Films This Week
Check out the movies playing around town.
With reviews and trailers.

In this week’s Win It and Wear It contest, we feature a stylish, charming necklace from Stripe, a Downtown Santa Cruz retailer on Walnut Street. Dangling from a gold chain are three enticing charms—a bird to remind you to take flight, a gem because you’re worth it, and a dagger, for, well, getting to the heart of things. To enter the contest, leave a comment at this Stripe necklace blog and tell us about something in beauty or fashion that you’re obsessed with. The contest ends Oct. 19 and the winner will be announced on Oct. 20.

Stripe, a romantic, vintage-inspired store, sells gifts, clothing, jewelry and more. We just swung by the store and here are a few of our current obsessions (in addition to this lovely necklace): fingerless gloves by local company, Nuala; infinity scarves from Made by Lex; a slew of candles by Lucia; several to die for blouses from Dear Creatures; leather cuffs with a broach from Nuala; and enticing, creative, inspiring journals hand-made by the staff at Stripe. Take a look. Stripe, 107 Walnut Ave., Santa Cruz, 421-9252, stripedesigngroup.com.

Founder Rick Walker on what makes the inventive Y2K-X Live Looping Music Festival a global hit. And why it will be his last.

Rick Walker can’t sit still. Sporting a black Nine Inch Nails T-shirt and sipping his preferred drink of choice, a cosmopolitan, the local drummer tells an endless supply of stories with animated hand gestures and impassioned sound effects. To illustrate his points, he spontaneously acts out air drums, air guitar, air maracas, air sitar, air (insert remote African instrument you’ve likely never heard of before).

When he goes over his 40-year music career, it’s like he’s reliving the excitement of each chapter; there’s the time in college at UC Santa Cruz in the early ’70s when he witnessed a Central African pop band and it made him discard his rock records for world music and, he says, “changed my life;” and then the time decades later when hearing Aphex Twin jolted him further into electronic-infused music and, again, he says, “changed my life.”

The Morning Benders find success and homelessness
If you want to learn what it was like for The Morning Benders’ Chris Chu to work with co-producer Chris Taylor (of Grizzly Bear fame) on the band’s 2010 album, Big Echo, you can refer to, well, pretty much any other interview with Chris Chu. Just how many times has that topic come up?

“I guess I couldn’t tell you because I’ve lost count,” says the vocalist and frontman. “I might say over 100 times.”

If nothing else, having to answer the same question over and over is evidence that The Morning Benders—coming to the Rio Theatre on Friday, Oct. 15—are moving up in the indie world. Yet success is a relative thing in the post-Napster generation, as the band’s grueling touring schedule would suggest.

Plus Letters to Good Times

Are we there yet? Are we ready for 2011?  Almost? Maybe? It’s been a full year, so when somebody recently asked me what the best thing about 2010 has been so far, I just laughed. I think I needed a week to figure that one out. The best thing? Well, good things have unfolded this year, that’s for sure. I entered my 11th year here at GT and the paper celebrated year 35. So, we’re both getting up there but, hopefully, not letting anything get us down (for long). That said, after filming several festive events, flying over the area in a Cessna and really getting a profound “Big Picture” view, as well as recently emcee-ing two local events in town, I was once again reminded of how abundant the spirt of Santa Cruz, and the county it sits in, actually is—from its agriculture to the amazing array of creative souls walking around here. I’m really not trying to sound like a keynote speaker at a pro-Santa Cruz rally, I’m simply feeling compelled to count my blessings.

Durif 2007—Gold Medal Winner

The Petite Sirah grape is known in France as Durif. In the 1880s Dr. François Durif created a hybrid by cross-pollinating Peloursin and Syrah—and named it after himself. Both of these grape varieties are native to the Rhône Valley in France, and both produce high-octane, dark, inky wines—resulting in big, full-bodied reds that are not for weak-kneed wine drinkers. Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard’s winemaker extraordinaire, Jeff Emery, prefers to call his Petit Sirah by its “real” name—Durif—and not the name that was given to the Durif grape—Petit Sirah—when it was shipped over to California from France. “There is no such thing as Petit Sirah in France,” says Emery. “We are just strange and iconoclastic enough to insist on calling this grape by its real name.”

End-of-the-season vegetables join fall produce on the seasonal menu at Oswald
s we creep deeper into fall, sunflowers mature, the last of tomatoes hang on the vines, squash ripens, and roots are harvested. There is something    about autumn that alters my appetite. Something, I wonder, that might reside in my DNA.

Birds build nests without the benefit of parental instruction. Do they hear voices whispering, “Build it!” as did Noah, and Ray Kinsella?
It is perhaps this same phenomenon that creates a craving for vegetables at this time of year unlike that of any other. Perhaps it is my ancestors, who lived before the advent of supermarkets, reminding me that fresh produce will soon become scarce.

I was craving egg rolls, or maybe wonderfully hot Chinese mustard, so I stopped by Kong’s Market which is nestled on a residential street near Pleasure Point. Stocking a small selection of household staples, it also houses a deli counter with sandwiches and pocket-like burritos to-go.

I chose Pork Egg Rolls ($1.40) over the vegetarian version and was quite surprised by their appearance. The crisply fried, long rectangles of dough stuffed with lightly seasoned ground pork were bumpy and blistered. The wrapper was thicker than that of any egg roll I had previously eaten. I asked for some sauce, and was presented with four bottles of condiments.

The recession will probably be over when people will be able to buy homes again, sell their homes if they want to, have jobs, and not worry every day about making ends meet.

Joan Kenney
Santa Cruz | Retired

Tasty sampling of Pacific cultures in 22nd Pacific Rim Film Festival
Music, food, dance, traditional folkways and eco-politics are spotlighted at this year’s Pacific Rim Film Festival. Now in its 22nd year, this popular, annual free film event once again offers viewers a cinematic voyage of discovery around the Pacific Rim of Asia and the Americas. In a program of 18 drama and documentary films, transporting viewers to such diverse locations as Nepal, Bolivia, Korea, New Orleans, the Marianas Islands, and the South Pole, this cinematic sushi bar invites us to sample the exotica of other cultures, while reminding us how much we have in common, despite our cultural differences.

This year’s six-day event unspools Friday, Oct. 15, through Wednesday, Oct. 20, at three countywide venues: the Del Mar Theatre, the Rio Theatre, and the Cabrillo College Watsonville Center. All films are presented free to the public, except for the closing-night benefit, and many screenings will be followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker. Presented by George Ow Family Properties, the festival is dedicated to promoting cross-cultural understanding, in accordance with the longtime PRFF theme: “When Strangers Meet.”