich movie (wait, isn’t that the storyline for Coming to America?), but it was so well done. I was really taken with the film’s charm. There were a few transcendent and very clever scenes in the movie (my favorite being the dizzying walk through traffic in the rain). My Best Girl isn’t on Netflix, but you can watch it on YouTube! The music is a little different than what I remember from the Castro, but that’s part of the fun of seeing movies live.

Other movies at the festival looked promising, and I’m kicking myself for not checking them out. Thankfully, a few of them are on Netflix.

The photos and film descriptions are from SF’s Silent Film Fest website. If you click on the movie name it will take you to the Netflix streaming page.

Faust 

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F.W. Murnau’s Faust is the most expressive telling of the old European legend, immortalized by Goethe, of the learned man who sells his soul to the devil. Magnificent in its surreal depictions of heaven and hell and a nightmarishly otherworldly world, Faust is masterpiece of German Expressionism, as boldly distinctive as Murnau’s other horror masterpiece, Nosferatu. When Emil Jannings’s wily Mephisto shows up to tempt Faust (Gösta Ekmann), a man of books and learning, with the ability to cure the plague and a 24-hour return to his youthful body, it seems God may have lost his wager with the devil over pious Faust’s immortal soul. Or has he? Murnau’s use of chiaroscuro effect beautifully contrasts light and dark, life and death; and evil is chillingly limned by Jannings’s brilliantly nuanced, subtly comic performance.

Kind of nervous about watching this one. The organist was practicing the music for Faust while I was volunteering, and it gave me the heebie jeebies.

The Thief of Bagdad

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Douglas Fairbanks’s personal favorite, The Thief of Bagdad shows him at the top of his charming, acrobatic game. Directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from One Thousand and One Nights, the story revolves around a thief (Fairbanks) who falls in love with the daughter (Julanne Johnston) of the Caliph of Bagdad. So overcome with love that he refuses to be deceptive about his true identity, Fairbanks’s thief still has the chance to win the fair maiden by bringing back the world’s rarest treasures. Thus begins a rousing fantasy replete with flying carpets, winged horses, and underwater sea monsters. Exquisite camerawork and lavish sets support early special effects to make Thief a wildly entertaining spectacle.

I’m watching Thief of Bagdad right now and it is epic. Watch this movie!

Art

The new Nick Cave album Push the Sky is coming out in a mere three days. I only found out about it via an email that they were coming to town in April (with Sharon van Etten, NO LESS) !!! I am SO EXCITED.

Found this teaser video of work on the album on their YouTube channel. I love finding stories, video, etc. that remind me that the creative process is indeed hard work. I forget this whenever I try to write, or draw or knit or whatever the hell it is that I claim to do. You don’t just sit down and suddenly strum out something like “Midnight Man” on a sunny Tuesday morning  in a beautiful London loft. You sit in your office writing from 9-6 for months, years. You read, you write bad poetry, you watch movies. You binge on five hours of Frasier (wait that’s just me). You play around with chords, dick around, and argue with your collaborators about the “wa wa sound.”

Back to work, artists. Back to work.

Food, Health

I Quit Sugar: Week 6: All Savory All the Time

 Week 6: End of the line for my vegan and sugar experiment.

When I started this experiment I figured that going vegan might be easier than cutting out sugar. That hasn’t changed. Thankfully I’ve found a few dishes that have been lifesavers. See below!

Vegan:

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Back on board the Meat Train:

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  • Slow cooker curried lentils, potatoes and chicken with greek yogurt- fantastic, but not as awesome as the butternut squash soup

 My vegan experiment has been over for more than a week, but the aftereffects are surprising.

I was so excited at first to eat meat and eggs and butter and cheese. Yet now that I can, I’m feeling pretty sensitive to meat. I feel grossed out if there’s too much, for example.  It feels wasteful if the meat that I’m eating is not rocking my world. Carmelized bacon with eggs? YES! Random burger from so so place? EH. Also I’m really feeling the heaviness from meat and the accompanying heartburn. 🙁

I’ve faltered a bit with the sugar thing the last few weeks.

It’s been really really hard. I stole secret sniffs of a lemon pie at a party and pretended in my mind that I was eating it.(This is a trick I have heard that makes you feel like you’re tasting it, but IT DOES NOT WORK). SAD. I’ve purchased sugar free, lactose free and gluten free ice cream, only to get home and notice “may cause a laxative effect in sensitive individuals” on the side label.

Hard as it has been, the experiment has been enlightening. But with diabetes, liver and cancer all up in my family history, I think that it’s worth it to keep trying to cut it out to a manageable level.