Sunday’s Women’s World Cup soccer Final between USA and Japan is going to be amazing, thrilling, historic. What do you need to know to be fully swept up in the excitement? A little background never hurts.
Let’s start with the home team. USA has long been a superpower in women’s soccer.
An iconic moment from 1999. Chastain says Sunday's final will be “a clash of cultures in both game plan and philosophy.”
They broke onto the world stage in 1999, when 90,000 people filled the Rose Bowl to watch USA play China in the final. The score was tied 0-0 at full time and remained so until a nail-biting penalty kick shootout resulted in a USA win. Mia Hamm and Brandi Chastain became stars, and the game brought huge attention to women’s soccer and athletics.They haven’t won a World Cup since, and they’re ready.
USA’s playing style has been characterized as a relentless hustle, never-say-die approach. This team bristles with talent. Hope Solo might be the best goalkeeper in the tournament. Star forward Abby Wambach’s late-game goal against Brazil last Sunday was the stuff of legend.
USA has flourished under the coaching of Swede Pia Sundhage. Hope Solo, pictured here, says of Sundhage's coaching style, "She said, 'You guys are creative, you are soccer players.' She wanted us to think and read the game for ourselves.... She lets the game come to us.”
Japan has displayed discipline, savvy and skill throughout the tournament. But there’s something more. Shortly before Japan faced two-time defending champion Germnay in the quarterfinals, Coach Norio Sasaki gave showed his players slide-show images of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan’s northeastern coast on March 11, killing more than 15,000 people.
“They touched us deep in our souls,” midfielder Aya Miyama told reporters.
Hope Solo sums it up: “They’re playing for something bigger and better than the game. When you’re playing with so much emotion, that’s hard to play against.”
We’ll see how they do on Sunday. Join us. Details here.
The 2011 Sixth Annual Youth Film Festival was held on Sunday, April 3rd. The festival featured twenty-nine juror-selected films, and was well attended by young filmmakers (ages 10-18) as well as their friends, families and supporters.
Our thanks and congratulations to those selected to compete in this year's festival. Submissions came from all over the state, as well as from NYC, Boston, Maryland and Indiana.
Congrats especially to this year's winners!
Although all of the films were worthy of praise, prizes were awarded in the following categories:
Best Music Film (ages 14-18) “Sleeping Lessons”
Kendra Bradanini (Urban School of San Francisco)
Best Documentary (ages 10-13) “Chinese Invention Express”
Joseph Osborn, Davidson Middle School, San Rafael, CA
Best Documentary (ages 14-18) : “Independence In Sight”
Lauren Lindberg & Bonita Tindle (Bay Area Video Coalition-BAVC)
Best Narrative Film (ages 10-13) “Lemonhood”
Kellen Abend, Luca Evans, Danni Hone, Leo Levy, Ben Olizar, Jadon Seitz, Benjamin Share, Jacob Share, (Future Filmmaker Workshops)
Best Narrative (ages 14-18): “Driven”
Colin Patty (Cardinal Newman High School, Santa Rosa, CA)
Honorable Mentions: Best Narrative (ages 14-18):
“Roadkill” Alex Herz, Hall Middle School, Larkspur, CA
“Vantage” Cameron Billingham, (Bear River Valley School, Auburn, CA)
We would like to thank our jurors Jenna Capozzi, James Hirsch, Alexandra Mende, and Henrik Rutgersson.
We would also like to thank Best Buy, California Academy of Sciences Museum, Central Marin Rotary, Disney Museum, San Francisco Film Society, Stefano’s Solar-Powered Pizza, and the Twin Cities Police Authority for their support and generous donations of prizes for the festival.
We look forward to another great festival next year!
It’s event season again here at the Lark, and we have a lot coming up. Our Family Film Series has been a great success. Sponsored by the Sellers and Koeppel families, the series has been our way of offering an easy and affordable afternoon activity for kids and parents alike. Tix are $5 for kids under 12, $6.75 general. As a special part of the series, on 1/29 & 1/30 we’ll have Sing-along WIZARD OF OZ, with SF Opera chorus member Kathleen Bayler leading us in song (same ticket prices except adults are $10 at the door, $6.75 in advance).
Part of our NT Live series, KING LEAR comes to our screen on 2/3 and 2/5. The title role in this most dark yet transcendent of Shakespeare’s works is taken on by that most humane, most nuanced, most astonishing actor, Derek Jacobi. We are proud to be able to offer this caliber of performance, and we hope you’ll join us.
On Feb. 6 we’ll have Super Bowl XLV live onscreen – great for families who like to gather friends together but prefer to skip the clean-up or who have kids too young for the sports bar. Our Sports Onscreen events have grown in popularity. Ticket price Includes one soft drink or beer, popcorn and hot dog or pizza. Join us!
By popular demand, we’ve added a showing of FELA! on 2/10 at 7:00pm. Tony Award winner and living legend choreographer Bill T. Jones helms this amazing production, which he says is “rooted in the big questions of my life, questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality, history, race, power. And there’s something about the man that calls out for a very poetic treatment. His life is so mythic in its scale.”
Stay tuned for more – not least, our Seventh Annual Academy Awards Party, coming up on 2/27.
Who can resist a story about a sassy girl who can’t stay out of trouble? Generations of boys and girls alike have loved Beverly Cleary‘s books, which have sold over 75 million world-wide (in other words, nowhere near JK Rowling, but neck-and-neck with Dan Brown). Now on screen at the Lark is the G-rated RAMONA AND BEEZUS. Great fun for kids who’ve read the books; might inspire those who haven’t. And while we’re speaking of summer family films, there are three more to go in our Family Film Fridays series: Fridays at 10am through 8/13, see family favorites for $1 (12 and under), $5 general.
Oh, Ramona’s not enough of a trouble-maker for you? Not enough sass? Try Carmen, then. The last in the Met’s Live in HD summer greatest hits series, this most-loved opera of all time is given lean yet delicious new life in Director Richard Eyre’s fresh production. Eyre says CARMEN “is about sex, violence, and racism and its corollary: freedom. It is one of the inalienably great works of art. It’s sexy, in every sense. And I think it should be shocking.” Come see for yourself on Wednesday, 7/28 at 6:30pm or Saturday, 7/31 at 10am.
With a perfect record of predictions for the 2010 World Cup, Oktopus Paul was one among many remarkable performers we had the privilege of witnessing during this exhilarating series of sporting events. The Lark Theater presented three of the games live on the big screen, with two sold-out houses. It is thrilling to watch a live sporting event here in the dark on the very big screen with a house full of like-minded fans and an up-close view of the action. Today, Paul goes into well-earned retirement. But we will continue to bring you live sporting events; next up, Super Bowl 2011.
Meanwhile, it’s summer, and these breezy, fog-conditioned days won’t last forever. Come in and cool down with us Friday mornings through mid-August at Family Film Fridays, where tickets are only ONE DOLLAR for kids 12 and under, and only FIVE DOLLARS for everyone else. See our website for details on this and more.
And there are three more Met Opera greatest hits coming your way in the next few weeks: LA BOHEME, TURANDOT, and CARMEN. If you haven’t had the amazing experience of the Met onscreen – or if you haven’t seen one or all of these brilliant productions – we hope you’ll take this opportunity. We don’t need a psychic octopus to know you’ll enjoy your experience.
The Lark Theater celebrates our 5th Birthday on July 9, 2009.
Do you know the story of the Lark? It’s a good story – a local example of people stepping up to make a difference right on their own main street.
Marin is full of great, colorful little towns, but few have held on to their historic character as stubbornly as Larkspur. Downtown Magnolia Avenue is anchored at its South end by the Victorian mansion that houses Tavern at Lark Creek (cheers to the good people who decided to make the exquisite fare of the Lark Creek Inn affordable!), and in the North by the 1936 Art Deco cinema, the Lark. As recently as 2003, the proud people of Larkspur would hang their heads as they passed the Lark, which had been standing empty and dark for five long years.
Finally – as the wrecking ball loomed – they said “Enough! We won’t let this piece of our history, this place that could nourish our minds and souls, this place where we made out in high school while watching Mother, Jugs and Speed disappear forever!”
Executive Director Bernice Baeza and our nascent Board urgently pleaded the theater’s case all over town. Donations large and small poured in. Local residents came to do the hard physical work of tearing out the old, damaged interior and, later, to painstakingly hand-paint beautiful new Art Deco – style murals on our walls.
The Lark is still a labor of love by and for our community. Marin residents know their county is more diverse than is often assumed. In our audience are old and young, people of means and many who struggle, people from a range of interests and backgrounds. The staff, Board and volunteers of the Lark work hard to offer a wide variety of cultural programs and events to entertain and inspire. Just look over the list of our past productions. You’ll find something for everyone – and if we missed you, we welcome your suggestions.
So, on July 9th we celebrate. Come by for free cartoons, birthday cake and root-beer floats. And, if you haven’t yet, become a member of the Lark. If you’re a local resident, if you know how few historic, single-screen cinemas still operate in this country and it makes you sad, if you believe we need places to gather and reminded – through art, celebration and meaningful discourse – of our individual and collective potential, then the Lark Theater is your place and we need your support.
Do you have tweens? Then you know Twilight, the teenage vampire romance series that has invaded the adolescent psyche like some kind of rampant cross between Harry Potter and Titanic (the movie). Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown). One critic calls it “a cloudburst mood piece filled with stormy skies, rippling hormones… Hardwicke stirs this teen pulp to a pleasing simmer.” To die over if you’re a teenage girl, and a guilty, lightly cheesy pleasure for grown-ups. Starts April 10, rated PG 13. Dress up! Here’s how.
For grown-ups who prefer more complication and less cheese with their steamy romance thrillers, we have Duplicity, with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, starting 4/10. On 4/16 at 1:00pm we’ll offer a Cinemama screening: bring your little baby, up to two years old, at no extra charge. Changing table provided.
Music lovers who don’t yet love Peter Rowan have their chance on Thursday, 4/16. A venerable, grammy-winning artist who has played with Bill Monroe, Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and countless others, Rowan serves up bluegrass with flavors of folk, rock and reggae. Simple, distilled melodies, thoughtful lyrics and smooth, nimble pickin’ that will expand your musical horizons even as they make you feel right at home.
Daters! Bring that charming person you are hoping so desperately to impress to our Big Night dinner-and-a-movie event on Saturday, 4/18. We’re serving an Italian dinner at 7:00pm followed by the fun and fabulous food movie, directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott with a great ensemble cast. Tickets for all this are only $20, so the pressure’s off, plus you’ll be supporting your local independent cultural center, which will make you look, well, local, independent, cultural and centered. As the tagline goes, “In love and life, one big night can change everything.” Fingers crossed!
We celebrate the future of local filmmaking with our annual Youth Film Festival on 4/26, 12:00 – 3:30pm. Please buy your tickets soon, especially if your kid has a film in the festival. They sell out fast. This year we are especially impressed by the resourcefulness, creativity and care these student filmmakers have brought to their work. Awards announced at the event.
If you missed last week’s post, please scroll down to see the rest of what we’re doing in April.
Name that icon: “… The best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history…” In the words of a film journalist during her heyday, this was Mary Pickford.
A prolific and beloved actress – and the first to make more than one million dollars a year – she was also a pioneering film producer and a co-founder (with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith) of United Artists Studios. She had a huge impact on the development of film acting and on the shape of the nascent film industry – and she got the ball rolling in terms of the celebrity culture we now love and hate so very much (she and Douglas Fairbanks – “America’s unofficial ambassadors to the world” – being the ur-Brangelina).
Fall prey to the mystique and get behind the myth of Mary Pickford in May, at our mini-festival. We start with the West Coast premiere of Nicholas Eliopoulos’s documentary Mary Pickford: The Muse of the Movies on Friday, 5/1. Mr. Eliopoulos will join us for a conversation after the film. Then, just when your curiosity is piqued, we’ll show the Pickford classics My Best Girl and Secrets (5/2 – 5/6, showtimes to be announced).
And while we’re contemplating great women, let us not forget the most influential of them all: Your mother! We celebrate Mother’s Day early this year with a screening of The Joy Luck Club, Wayne Wang’s film based on Amy Tan‘s novel, on Thursday, 5/7.
Don’t be fooled: There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in April too! As soon as a couple of scheduling details have fallen into place, we’ll share the news with you here (and of course on our website) ~ Check back soon.
As always, there’s lots going on here at the Lark. The Moore-o-Nettes’ Marionette show (Saturday, 3/21) is almost sold out. Great to see so much local enthusiasm for this special form of performing art, which is so deeply traditional and yet which invites such wildly original creativity. We always welcome an opportunity to use our space – designed for film but also a beautiful concert setting – in a new and different way.
In Met Opera news, our live transmission and first encore performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly sold so quickly that we had to add a second encore, coming up on Wednesday, 3/18 at 7:00pm. The insanely beautiful, colorful staging of this production and the music – you’ve heard the heart-piercing aria “Un bel di vedrema,” even if you don’t know it – make this a great introduction if you’re new to opera, or new to opera onscreen. Just days later we’ll be showing the next opera in the Met’s season, La Sonnambula with soprano Natalie Dessay. There are still tickets available for the encore presentation on Sunday, March 22. The New Yorker magazine had an interesting profile of Dessay in its March 2 issue which will give you some juicy background if you’re already planning coming to the show, and probably convince you to come if you weren’t. Here’s a run-down.
Also upcoming is that family classic you have to see at least once on the big screen, The Sound of Music; some great live music; and our annual Youth Film Festival. Please check our website for details: www.larktheater.net. You can find us on Facebook too!
We welcome your comments and suggestions below.
