In State

This Friday and Saturday night at the Guild Cinema in Nob Hill, another local feature will have its world premiere. Tim McClelland’s sci-fi/horror/drama Fugue State has been in production/post-production for a couple of years now, but it joins a whole host of low-budget feature-length films screened at the Guild in the last 12 months. It’s been a productive time for local filmmakers, and it’s great to see another successfully completed project. You can join writer/director McClelland and his cast/crew for screenings at 10 p.m. and midnight both nights. Tickets are a mere $7. For more information on Fugue State, log on to myspace.com/fugue_state.

War drama tries, but nobody’s listening

Easter weekend, the No. 1 film in America (raking in $23.7 million) was 21, the story of some college-aged kids who gleefully bilk Las Vegas casinos for a bunch of money. Buried down at No. 8 at the box office was Stop-Loss (scraping together a mere $4.53 million), the story of some college-aged kids who return from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq only to be yanked back onto the battlefield by the U.S. military. Not that we needed it, but the numbers were further proof Americans would rather stick their fingers in their ears and hum a happy tune than hear any more about our country’s unending “War on Terror.”

C’mon, these prisoners aren’t going to torture themselves, people!

“Elegant” may seem like an inappropriate word to describe a film detailing America’s systematic employment of torture in the War on Terror, but it’s somehow fitting when applied to Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side. The film--which recently swept in to claim the Best Documentary award at this year’s Academy Awards--is simple, powerful and possessed of a certain ineffable grace of design. It’s the elegance of an argument that is formed by logic and fact and shaped by empathy.

TV’s going digital, nobody panic!

With greater frequency and an increasing level of tension in their voices, people are asking, “What the hell’s up with this digital TV signal thingamabob? I already bought an HDTV and a Blu-Ray DVD player. Do I have to go out and get some new digital antenna doohickey now? I just don’t understand!”

Week in Sloth

The Week in Sloth