We are always going to tell you to see Other Cinema. You can set your watch to it, we promise. This week’s Incredibly Strange Music program is packed with punk rock/bad music video genius. We’re particularly into the experimental film but there’s oddity for every taste, as curator Craig Baldwin’s program religiously offers.

This week, however, the OC schedule has a staunch competitor in the Castro’s program. If the lull in SF film festival activity has got you aching for films and special guests (don’t you love Cannes?) the Castro’s weekend long 007 mini-fest is a formidable cure. The first night, Richard Keil (aka Jaws from The Spy Who Loved Me) will there in person!

Two late plays that are really vital if you happened to miss them first run are screening at the Red Vic and the Balboa. If you missed German Academy Award winner The Lives of Others, you have a blessed second chance to see it at the Balboa – an already lovely venue made that much lovelier by good foreign fare. And if you missed out on Bong Joon-Ho’s acclaimed Korean horror movie The Host, you can catch it at the Red Vic this weekend.

Also worthy notations: see some vintage Peter Greenaway in The Draughtsman’s Contract at the Berkeley PFA on Friday and after that (exciting!!) Shohei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama. The weekend also offers other Imamura films at the PFA, and if you’re not familiar with his tales of sage/sanguine humor and Japanese custom, he’s a great one to study.

Foucault’s Pendulum