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It never occurred to me that I’d rather see Lynndie England in a movie than Norah Jones. Nothing works in My Blueberry Nights. Even Wong Kar-wai’s famous ability to pick music deserts him. Regardless of what’s playing on the sound track, it’s “After Midnight” you hear — the film looks like a ten-ye…

California is death haunted compared to New York. Everything is still and spooky, the grass along the highways north of Oakland is dry and brown. New York moves in the frame-skip fast-forward of digital video. One thing replaces another, they build an IKEA in no time by paving over cobblestone stre…

Twice each month on Friday nights, the leaflet said, the Harmony Center for the Joyful Spirit hosts movies at the “Home of Gwendolyn and Daniel.” The mission of Oakland’s Harmony Center is to bring “Joy and Inspiration into our lives.” “What better way to do that than to get together with friendly …

Reader, it was not to be. Right when I got into town a headline blared at me from a newspaper box on a street corner. “Alameda Labor Dispute Hinges on Skills of Projectionists,” read the front page of the East Bay Express, the area’s alt-weekly. The projectionists at the Alameda Theatre were on str…

I saw the documentary The War Tapes on DVD and made the mistake of watching the bonus features first. One of the bonus features turned out to be résumés for director Deborah Scranton and producer Chuck Lacy. Scranton is a former director of network-TV sports who graduated from Brown with a degree i…