It's tremendously exciting filmmaking. Here Chazelle is more of a disciple of Steven Soderbergh than Ron Howard. Rather than taking in the vastness of space, Chazelle's focus narrows to the view through a space capsule window. He makes it all frightening: the glow of hot metal, the rows of toggle switches, the seams of the capsule that look thin enough to split. Chazelle re-creates the excitement of breaching the atmosphere after a bone-shaking ride and finally emerging into stillness. It's all caught with little gestures: the snatching of a floating pencil in zero gravity, or the slap of a bare hand against the window, as a terrific spin almost whirls the Gemini capsule into oblivion. » Read More

Every filmmaker has to start somewhere, and the 10th annual San Jose International Short Film Festival gives us a chance to spot and celebrate rising talents. Among the 150 films on view: Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontilla's animated "One Small Step" would make a good opener for First Man. Without dialogue, this charmingly animated fantasy tells of the coming of age of Luna Chu, a young San Franciscan who dreams of travel to the moon. Typical sexism that there hasn't been a woman on the lunar surface yet (Wally Funk, a female astronaut, lost her chance when the cost of the Vietnam War curtailed the Apollo program). This is a dream one would love to see come true. » Read More

The spotlight shines on a woman standing alone at her desk. Alison (Moira Stone) introduces herself to us from the middle of an empty stage. She's a cartoonist in search of the perfect caption to describe her childhood. One of her panels appears on a projection screen behind her. In it, her father holds her younger self aloft on his knees. She extends her arms out wide to mimic the wings of an airplane. This and other rare moments of father-daughter connection punctuate Fun Home, the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel's graphic novel. » Read More

Joshua Marx directs Martin McDonagh's play The Lieutenant of Inishmore with verve and efficiency. In this black comedy about a rogue INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) agent set on a path of revenge and destruction, the production emphasizes comedy even when the comic asides land in Grand Guignol territory. The pacing is light on its feet. Marx wrangles passable Irish accents from almost every member of the cast. And the actors commit to the psychic and physical geography of rural Ireland. As an ensemble, they're all on the same page. The production answers every question McDonagh poses on the page except the most important one: "Why?" » Read More

As the title of the current Pace Gallery exhibit suggests, "Agnes Martin/Navajo Blankets" pairs Navajo blankets with Martin's spare canvases. The blankets date back to the 19th century and are still intact and vibrant. One example identifies No. 6 as a "First Phase Chief's Blanket" (c. 1800-1830). No. 6 is lined with brown and white (now aged to the color of cream) stripes alternating with occasional thin indigo lines. This first phase of Navajo weaving didn't incorporate patterns. At a glance, it looks like an uncomplicated design. But you could come to the same conclusion about Martin's acrylic and graphite canvas Blessings (2000). Pale blue stripes alternate with white ones until they meet in the middle, where one slim line of reddish » Read More

While at the Paris Climate Accord in December 2015, Patrick Brown noticed something peculiar about the mass of environmentally conscious politicians and ardent activists attending the momentous summit. Despite spending days advocating for more stringent regulations around greenhouse gas emissions, he observed that many of these conservationists would end their day not with a salad, but instead with a juicy steak.
While there's nothing inherently wrong with prime rib, it's a bit of a daring choice for environmental advocates: Livestock alone generate 7.1 gigatons of greenhouse gases each year, about the same amount as the entire global transportation sector, and are also the biggest driving factor of biodiversity loss in the world » Read More

A dark elegiac story about young girls growing up in the Pablo Escobar era of drug lord violence in Colombia, Fruit of the Drunken Tree, the debut novel by Ingrid Rojas Contreras, grew out of her own life experiences. Next week, on Thursday, Oct. 18, Rojas Contreras will be one of seven authors reading at Story is the Thing, a quarterly series at Kepler's Books. In the book, the lives of two sisters, Chula and Cassandra, ages 7 and 9, along with that of their maid, Petrona, 13, anchor the story. The sisters live in Bogota in a gated two-story house with all the comforts, while Petrona lives in a guerrilla-occupied slum, caught up in whether or not she should work for the guerrillas. One by one, car-bombings, kidnappings and political » Read More

Interestingly, it seems that the reassurance doesn't have to come in spoken word form. Psychologist Brooke C. Feeney found that in the context of a close relationship, "affectionate touch...was an effective buffer against jealous feelings" for relationship partners at times when anxious attachment levels were high. Sending the message physically like this takes advantage of how, according to research in "embodied cognition," our body and actions, independent of conscious thought, are surprisingly powerful and efficient tools for changing our habitual emotional reactions. » Read More

In his book The Snow Leopard, Peter Matthiessen describes his quest to glimpse the elusive and rarely seen creature in the Himalayas. "Its uncompromising yellow eyes, wired into the depths of its unfathomable spirit," he writes, give it a "terrible beauty" that is "the very stuff of human longing." He loves the snow leopard so much, he says, that it is the animal he "would most like to be eaten by." I bring this up, Aries, because now would be a good time, astrologically speaking, for you to identify what animal you would most like to be eaten by. In other words, what creature would you most like to learn from and be inspired by? What beautiful beast has the most to give you? » Read More