The title of A Quiet Passion is kind of lethal. "Quiet" is a risky word in the movie biz. The film's pace is very deliberate-the first impression is of a game that went into extra innings. There's a line here any critic could take to heart: "All the best compliments are dubious." Praising the deliberateness of this movie's pace may make it sound boring. When it's over, it's clear that the eminent director Terence Davies, a master of moody, immersive cinema, needed time to contrast the body and soul of his subject. Davies (Distant Voices, Still Lives) focuses on Emily Dickinson (Cynthia Nixon), a lady of solitude and physical sufferings: "The Queen of Cavalry" as she called herself, tortured to an early grave at 55 by Bright's disease. » Read More

Witness the flight of the Covenant, a colonizing space ship of 2104 headed for Origae 6. It is a ship free of anyone who can make an intelligent decision, except for the onboard android. The first mistake is changing course for a seemingly unexplored planet, on grounds of proximity. More wrongheaded choices follow. Alien: Covenant has sterling production design, and an almost regally solemn Jed Curzal score. It mulls the idea that humans and the hellspawn Xenomorphs have a linked destiny. Animated now, as opposed to being acted out by a 7-foot-tall stuntman as in the original, the critters come in all sizes and shapes. They're as lithe as monkeys, chittering, making creaking noises like sprung floorboards. » Read More

There's at least one Eichler home for sale right now in Sunnyvale. It's a four-bedroom, two-bath listed at just under $2 million. What a difference seven decades make. In a 1949 ad on display in Eichler Homes: Modernism for the Masses, you could put $600 down near Saratoga Road in the same city and own one of "36 Strikingly Beautiful NEW 3 BEDROOM HOMES!" That's about $6,000 today-in an age when the median down payment on a South Bay home approaches the $200,000 mark. But the past affordability of Eichler homes is just one set of facts presented at the Los Altos History Museum's new exhibit about the builder Joseph Eichler and his enterprising vision. » Read More

One of the gnarliest skateboarding companies around is premiering its new video this week at The Ritz in San Jose. Known for its rough-around-the-edges but equally well-rounded approach to terrain, Creature Skateboards is currently crossing the country showing off its new full-length skate film, The Creature Video, including a special stop in San Jose. More than two years in the making, The Creature Video brings together the team's (the 'fiends,' as they are affectionately known) wide variety of skills and styles in a mind-blowing display of skating prowess. Featuring tried and true Creature team members, including transition master Darren Navarrette, criminally underrated Taylor Bingaman, and all-around miracle-maker David Gravette, The » Read More

It would be criminal if the optics weren't spot on for Creativity on the Line: Design for the Corporate World 1950-1975. Rest assured, no graduate student from The Stanford d.school or the California College of the Arts should be able find fault with the presentation. Cantor Arts Center's new exhibit celebrates work created by both graphic and industrial designers. As such, even the fonts on the wall text have been meticulously chosen. The objects themselves have been thematically arranged in clear plastic boxes. There's even a white porcelain sink with a chrome faucet polished clean, a cheeky salutation, perhaps, to Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, which kicked off the dada movement 100 years ago. Stenciled in temperate colors, pull quotes from » Read More

The white Chevy Biscayne rolled into Haight-Ashbury as the sun dimmed. The barefoot, flower-throwing hippies dancing in the streets jumped on the V8 engine's hood, the white monster that had pulled our Starcraft trailer clear across America on a liquid diet of 27-cent gas. The Doors' "Light My Fire" played every 60 minutes on the AM radio as it rose to the top of the charts. My sister and I huddled in back on that day in the summer of 1967, transfixed by the colorful images swirling around us at a street intersection that our mother had learned about from photos in Life magazine. When the California dream pulled us to Southern California a few years later, I headed to San Francisco to join what I expected would be a never-ending street » Read More

A few stories came out last week to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1987 film The River's Edge, based on a grotesque murder in Milpitas. The teenage killer left his victim's corpse in the woods for a few days, inviting his friends to come over and check it out. Only then was the crime finally reported. It was a horrific incident that unleashed a national media firestorm. When the film came out, it likewise shocked the country. The River's Edge opens with the killer sitting at the victim's body and then cuts to him and his pals trying to buy beer at a Stop 'n' Go convenience store, which were common in those days. Then we get an 80-minute window into the lives of alienated teenagers dealing with the fallout, a picture that successfully » Read More

Ripple effects were felt worldwide, as the Sikh Foundation International-headquartered in Palo Alto-celebrated its 50th anniversary last weekend in grand-scale fashion. A few hundred Sikhs from around the globe dropped serious cash for a gala that took over the Asian Art Museum on Friday, followed by a free two-day conference at Stanford's Li Ka Shing Center. Somehow, surrounded by Sikhs, I managed to avoid talking about religion for the whole weekend and only one person tried to arrange a marriage for me. But first of all, let me introduce Narinder Singh Kapany, more commonly known around the globe as Dr. Kapany, the father of fiber optics. Kapany started the Sikh Foundation exactly 50 years ago in 1967, and he's been collecting Sikh art » Read More

On a recent rampage through McAllen, Texas, the anti-man-about-town did not expect to witness such a landmark, epic, unprecedented transformation of abandonment into something productive. To be more precise, an empty former Walmart was repurposed to become the largest one-story public library in the US. It opened six years ago, but the facility continues to evolve and blow minds, especially the mind of this columnist, who grew up in libraries and reaped their benefits at an early age. By the numbers, McAllen is a small city, just under 200,000, and only minutes from the Mexican border. Eighty percent of the residents identify as Hispanic. » Read More