Here's a look at some of the more scrumptious visual bonbons being served in theaters and screening rooms around the bay this weekend:
The Children of Ray Bradbury
This series of shorts celebrates the work of the Something Wicked This Way Comes author, who died earlier this year. Bradbury's shorts "All In a Summer Day," "I Sing the Body Electric," and "The Veldt," which has been read on tape by a score of actors from Stephen Colbert to Leonard Nimoy and even sampled for a recent deadmau5 song, all get the treatment. Make sure to RSVP if you plan to go as the Oddball screening room has strictly limited seating. Plays Thursday at Oddball Film+Video.
Wuthering Heights
This largely wordless, primitivist take on Charlotte Bronté's canonized tale of class angst mixes a pinch of Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher), a spoonful of Terrence Malick (Tree of Life, Badlands) and a healthy serving of mucky British farm dirty and creates a compelling and moody concoction far more enrapturing than even the most bookish found the novel when they read it in high school. Starts Friday at The Bridge Theatre.
John Woo's Hard Boiled
Surely you've seen this one by now? No? Get on down to the Roxie on Saturday then! Possibly the most exquisitely choreographed action film of all time, Hard Boiled is the peak of Woo's bullet-fueled double-barrel horsepower antics and the film that made every teenage boy that saw it suddenly (if only temporarily) want to grow up to be Chinese. William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A., which it plays back-to-back with, is less of a must-see, but holds it's own strange thrall, especially for fans of Willem Dafoe. Both play Saturday at Roxie Theatre.
UP Urban Prototyping Festival
While not a film event in the strict sense of the word, the first iteration of this San Francisco Urban Design Festival will certainly contain its share of treats for the visually inclined. Highlights include DJ sets on the Minna Street stage backed by live visuals from artists local and imported and a rare audio/visual performance from experimental music giant Mark Fell. Starts Saturday at 12:30 pm.
The Sessions
Ben Lewin's film about a iron-lung-bound Berkeley poet trying to lose his virginity is a delight on its own but the fact that it's become sort of an unofficial coming out party for long under-appreciated character actor John Hawkes makes it all the more sweet. If it's appearance at the Mill Valley Film Festival recently is any indicator, the drama will be grabbing an Oscar nom in the very near future. Starts Friday at Embarcadero Center Cinema.
Peaches Christ presents Death Becomes Her
Right after he finished directing the third Back to the Future movie, Hollywood mainstay Robert Zemeckis delivered an odd baby: the massively campy, massively bitchy Beverly Hills satire Death Becomes Her. On Saturday, uber-queens Peaches Christ and Heklina present it again, for this first time, with the extra side of bitchy campiness it so rightfully deserves. Along with the screening and the customary pre-show the spectacle promises "Ever Lasting Makeovers" and a "Fountain of Youth Bar" in the Castro Mezzanine, along with a Dead Celebrity Costume Contest. Plays Saturday at The Castro Theatre.
The Lighted Field: Beings and Relations
SF MOMA runs a program of film and video to tie into the expansive, architecturally slanted "Field Conditions" exhibition currently running at the museum. Check out a sample here. Mind-altering substances not explicitly required, but red wine isn't the first thing that will come to mind when viewing thie surface-themed, mostly black-and-white works. Plays Thursday at SF MOMA.
