Thought you'd escape the wanton devastation in Batman v. Superman by going to the allegedly mature drama Demolition? The joke's on you. Jean-Marc Vallee's follow-up to his excellent Wild and his middling Dallas Buyer's Club concerns a man who seeks catharsis through smashing things. Like Bruce Wayne, Davis (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an affluent, muscular executive, driving around in an expensive car, traumatized by the death of a loved one. The real Batman never had to describe the worst day of his life as Davis does at the dinner table, when he displays a stiff upper lip over the death of his wife Julia (Heather Lind): 'Massive head trauma in a car accident. Can you pass the salt?'
Davis has been cracking up ever since his wife was killed, and » Read More

Clearly a person needs to eat before they see City of Gold, the lovingly-made documentary about LA Weekly and LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold—the scenes of the simmering black Oaxacan sauces, flaming Thai curries and gourmet taco trucks are food porn of the rarest order. But even indifferent foodies can enjoy this profile of an erudite yet funky writer. With large brow, larger girth and a Ben Franklin haircut, Gold could be a model for Dutch master Frans Hals, or anyone's picture of Falstaff. But during ride-alongs in the Dodge truck of this eminent critic, we get more than just profiles of restaurants high and low, and supporting commentary by the likes of Calvin Trillin. » Read More

The adage 'everything old is new again' certainly applies when viewing the current exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. 'Blanket Statements' is a color-saturated display of both historical quilts from the 18th and 19th centuries and the recent work of contemporary fabric designer Kaffe Fassett. On view until July 3, the 20 new quilts and 15 vintage quilts present a wide range of technique and subject matter-a sort of visual history of this old and venerable medium. The exhibition was created by the York Quilt Museum and Gallery in England and has been presented at two other venues in the United States. » Read More

Continuing their tradition of performing classic movie scores live beneath the big screen, Symphony Silicon Valley is tackling The Godfather—playing Nino Rota's revered compositions while Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, Diane Keaton and the rest of that star-studded cast bring Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's gangster epic to life. Matching revered films with the dynamics of a live orchestra might seem a throwback to the silent film era. But, according to SSV's general director Andrew Bales, the marriage of live music and talkies is a new-but increasingly popular-art form. The demand for such productions is growing around the world, Bales says, pointing to the recent success Symphony Silicon Valley had live-scoring The Lord of » Read More

In the order she got them, Amy Cohen has: a drawing by Leonard Cohen, a bouquet of flowers, a lantern, a ship bursting from a bottle, an hourglass and a wreath-'originally designed for the mannequin in the exhibit,' she says, hinting at what visitors to the McKay Gallery in History San Jose will see, should they visit the new exhibit, 'Tattooed and Tenacious: Inked Women in California History.' Cohen, the exhibit's curator, got the idea from her own body art, and also from her line of work. She holds a degree in Museum Studies, and in 2014 she found herself working at Hayward Area Historical Society with an un-inked colleague, curator and archivist Diane Curry. 'We would talk about tattoos a lot,' Cohen says, recalling her time at the » Read More

Thirty years after Somini Sengupta left India as a child, she returned to work as the New Delhi Bureau Chief for the New York Times. She was the first reporter of Indian descent ever assigned to the post and, in the process, Sengupta discovered a brilliant way to rediscover her own roots while documenting the future of Indian kids and their predicaments at the same time. The result is a fantastic new book, The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India's Young, in which Sengupta weaves the results of her own journey, both personal and journalistic, into the trajectories of seven different Indian youth cases, creating a tapestry with the author/journalist as the observer/participant. » Read More

Silicon Valley's chatter about sending a human to Mars reached a fevered pitch in 2015 with the cinematic release of Andy Weir's The Martian. The same year, another rocket-shaped innovation took the valley by storm when it landed on Palo Alto's University Avenue. We are talking, of course, about the sushi burrito. The crunchy, high-protein and cleverly-branded Sushirrito fused two dominant California cultures with food tech to create a lunchtime phenomenon. Sidewalks were roped off and cut into concrete turf traditionally reserved for people camping out for a just-released iPhone. We expect these kinds of changes in a region that put supercomputers in our pockets and brought waffles to our toasters. » Read More