Think of the different battlefronts in World War II. Now choose the one you are the gladdest that you missed. The Golden Staircase in New Guinea? Saipan? The Ruhr cities under the RAF night bombing missions, or the London blitz? That great engineer of cage-rattling cinema, Christopher Nolan convinces you that Dunkirk ought to be way up on the list. On the cusp of May and June 1940, some 400,00 troops of the British Expeditionary Front were pushed to the sea at the resort town of Dunkirk, France, by the sudden collapse of the French army. A character here describes the soldiers, lined up and waiting to be ferried back home, as "fish in a barrel." It's more like the machine-gunning of a sardine can. Strafing planes and dive bombers decimated » Read More

The Jewish faith has its share of patriarchs. But even though latter-day thunderers such as Karl Marx and Fritz Lang have biopics in the South Bay division of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, there are plenty of matriarchs during the five-day, 28-film stand.Big Sonia by Leah Warshawski and Todd Soliday concerns a Kansas City tailor, still working into her nineties, who uses her spare time to testify to students about her own time as an alumnus of three different Nazi death camps.A Classy Broad is about the film producer Marcia Nasatir, a Texan who went to Hollywood, where she rose as a talented script-reader. » Read More

Please note the inside joke from Spider-Man: Homecoming, making up somewhat for the rotten Easter-egg Captain America tossed at us at the end of the film. What a big nerd-chuckle in the theater it was when Donald Glover showed up. He played Aaron Davis, a minor criminal Spider-Man did his worst to interrogate. Davis gives up the info Spider-Man was pathetically trying to scare him out of. He, Aaron, wants The Vulture and his space-weapons off the streets. After all, Aaron's nephew lives in the neighborhood. Chuckle, said the fanboys. They knew the nephew was a sly reference to artist Sara Pichelli and writer Brian Michael Bendis' comic series Spider-Men, which finds Peter Parker and Miles Morales uniting as a multi-culti web-slinging duo. » Read More

City Lights Theater Company's summer production is a fun, frightening and raucous musical retelling of one of America's most infamous murder cases. Lizzie follows the life and (alleged) crimes of Lizzie Borden. Most known to the world through a grisly nursery rhyme, Borden famously went on trial for the murder of her parents in 1892, after their bodies had been found axed to death. Some say it was for revenge, others money and still others point the finger in different directions. And although Lizzie was eventually acquitted of the murders, her story still haunts American culture. The show opens on a sparely furnished, almost bare, Victorian room. The walls are covered in picture frames. The largest two hold digital pictures of Lizzie's » Read More

When Tabitha Soren accompanied her husband, Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, to the Oakland A's spring training camp, it was a stroke of luck that the she brought her camera along. There, the former MTV reporter met the team's 2002 minor league draft picks-21 young men whose lives she would follow for the next 14 years. "When I met them, they were so full of hope and purpose that I felt like I wanted to capture that emotion on film," Soren recalls. While screaming fans and big money saturate the narrative of Major League Baseball's superstars, the 180 photographs in Soren's exhibit-titled "Fantasy Life"-capture the hidden faces and stories behind our national pastime. » Read More

Heinz Jones enjoys the simple things in life, or so it would seem. Maybe it's his red, foot-long beard. One gets the impression the former techie has found the keys to eternal contentment. And yet, as he discusses the genesis of Forager Tasting Room + Eatery, his eyes light up with a glint of ambition. He isn't so content after all. Forager is on a mission to revolutionize the local culinary and sips scene. Compared to other major metropolitan areas like Portland, Seattle and San Diego, San Jose and surrounding cities have relatively few options to find a locally brewed beer. Despite the fact that over a million people live here, San Jose is home to less than 10 of the 120 plus breweries in the Bay Area. And people are thirsty. » Read More

You don't have to be a forcibly exiled maharajah longing for his original country to identify with The Black Prince, a vivid historical film opening this weekend. Written and directed by Kavi Raz and based on the true story of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last king of Punjab before it was annexed by the British Empire, The Black Prince illuminates a tragic tale often hidden from the mainstream histories of South Asia. In 1843, at the age of 5, Duleep Singh ascended to the throne of Punjab, a.k.a. the Sikh Empire, and even survived an attempt on his life. Over the next few years, the British began to set their sights on Punjab, the last remaining piece of Northern India not under their subjugation. » Read More

Most people will tell you they want to be accepted for who they really are-yet those doing online dating rarely post profiles with stuff like "I like long walks on the beach, fine dining, and obscenely large breasts." In light of this, sites using these compatibility "algorithms" would seem to have some added value. However, according to a massive online dating analysis by social psychologist Eli Finkel and his colleagues, this algorithm stuff mainly seems to be a "science!"-flavored marketing ploy. The researchers explain that it's "virtually impossible" for sites to do what they promise with these algorithms: "match people who are uniquely suited to one another" and who are likely to have a "satisfying and lasting long-term relationship" » Read More

It's a favorable time to strengthen your fundamentals and stabilize your foundation. I invite you to devote your finest intelligence and grittiest determination to this project. How? Draw deeply from your roots. Tap into the mother lode of inspiration that never fails you. Nurture the web of life that nurtures you. The cosmos will offer you lots of help and inspiration whenever you attend to these practical and sacred matters. Best-case scenario: You will bolster your personal power for many months to come. » Read More