This week: Michelle Tea’s Valencia turns 25, and California turns 175; Boozie Brunch boosts local restaurants while Culinary Cinema pairs films with three-course meals; a state park thrives post-wildfire and Point Molate is opening to the public; plus, puppy yoga, cat Pilates, and Bay Area makers.

Boozie effect

Local influencer Novi Mitchell, who’s Oakland born and raised, has built a 169,000-strong Instagram following with her Boozie Brunch account by spotlighting Bay Area restaurants big and small.

Between a full-time job at Microsoft and weekend filming, she turns casual food adventures into a platform that boosts mom-and-pop spots. One rave review can transform business overnight — Samara’s Southern Creations says reservations haven’t slowed since she posted their deep-fried waffles with peach cobbler butter. — KGO

Dinner and a movie, elevated

At Pruneyard Cinemas in Campbell, classic movies come with a side of chef-crafted flair. The Culinary Cinema series pairs films with three-course dinners inspired by the story, characters, or setting.

Think pink-hued appetizers for Legally Blonde, or a cannoli nod for The Godfather. Mixologist Jacqueline Aguirre tops it off with specialty cocktails echoing the films’ moods, providing a full sensory experience. — Bay Area News Group

New shoots, old giants

Five years after the CZU Lightning Complex fires, much of Big Basin Redwoods State Park’s forest floor is exposed to full sunlight where old-growth redwoods once formed a dense canopy. The trees are tapping into decades of stored energy, sprouting green shoots in a “bottlebrush” effect that hints at their resilience.

Down below, tiger lilies, California lilacs, huckleberry, blackberry, Pacific madrone and tanoak seedlings fill the gaps, stretching toward the sun. Birds, pollinators, and other small critters have moved in to stake their claim. As the canopy slowly rebuilds, the forest’s plant and animal communities continually respond and adapt. — Santa Cruz Sentinal

Michelle Tea’s Valencia, 25 years later

In her 2000 novel, Valencia, Michelle Tea captured San Francisco’s 1990s butch-dyke lesbian scene with a raw, immediate voice, gaining her widespread acclaim. The 25th-anniversary edition revisits the book’s impact, highlighting its cast of real-life characters and its portrait of a generation.

Valencia was later adapted into a feature film, which premiered at Frameline Film Festival in 2013, per SFist. Fast, chaotic, and unflinching, Valencia captures the streets, bars, and poetry readings of an iconic era in San Francisco. The book remains a touchstone of lesbian history, art, and rebellion. — Autostraddle

Point Molate preserved

After decades of plans, proposals, and lawsuits, 82 acres of Richmond shoreline at Point Molate have officially become open to the public. The East Bay Regional Park District bought the land from the Guidiville Rancheria for $40 million, securing space for trails, open access, and environmental preservation.

The site includes Ohlone shellmounds, the Winehaven castle, and former Navy warehouses. A 2.5-mile trail is in the works, connecting the area to the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. Once complete, visitors will be able to explore a new stretch of Bay front open space. — SFGate

Sixteen artists in SOMA

September at Arc Gallery in SOMA blends small-scale art, music, and conversation. The FourSquared exhibition features sixteen Bay Area artists, each showing sixteen works under $800.

Events include Art & Sound with the Berkelium String Quartet on September 10, a SOMA West CBD Happy Hour on the 18th, and an Artists Talk and Reception on the 20th, all in the heart of Arc’s multi-gallery, studio, anyone d arts hub.

The show continues through October 4, alongside Arc’s supportive artist community, Kearny Street Workshop, and Café Suspiro. — Arc Studios, Cafe Suspiro

Berkeley vendor who gives

If you’ve ever bought an African hat or basket on a Berkeley corner, there’s a good chance it came from veteran street vendor Viveca Jones, who's been part of the community for nearly four decades. Jones tells Berkeleyside she was the first to use a cash register at the Berkeley Flea Market back in the ‘70s. These days, she can be found at Shattuck & Vine, Monterey Market, and the downtown farmers’ market.

Jones spends her earnings feeding people twice a day, setting out food boxes and fruit she’s picked from neighbors’ trees: “Helping others keeps me going.” — Berkeleyside

Puppy planks & cat pilates

Move, stretch, and find your balance—sometimes with a paw in the mix. The Bay Area’s animal-assisted fitness scene includes puppy yoga at The Puppy Sphere and Puppies & Yoga, cat-centered Pilates at KitTea Café, goat yoga at Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay, and even early-morning sessions among zebras at the San Francisco Zoo.

Mats, cuddles, and unexpected companions included — just be ready for a little animal-assisted improvisation. — 7x7

Presses, prints, and local makers

The Box SF’s historic 1920s building opens September 6–7 for its monthly fair, where local artists and makers fill two floors with handmade goods, crafts, and vintage finds. The ground-floor Pressroom and Mercantile, a museum-like antique letterpress shop, adds another layer of curiosity with restored printing presses and millions of pieces of printed history.

Free and open to the public, the fair turns the space into a hands-on, browse-and-shop experience celebrating Bay Area creativity. — The BoxSF, teresa.sw

California turns 175

California celebrates 175 years of statehood on Tuesday, September 9, at the State Capitol in Sacramento, featuring family-friendly activities, food trucks, birthday cake, and California-grown treats. A laser display follows 30 minutes after sunset. The State Library marks its own 175th birthday that same day with tours and cake.

Additionally, the California Museum will host a Statehood Celebration on September 6 with historic artifacts — including the original 1850 California Constitution — live music, dance, crafts, and a film screening.

The anniversary is part of a broader slate of in-person and virtual events throughout the month across the state. — CA.gov

Top Image: Lily Moon/Flickr

Previously: Field Notes: Muttville's New HQ, Tactile Maps, Pavement Plants, ‘Fairyland’ Flick, and a Hidden Mansion

In an interview with Jesse Eisenberg on Fresh Air this week he talks about his changing view of a man he portrayed over a decade ago, Mark Zuckerberg. And, apparently, a sequel or follow-up to The Social Network may be in the works.

The Social Network was something of an Oscar darling after it came out in 2010, getting nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for star Jesse Eisenberg, and going on to win Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin) and Best Score (Trent Reznor — who, sidebar, got snubbed today with no nomination for the Challengers score).

This week, as Eisenberg gets a second Oscar nod, this time for his screenplay A Real Pain, he was on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. And the conversation naturally came around to The Social Network, and how Eisenberg's view of Zuckerberg, whom he portrayed as a younger man in the 2003 to 2007 era of Facebook, has changed.

He tells Gross that he saw Zuckerberg as "an outcast in the world" who created a platform where people could interact virtually because "he felt uncomfortable connecting with other people through more traditional social norms."

She asks him if he feels at all connected to Zuckerberg when he does something that makes news, especially something he's vilified for, like ending fact-checking and some forms of content moderation on Facebook.

"As an actor, your job is to kind of like really understand your character, even if your character is a villain in a movie, your job is to defend your character," Eisenberg says. "So I spent a lot of time thinking about this guy... and at the time, when I was acting in it, I thought, 'This is wonderful. I'm totally defensible. This is a guy who is ambitious because he has this great thing he is going to unleash on the world.'"

But, Eisenberg says, his views on Zuckerberg have of course changed, and he isn't so defensible anymore.

Regarding moves like the recent one to end fact-checking, or going on Joe Rogan's podcast to brag that he's making Facebook "more MAGA-friendly," Eisenberg says, "I wonder if that's really an extension of that same person, a person whose ambition sort of supercedes their caution in a way that can be pretty dangerous."

He says, of where Meta/Facebook has gone in the last decade, and who Zuck has become, "I feel a little bit sad. Like, 'Why is this the path you're taking?'... This is that same person that I spent a long time humanizing and thinking about and trying to justify his behavior."

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin mentioned last year that he is working on a script for a January 6th movie, which no doubt could get greenlit this year, which sounds like it could center on Facebook and decisions around content moderation following the 2020 election. He added that he "blames Facebook" for the January 6th debacle (though surely we have to blame Twitter and Telegram too).

E! Online took this to mean this could be a sequel to The Social Network, but it could also just be a different film in which Zuckerberg figures in as a supporting character.

When asked if he would be up for reprising his role as the older but un-wiser Zuckerberg, Eisenberg told E! in November, "Will I be in that movie? Yeah, I'll be in anything."

Related: Saying Its Content Moderation Has 'Gone Too Far,' Meta Now Set to Become Hotbed of Transphobia and Conspiracies

A Jerusalem miniature donkey in Palo Alto named Perry served as the movement model for Eddie Murphy’s Shrek character Donkey in the animated franchise, but Perry succumbed to a hoof disease last week.

The Shrek movie franchise has now cracked out four iterations of Shrek films (a fifth is coming in 2026), as well as a couple of Antonio Banderas spin-offs. And Hollywood star Eddie Murphy has made an estimated $35 million over his run voicing the part of Shrek’s comical sidekick character Donkey. What is not well-known about this character was that two real donkeys served as the animation movement models for Murphy’s Donkey, and one of them was a donkey that lived in Palo Alto at a pasture called Barron Park Donkeys.

“Perry is famous because he was the animation model for Donkey in the Shrek movies,” the pasture explains. “In 1999, animators from Pacific Data Images, a local company contracted by Dreamworks for the 3D animation, visited the pasture and observed Perry, especially his movements and gait, to learn how donkeys move.”

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But Perry is off to the great pasture in the sky, as KTVU reports that the Palo Alto donkey who inspired the Shrek Donkey died last Thursday, according to an announcement from Barron Park Donkeys. Perry was suffering from an incurable hoof disease, and was euthanized. He was 30.

“We are heartbroken with [Perry’s] passing, but recently he had been in increasing pain, suffering from a condition known as laminitis which is not curable,” the pasture said in an online statement. “This was the right time (for him) to say goodbye although still too soon for us. In Perry’s last weeks, handlers spent many hours at the pasture with him, petting him, cradling him, singing to him, and telling him that he was and always will be loved.”

Perry’s handler Jenny Kiratli told People magazine, "I can attest that many of Donkey’s classic head tilts, eye rolls and bouncy trots were straight from Perry."

Barron Park Donkeys adds that “We will announce plans for a memorial service for Perry soon.”

So the Donkey in Shrek has Bay Area roots, but the Shrek franchise is not really otherwise much of a Bay Area thing. Shrek is not produced by the Emeryville-based Disney subsidiary Pixar, even though the movies have the general appearance of Pixar animation. The Shrek movies are produced by DreamWorks Animation, which is based out of Glendale, CA, and owned by the corporate conglomerate of Universal Pictures, NBC Universal, and Comcast.

Related: Upcoming ‘Toy Story’ Prequel Has Disney’s First Ever Same-Sex Kiss — Because Bay Area Pixar Employees Fought For It [SFist]

Images: (Left) bpdonkeys via Instagram, (Right) Dreamworks Animation

Hey, Barbie, Bullitt, and Labyrinth are among your summer outdoor movies in various SF parks this year, as the SF Parks Alliance brings back the popular outdoor movie series Sundown Cinema.

The cherished annual SF tradition of free outdoor movies in parks all over town is back for the spring/summer/fall of 2024. Today the SF Parks Alliance announced the full lineup for the 2024 Sundown Cinema series, with seven different free movies at seven different SF parks. The SF Park Alliance adds that “As always, expect local food, drinks, music, themed pre-show entertainment.”

Here is your 2024 Sundown Cinema schedule, with dates and locations, and all screenings scheduled to being at sundown, or around 7:30 pm:

• Friday, May 17: Selena (sing-along) at Dolores Park
• Friday, June 14: Bullitt at The Presidio
• Friday, July 12: Labyrinth at Glen Park
• Friday, August 2: Barbie at the Ferry Building
• Friday, September 6: SF’s Lost Landscapes, Found Home Movies at Duboce Park
• Friday, October 4: The Princess and the Frog at India Basin Waterfront
• Friday, October 18: The Nightmare Before Christmas (sing-along and costume contest) at Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in McLaren Park

Most of those are recognizable movie titles that need no explanation. But what is this SF’s Lost Landscapes, Found Home Movies playing on Friday, September 6? The official event page for that screening offers no explanation. But it does offer a one-hour, 15-minute YouTube video, seen below, which might be the whole show itself?

All screenings are free, but if you RSVP in advance on DoTheBay you might win some kind of prize. You can also reserve seats on that website ($20-$35), which gets you “members-only” seating and a drink ticket.

There are other outdoor film series playing in SF this spring, summer, and fall. The PROXY film series in Hayes Valley has Past Lives (Friday, April 12), Fremont (Friday, April 19), and Turning Red (Friday, April 26). Frameline has teased they may do an outdoor screening or two, and Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema will have its festival in September.

Related: San Francisco Parks Alliance Set to Bring Back Outdoor Movie Nights [SFist]

Image: SF Parks Alliance

Retro movie lovers are creating their own DIY “Free Blockbuster” kiosks so people can borrow or leave DVD and VHS movies for free, and a smattering of these lending libraries are popping up around the Bay Area.

The one-time ubiquitous video store chain Blockbuster Video declared bankruptcy in 2010, and at this point, there’s only one Blockbuster location left in the entire country (it’s in Bend, Oregon). The once-prominent Blockbuster near Church and Market streets closed in 2011, though as a funny footnote, the space that’s become home to the popular restaurant Nopa almost became a Blockbuster Video in the early 2000s.

But the Chronicle has an article today about some do-it-yourself pranksters who have started a wave of informal “Free Blockbuster” lending libraries, and they report that some of these makeshift little kiosks are turning up here in the Bay Area. They work on the premise of “Take a movie, leave a movie,” like Little Free Libraries, with small stocks of free DVDs and VHS tapes inside their kiosks.

Though honestly, who still has a DVD player or a VHS machine these days?

The Chronicle picks this up as a "trend piece," presumably because the New York Times wrote it up last week. But in looking at the Free Blockbuster national map, this “trend” is not exactly sweeping the Bay Area. While there are apparently 200 of these across the country, there are only five in Northern California (one each in Oakland, San Jose, Rohnert Park, Davis, and Modesto).

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That said, the Oakland Free Blockbuster kiosk (seen above) did open in 2019, which was the year this LA-based project started. That one is at 420 40th Street outside 1-2-3-4 Go! Records in the Mosswood District, and the Free Blockbuster website has instructions on how to set up your own “franchise,” including stencil designs and such with which you can repurpose an abandoned newspaper box.

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But Instagram comments indicate some who've done so have had a negative experience. The post above has drawn comments like “I got wiped out like 2 months after opening. I’m just saddened by how nobody seems to bring anything back god forbid they add to the box,” and “Someone wiped me out and left a bunch of R-Rated DVDs and VHS tapes. People can be jerks.”

And amusingly, the Chronicle adds that Free Blockbuster “has received a cease-and-desist letter from Blockbuster LLC. In response, they have submitted a licensing request, which is still pending.”

Related: BART Debuts Touchless 'Short Story Dispensers' as Part of One Year Pilot Program [SFist]

Image: freeblockbuster via Instagram

The 28-year run of SonomaMovies.com, and its sister site NorthBayMovies.com, will come to an end today, as the site’s sole proprietor is calling it quits on aggregating movie showtimes for a five-county, 160-mile stretch of Northern California.

The pandemic has been tough on movie theaters. But it’s also been a drag for hobbyists whose pastimes are following movie theaters, and maintain cult audiences dedicated to the irreplaceable experience of enjoying movies on the big screen. And so it goes for the regional specialty sites SonomaMovies.com and then with NorthBayMovies.com, which started in the mid-1990s, but the Chronicle reports that site operator Bert Towle will cease operating both sites today.

The final curtain is the result of a combination of cratering site traffic, the emergence of streaming services, and improved online tools that have filled what was once a very large void.

“We moved up to Petaluma in ’93 and I discovered when I got here that I couldn’t turn to The Chronicle and find Sonoma County movie times,” Towle says in his Chronicle exit interview. “So I decided to do something about it.”

“I only did Sonoma County at first, then within six months I started getting requests from people who lived in Marin County,” he says. The NorthBayMovies.com sister site grew to cover Napa, Mendocino, and Lake Counties, aggregating movie showtimes for a more than 160-mile stretch of northern California.

When the SonomaMovies.com started in 1994, it was the days before Google even existed, and the dominant internet portals like AOL and Yahoo were a GeoCities-like mess of completely non-localized news and pop culture stories. The most reliable way to get movie showtimes was a huckster-voice phone line called MovieFone, which often took several minutes to get results that were maybe inaccurate if you lived in a small town.

Towle started his sites as quick, no-frills, no-advertising labor-of-love reference guides, which is what they remained for their nearly three-decade run.

“I was just looking at the stats this past week and it appears that my peak was about 2017 and I was doing about 100,000 page views a week,” Towle tells the Chron. “In 2019 it was down to about three-quarters of what the peak had been. And then, of course, in 2020 (the first year of the pandemic) it fell to less than 25% of what it had been, and it still hasn’t recovered. It’s now at about 40% of 2017 (about 40,000 page views a week).”

“Thanks to all the people who've said kind things about the site,” Towle says in his farewell message on both sites. “I've tried to keep it simple and productive.”

Related: Downtown Berkeley’s Last Remaining Movie Theater, the Regal UA, Is Closing [SFist]

Image: Large Theater via Yelp

The Muni-kung fu-swordfight-car chase scene on SF hills is well worth the price of admission, but the rest of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is, well, up and down.

San Francisco film fans’ excitement kicked up last October, when a big-budget action movie car chase scene was filmed in Russian Hill. SFist confirmed this was for the upcoming Marvel Comics flick Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, bringing the kung fu character into the constantly expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe. When the Shang-Chi trailer dropped in April, comic book nerds and transit nerds alike rejoiced that there was a kung fu car chase on the 1-California Muni bus, and this film’s premiere was immediately circled in our datebooks.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings premiered last night, and is now playing at Bay Area theaters. But it’s only a “San Francisco movie” for about the first 30 minutes, after which it trots the globe and then goes off into a magical forest dimension, often getting bogged down with the bloated formula you expect from the Disney-Industrial Complex.

The absolutely glorious Muni car chase fight scene comes roughly 20 minutes into the movie, lasts 8 minutes long, and fully deserves its early praise as one of the greatest San Francisco car chase scenes ever. In addition to highly satisfying carnage, it's packed with inside-joke Muni references, digs at tech culture, and smartphone gags. Yes, there are geographically implausible location leaps, but there's so much whimsy and adrenaline in the scene that anyone’s disbelief will be delightfully suspended.  

We do get some exterior shots of the Fairmont Hotel and Chinatown (which SFGate reports was actually the Richmond), and the introductory aerial drone shots of local landmarks that establish these events are taking place in San Francisco. But the principal stars Simu Liu and Awkwafina  may not have ever even set foot in the city, it appears their scenes are just edited and weaved into the exterior shots. (The IMDb locations for Shang-Chi only list San Francisco for “second unit stunts.”)

After the film leaves San Francisco, director Destin Daniel Cretton (Just Mercy) deftly mixes up the comic book formula with elements of gangster movies, Chronicles of Narnia-style fantasy, and Crouching Tiger-inspired martial arts scenes with sweeping ballet movements and meditative character development over the course of the fight. This largely works quite well, until the final 30-ish minutes turn into some wholly unnecessary CGI dragon nonsense that will have most people, outside middle school kid and MCU stan demographic, sighing and wondering, “Will this thing just end already?”

Awkwafina is funny, though not Crazy Rich Asians funny, but she’s the tonic this movie needs in the latter half when it takes itself too seriously. Ben Kingsley  — of all people!  —  also capably carries some comic relief duties, and Michelle Yeoh shows up to do exactly what you would expect Michelle Yeoh to do. And yes, this being a Marvel Comics movie, there are bonus “stinger” scenes after the credits (there are two, stay for the whole credits), but these are unremarkable, and are just there to establish there will be a sequel. As if that were a question.

There are many reasons that Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a cause for celebration. It’s the first primarily Asian cast comic book film of the big-budget U.S. franchises, a welcome sight after a terrible year for the Asian-American community. Large portions of this film are in Mandarin and subtitled, it’s a proudly Asian-American film. It heralds the return of movies being made in San Francisco after the COVID downturn, so there is a very significant matter of civic pride here. But Shang-Chi is ultimately just another comic book movie, and most Bay Area viewers will only be interested in its first half-hour.

And hey, you can watch just the first half-hour and then put on something else! Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will be streaming for free on Disney Plus on October 18, just a month and a half from now. You may opt to just wait til then.

Related: Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi’ Trailer Arrives, With a Muni Bus Martial Arts Battle [SFist]

Images: Marvel Studios

The teaser trailer for SF-shot Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings dropped today, and a battle scene on the 1-California has local comic book fans in a delirious state of squee.

The minor kung fu comic book character Shang-Chi is a fairly obscure personality, but the Disney-Industrial Complex known as the “Marvel Cinematic Universe” has high hopes this character can be their next franchise-building action movie sensation. Last October, Nob Hill and Russian Hill residents noticed car chase scenes being filmed in their streets (the Muni bus chopped in half was a particular favorite), and SFist was able to confirm these scenes were for an upcoming Marvel martial arts film installment called Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which would also star Michelle Yeoh and Awkwafina.

The teaser trailer for this epic just dropped Monday morning. You can watch it above, though very little of it depicts San Francisco, until an epic battle royale breaks out on Muni at the 1:23 mark, which takes place in the Stockton Street tunnel! Or at least a CGI version of it.

The enduring highlight will be star Simu Liu gesturing in the above GIF, though there is plenty more for us to break down here.

As with any San Francisco car chase scene, there are completely implausible location jumps where cars find themselves in totally different neighborhoods than they were two seconds ago.

Many sharp-eyed observers on social media are ‘Well, actually’-ing that it’s not really a Muni bus, it’s a Hollywood-style replica. The 1-California signage rings true, but notice that the bus’ front says “SFT,” not “Muni.”

But most importantly we have an Awkwafina sighting! She at one point is seen driving (and of course crashing) the 1-California, followed by an obligatory wisecrack, perhaps a nod to her voicing subway announcements in New York City.

Other contextual information suggests her character Katy is not a Muni driver by trade, but merely commandeers the bus in a crisis situation as deemed necessary by action film circumstances.

This does not appear to be a “San Francisco movie.” The Muni kung fu fight notwithstanding, very little of this trailer even pretends to take place in San Francisco. Moreover, the IMDB location listings for Shang-Chi show that only “second unit stunts” shot here. Awkwafina, Simu Liu, and Michelle Yeoh probably never set foot here during the entire production.

The most ominous aspect to this trailer may be this preferred new language of “only in theaters September 3.” The movie studios would very much like to break you from this expectation of “simultaneous release” on streaming and in movie theaters on the same day, as we saw recently with Kong vs Godzilla and as we will see with Matrix 4.  Shang-Chi commands enormous fan interest, and you can see it “only in theaters.” The tug-of-war between the streaming services and the studios trying to preserve traditional box office revenue looks to be the biggest battle in the 2021 Hollywood blockbuster releases.

Related: Marvel Kung Fu Flick ‘Shang-Chi’ (Starring Awkwafina!) Now Shooting in SF [SFist]

Image: Marvel Studios

SF’s homegrown film festival returns with 103 films from 41 countries, highlighted by the Oakland High-focused Homeroom, a Sesame Street documentary, and the first batch of COVID-19 and quarantine films.

Like many things in 2020, the San Francisco International Film Festival now known as SFFILM basically did not happen last year. But the transformation of Fort Mason into a drive-in theater, and our not-by-choice new dependence on streaming films online, made it kind of a foregone conclusion that this year’s film festival would be a combination of those two formats. And we learned Wednesday morning that indeed it will be, as the festival announced its 2021 lineup in (of course) a Zoom call, but the array of drive-in movies and films streaming online features a number of real standouts.

The festival runs April 9-18, and most of the films are available to stream at any point during those 11 days. And since they’re streaming, you don’t have to worry about the show selling out or going to "rush tickets."

It’s 103 films from 41 countries, and 13 are world premieres. A full 57% are directed by women, and 57% were also directed by Black, Indigenous and filmmakers of color. “We are really delighted to share a program that more accurately reflects the world around us,” new director of programming Jessica Fairbanks said Wednesday morning.

Your big Opening Night movie screening at the drive-in is John Boyega’s new feature Naked Singularity (April 9), which “focuses on an impassioned public defender (Boyega) who stumbles into a drug heist while his reality collapses all around him.” Closing Night (April 17) is Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street, a documentary on that beloved kids’ program. And the Centerpiece film will feature a drag show at the drive-in for the North American premiere of  Socks on Fire (April 10) “the personal story of the filmmaker exploring old family wounds between his homophobic aunt and drag queen uncle.” These films are all streaming too, but with more limited windows than the full 11-day schedule.

Bay Area film fans will circle the date for the Oakland High School-focused Homeroom (April 16), which was also an online entry at this year’s satellite Sundance Film Festival. “We anticipate a great hometown audience, the cast and crew have not yet seen this film on a big screen and they will be with us in attendance at the drive-in,” Fairbanks said.

Other drive-in flicks include Eric Bana’s new thriller vehicle The Dry (April 10), the story of 22-year-old Youtube domino sensation Lily Topples the World (April 11), the horror film/critique of horror films Censor (April 15), futuristic sendup Strawberry Mansion (April 16), and the “teens-gone-wild comedy” Supercool (April 17).

SFFILM usually features some manner of silent movie accompanied by a big-name live band or DJ, and they teased Wednesday morning there will be something similar, but the date and the program were not announced Wednesday.

And if you’ve wondered if the film industry will make COVID or quarantine movies, they already have, and two are streaming for the festival. Nanfu Wang’s In the Same Breath is a documentary that examines the origins and outbreak of COVID-19, and I’M FINE (Thanks for Asking) is a whimsical drama about a homeless woman trying to put together a security deposit for an apartment under shelter-in-place.

The SFFILM festival is April 9-18, both online and at the Fort Mason Drive-In. Tickets and program here.

Related: Armistead Maupin Says SF's New Culture Is 'A Bit Dull' At ‘Tales of the City’ Premiere [SFist]

Image: SFFilm.org

What better way is there to seek out some entertainment during this pandemic than at a drive-in movie theater, safely distant from other cars, eating and drinking whatever you packed — and most importantly, doing something outside your house!

Yes, in case you weren't aware, there are a couple of drive-ins still in existence around the Bay, and on Tuesday they got to reopen. And they're part of a nationwide trend in re-embracing the drive-in, because no matter how great your home entertainment system is, there comes a time when you need to get the fuck out of the house somehow.

As KQED reports, the West Wind Drive-In company operates two drive-in theaters in the Bay Area — one in San Jose and one in Concord — and there's a third in Sacramento as well, all of which just reopened with full schedules of double features. Concession stands remain closed, but the restrooms are open — and you can only leave your car to use a restroom, with a mask on.

Also, cars have to park 10 feet apart.

But how fun and old timey! (The Sacramento location, according to Facebook, already reopened with these rules in late March.)

The Solano Drive-In location on Solano Avenue in Concord has two screens, so on one there's a more adult-oriented double feature today — The Hunt at 8:30 p.m. followed by The Invisible Man at 10:25 — and on the other there's a kid-friendly double line-up, assuming the kids can stay awake this long — Trolls World Tour at 8:30 p.m. and Onward at 10:25 p.m.

Also this weekend, there's a horror movie premiere with 1 a.m. showtimes: The Wretched. ("Following his parents' separation, a rebellious teenage boy, Ben, is sent to live with his father for the summer and work at the local marina in order to gain some form of discipline. The idyllic tourist town offers little solace for him, however, as he is forced to deal with the local, privileged teens and his father's new girlfriend. Ben's problems grow increasingly disturbing when he makes a chilling discovery about the family renting the house next door.")

At the San Jose location there are six screens with six double features going on, including all of the above movies as well as Hobbs & Shaw and Good Boys.

Admission is $8.25 per person, and $1.75 per child aged 5 to 11.

Tuesday evening, the Tenderloin Museum is presenting a screening of an underground documentary, shot on 16mm film, that captures some of crazier and most rarely seen images from real-life queer San Francisco in the late 1960s.

It's called Gay San Francisco, it was shot between 1965 and 1970, and it is a "lost" film that was rediscovered by documentarists Susan Stryker and Victor Silverman during their research for the Emmy-winning documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria, which originally aired several years ago on PBS.

The Tenderloin Museum originally screened the film in December 2016, and tonight it's being re-screened via Zoom, with a suggested donation of $10 for those who want to watch. (Register for a ticket here to receive a link — registration ends at 5:45 p.m. Tuesday.) The virtual event is being done in collaboration with The Roxie Theater, and Stryker and Frederick will participate in a Q&A after the film.

As the museum originally described it, "Scenes from gay bars are intercut with fascinating interviews featuring gay men, lesbians, and drag queens discussing issues from harassment to sex to job security."

Per the event description:

Created by filmmaker Jonathan Raymond, “Gay San Francisco” gives an unabashedly raw window into queer life decades ago. Restored from its original 16mm film and transferred to digital in a collaboration between Tenderloin Museum and California Preservation Program, this extended version features, among other new scenes, lesbian subject matter and a fetish “tickle sacrifice” scene.

A true mondo film with no shortage of pornographic material, “Gay San Francisco” tackles its gay and erotic themes with a respect and humor that was all but unheard of at the time of its shooting. This footage — along with scenes from San Francisco’s thriving LGBTQ culture, interviews with gay men and trans women, and rare pieces from a Halloween drag show at the historic On The Levee gay bar — give a shockingly complete depiction of homosexual life in San Francisco, and more specifically, the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s first queer neighborhood.

Meanwhile, the Tenderloin Museum is also doing a virtual, open-submission gallery show called "Shelter in Place" which invites local artists to submit work they’ve been making during the coronavirus lockdown. Artist who'd like to submit work can email kconry@tenderloinmuseum.org.

You can see the work submitted so far on this Instagram account.

At the Castro Theatre on Sunday evening, SF Sketchfest celebrated the 35th anniversary of the cult-classic comedy whodunit Clue, with star Colleen Camp, bit player Jane Wiedlin (of Go-Gos fame) and writer-director Jonathan Lynn. And to make a long story short (too late!), the films avid local fans came out in droves to rewatch the film and hear some behind-the-scenes trivia in a Q&A.

Sadly, a scheduled appearance at the event by star Lesley Ann Warren (Miss Scarlet) was canceled due to illness, but one of the biggest tidbits that Lynn discussed was about how Warren almost was never in the film at all. As Clue buffs likely know, the late, great Carrie Fisher was initially cast in that role, and just 10 days before shooting began she informed Lynn and the team that she had checked into outpatient rehab.

Lynn describes Fisher as coming in to do a reading for the role and "sniffling a lot" because she apparently "had a cold." She says she was marvelously funny in her reading, and equally hilarious when she came to meet him for lunch in Los Angeles some days after that audition — though he says she arrived at the restaurant in a whirlwind and managed to trip over a table and a chair on her way to his table.

Fisher was very open in her memoirs and in later life about her cocaine abuse during this period (the film came out in late 1985 and was shot in that year), and Lynn has said that he only later realized that producers Debra Hill (who died in 2005 at age 54) and Dawn Steel (who died in 1997 at age 51) were also doing cocaine at the time and were not alarmed by Fisher's rehab announcement.

As he told BuzzFeed in a 2013 piece about the film,

"[Carrie] said, 'Oh, yes, they'll let me out during the day and I'll just come back at night.' And I thought, Really? So I asked Debra Hill, and Debra said, 'Yes, that sounds good.' I think Debra was also on cocaine, but I didn't know that. Then it was put to Dawn Steel, and she didn't seem to have a problem with it. I didn't know that everyone in Hollywood was snorting cocaine. I was really naive. They weren't doing that in Hampstead, where I lived. Then the insurance company got involved and said, 'Absolutely not. What are you thinking?!' — which surprised everybody but me."

Lynn told a similar story on stage at the Castro, adding, "I'm so curious to know how Carrie would have played the part of Scarlet. It would have been very different."

Camp concurred: "Very different."

As we all know, Fisher's part was quickly recast, and Warren arrived on set in time for a week's rehearsal before shooting began.

Regarding her own part, Yvette, Camp reiterated a detail that was in the BuzzFeed piece about how Madonna and Demi Moore both vied for the role before her, and she got the part by renting a French maid's costume and wearing it to the audition. (She left out Jennifer Jason Leigh — and Lynn didn't seem to remember any of this.)

Another amusing detail that one of the audience members brought up in the Q&A, addressing the question to Jane Wiedlin — who played the walk-on/dance-on role of the Singing Telegram Girl who gets shot toward the end of the film — was how two members of L.A.'s punk scene ended up in the film. Lee Ving, the lead singer of the band Fear, and he played the role of Mr. Boddy. Wiedlin said it was just random coincidence — though in the earlier BuzzFeed interview Lynn had said that Ving was someone the studio had insisted on, apparently because of his punk fame, and he was the one casting choice by the studio he decided to agree to.

Some more funny takeaways:

• Lynn had gone to boarding school in the UK with Tim Curry, and was one year older than him, and Curry apparently told him that he'd only found the courage to pursue acting after seeing that Lynn had gone off and done it.
• Lynn said he screened Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday for the whole cast on the first day of rehearsal, saying, "This is the pace that we need to be at." He now says he feels the pace of the dialogue is "just a bit too fast," and that too many of the jokes end up getting buried by the pacing.
• Producer Jonathan Landis gave Lynn his first directing gig with this film because he had to go direct Spies Like Us.
• Landis had the idea for the three different endings, believing that fans would go see the movie three times, but that turned out to be a blunder — Lynn says he was always more fond of stacking the three endings together as was done on the VHS and cable TV version, which led to the film's cult following.
• Colleen Camp said she'd recently met Knives Out writer-director Rian Johnson who said he was a huge fan of Lynn's films, especially Clue and Greedy.
• Lynn's biggest Hollywood success came when he directed 1992's My Cousin Vinny.

Sketchfest is doing several other anniversary screenings with members of the original cast and crew of the films during this year's fest, including a 20th anniversary screening of Superstar with Molly Shannon in attendance tonight (Monday) at Alamo Drafthouse, a 35th anniversary screening of Just One of the Guys on Saturday, and a 40th anniversary screening of Airplane! on Sunday.

Seven years after a mass shooter dressed as the Joker killed a dozen people at a Colorado movie theater during a premiere screening of The Dark Knight, the release of the dark Warner Bros. origin story Joker had theaters around the country bracing for the worst.

Here in the Bay Area, all AMC theaters issued a ban on wearing masks to Joker screenings, though costumes are allowed according to KRON 4. And Landmark Theatres has banned all costumes from screenings altogether, with a pair of East Bay Landmark cinemas choosing not to screen the film at all, as a precaution.

AMC issued a national statement after reports they may be banning costumes, saying, "Because we’re also getting calls about our costume policy, I want to make sure it’s clear that this is AMC’s standard costume policy, which has been in place for several years and applies to all movies at all times: Guests are welcome to come dressed in costume, but we do not permit masks, face paint or any object that conceals the face."

KPIX reports there was a quiet police presence outside the Presidio Theatre where the film was showing, though as one moviegoer on his way out of a screening quipped, the only danger is "falling asleep."

The FBI has reportedly been actively monitoring social media for credible threats connected to Joker screenings. And as the Hollywood Reporter reports, families of victims of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting issued an open letter to Warner Bros. calling on them to donate movie revenues to non-profits that combat gun violence.

Police around the country have been monitoring movie theaters playing the film, as Reuters reports, with police in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles all confirming that they have added patrols to movie theaters. There was also a report that the NYPD was sending plainclothes cops into screenings.

Joker stars Joaquin Phoenix in what's been hailed as a stellar performance in an origin story that uncomfortably depicts a character with some disturbingly similar psychological markers to recent mass shooters. The New York Times' A.O. Scott did not have a rave review, saying the film, "an empty, foggy exercise in second-hand style and second-rate philosophizing." Meanwhile, the SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle, whose opinion should never be trusted, calls it "a very good movie." And the Times separately delves into other risky, violent films that Warner Bros. has made in the past, like Natural Born Killers, and A Clockwork Orange.

In any event, it looks like Warner Bros. is laughing all the way to the bank on this one, with the movie scoring a $155 million global opening.

Locally famous (in Milpitas anyway) homegrown, low-budget horror film The Milpitas Monster (1976) just aired Saturday night on Northbay TV's (channel 49) "Creature Features," a reboot of KTVU's long-running horror movie series hosted by the late Bob Wilkins. As SFist's own movie critic Rain Jokinen notes on her Musty TV blog, Wilkins apparently used to crack jokes at the expense of Milpitas on air back in the day, which inspired some Milpitas high school students and their photography teacher to set about making their own monster movie. The tongue-in-cheek horror flick is an unsubtle commentary on growing environmental problem of landfills and garbage — the Milpitas Monster is a creature created by/grown out of human-dumped garbage who comes back to kill people, a la Godzilla.

"It's terrible and it's great," says Rain of the film, which you can watch in full on YouTube above, albeit in pretty degraded condition (there are lighting issues throughout).

The movie was made by students at the now gone Samuel Ayer High School, thus the joke about this being a "Samuel Goldwyn Ayer" production.

Current Milpitas High School art teacher Irene Hentschke sings the praises of this so-bad-its-good movie in a review you can see here, which comes ahead of a scheduled big-screen viewing event on Halloween Eve, Monday, October 30, at the Milpitas Great Mall Cinemark Century theater. "The Milpitas mayor, police chief, city council members, police officers, firefighters, Milpitas residents, town drunk, high school principal and teachers were all wrangled into a docu-horror drama playing their own authentic roles," Hentschke writes. "Watching this very original rendition of a '70s California small town is like a blast in the past in Technicolor."

The movie was screened in Milpitas last Halloween, and they're doing it again this year, with what appear to be a couple of the original cast members in attendance. Find tickets here if you want to go on Monday. DVDs are also available at that link.

Just in time for Halloween weekend, we have the first teaser trailer — actually a pretty extended teaser at that — for the Winchester Mystery House movie that you've been hearing about all year, now set for a winter premiere. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built, starring Helen Mirren and Jason Clarke, centers on the true story of Sarah Winchester, the widow and heir to the Winchester firearms fortune, who as the legend goes, built her sprawling, creepy, idiosyncratic manse in San Jose in an effort to outrun and confuse the ghosts she believed were haunting her — ghosts of those who were killed by Winchester guns.

Up until now, all we've seen of the film is the imposing portrait of Mirren, decked in black and sitting in a carriage. Now we have a glimpse into the vision of filmmakers Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers, Saw: Legacy), who have clearly taken liberties with real-life events to tell the story of Winchester, who was being treated by a San Francisco psychiatrist, played by Clarke, apparently hired by other Winchester heirs in an effort to declare Sarah mentally unfit to manage her own funds.

The trailer has a few of its own ghostly, jump-in-your-seat moments, and it just might be a winner! As Michael Spierig told People Magazine earlier this year, "I think everyone will be pretty scared."

And, clearly, never has the Winchester Mystery House looked so scary — though as we heard when they were shooting earlier this year, most of the interiors were done on a studio set in Australia, to save money.

Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built hits theaters February 2.

Previously: Helen Mirren Is In San Jose Shooting 'Winchester' Right Now