Unpreviewed is the opening-night film, Poisoning Paradise by Keely Shaye Brosnan, on the subject of the dosing of Kauai with pesticides. The executive producer and director's husband is an actor and organic gardener named Pierce. He's saved the world a few times himself, and he may or may not also be on hand for the festivities. Opening for Poisoning Paradise is Irina Patkanian's short, Little Fiel. The documentary recalls a UN motto taken from Isaiah 2: 3-4, and illustrated by Yevgeny Vuchetich's statue of a man beating a sword into a plowshare. (Note that Vuchetich, having made this famous statue viewed by all who visit the UN headquarters in NYC, also created a monument to the battle of Stalingrad, with Mother Russia wielding the » Read More

In the new action-horror flick Mandy, we face the question of how much you can gussy up the kind of movie most people have been watching since they were 10 years old. In 1983, the wary lumberjack Red Miller (Nicolas Cage) returns to the safety of the cabin he shares with his zonked, facially scarred wife, Mandy (Andrea Riseborough, who as in Battle of the Sexes, looks more like a hippie than most of the actual hippies of the hippie years). Here comes a Mansonoid cult run by Brother Jeremiah (Linus Roache) who, like Charlie Manson, severely overestimates his skills as a musician, and has to kill people to make them pay attention to his LP. » Read More

With its latest exhibit, "Contact Warhol: Photography Without End," the Cantor Arts Center has come up with an alternative to binge watching. Instead of spending hours with Queen Elizabeth and her corgis on Netflix's The Crown, you can pore over a newly acquired digital archive of Andy Warhol's photographs online. And just like an evening lost to streaming movies and endless TV series, you never have to leave your house or change out of pajamas to enjoy the approximately 130,000 photographic exposures collected in sets of contact sheets and negatives. » Read More

El Dia de Los Muertos, the traditional Mexican holiday celebrating life by remembering and honoring the dearly departed, will be observed in a variety of ways in San Jose this year. Enjoy tasty Mexican food, cold drinks, live music and cultural activities--like decorating a sugar skull, contributing to community altars and dancing. » 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

Blakesberg, 56, is one of the most prominent names among the Bay Area's contributions to the list of the world's greatest rock & roll photographers. In the last decade or more, he estimates he has shot about 2.5 million photos, of which he has kept and archived about 1.5 million as digital files. But to hear him tell the Almost Famous-like story of his earliest years as a rock-loving aspiring photographer is to experience a world that, in today's Instagram-ized iPhony environment, sounds positively antique. Blakesberg was a teenager in the late 1970s in New Jersey. He would regularly sneak cameras into concerts and take performance shots of the rock gods that he idolized, just because he wanted memorabilia for his bedroom. "I had a » Read More

So last year when Donald Trump decided to implement a travel ban targeting people from specific Muslim-majority countries, the quartet responded by researching, commissioning and now presenting a program of music from those parts of the world. This Saturday, "Music for Change: The Banned Countries," takes place in Stanford's Bing Concert Hall. While the program is not limited to the countries on Trump's original list, music from Egypt, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and other countries in or near the Middle East will be emphasized. » Read More

In fact, Schultz's research suggests that "novel rewards" may be two to three times more dopamine-elevating than delishy stuff we've previously experienced. This motivational downshift comes out of how dopamine neurons are, in a sense, fortune-teller cells; they predict how rewarding things or situations will be. Dopamine, contrary to what countless books and articles contend, is not a "pleasure chemical." It does not generate a heroin rush-type euphoria. It's stimulating. It drives wanting and seeking, motivating us to explore new stuff that might enhance our ability to pass on our genes. » Read More

Humraaz is a word in the Urdu language. Its literal meaning is "secret sharer." It refers to a confidante, a person in whom you have full trust and to whom you can confess your core feelings. Is there such a character in your life? If so, seek him or her out for assistance in probing into the educational mysteries you have waded into. If there is no such helper you can call on, I advise you to do whatever's necessary to attract him or her into your sphere. A collaborative quest may be the key to activating sleeping reserves of your soul wisdom. » Read More