Tag: San Francisco

Retailers that sell alcohol can't accept payments from suppliers to advertise their products. And since wine producers pay Amazon fees to sell through Amazon Wine and it sells as a retailer through its newly acquired Whole Foods Market chain, the situation violates the law. So Amazon Wine which was launched...

Dee Rees. I didn't know much about her. After Mill Valley Film Festival opening weekend that all changed. The director, best known for Netflix's coming-of-age darling Pariah (2011), held court at the "Mind the Gap" summit on Saturday. Flanked on either side by members of her filmmaking team that helped...

Who is Stark Insider? A. Blinding. Light. The theme continues as Loni Stark and I roll out our series of shorts over the coming weeks and months. This marks the first time we've created a central theme for a series of videos. Over the summer we took a short timeout from...

Kicking off the first ever collection of Stark Insider short films.

The Mineola Twins at Cutting Ball Theater opens with thunder and lightning. The intensity continues unabated throughout the show. Paula Vogel’s play follows a pair of small-town twins as they navigate the trials of sex, potential nuclear war, marriage, electroshock therapy, parenthood, and violent crime. Myra and Myrna have...

This week we kick off our coverage of the Mill Valley Film Festival. Those that have followed Stark Insider over the years may already know we've been covering MVFF since 2010. Since that time we've captured many memorable moments on video. And been fortunate to meet many interesting and...

The American Conservatory Theater’s Hamlet marks the debut of two greats who somehow (strangely) have never tackled this great play. John Douglas Thompson premieres his Hamlet, direct by A.C.T. artistic director Carey Perloff. The results make me thank whatever theater gods brought these two together to work on Shakespeare’s...

Playwright Paula Vogel has been in the news a lot recently. She made her (shamefully overdue) Broadway debut with Indecent, which was nominated for the 2017 Best Play Tony. She started a national conversation around producers’ and critics’ biases when it comes to financing and reviewing plays by women...

Organizers this morning took the wraps off the highly anticipated line-up for the annual Mill Valley Film Festival. We've seen many films with strong showings at MVFF (e.g. Moonlight, The King's Speech) go on to do well during awards season. It looks so far like that streak will continue. Festival...

The Japan Film Festival of San Francisco is the first and only film celebration dedicated to Japanese cinema. In its fifth year, the festival in 2017 will feature a variety of genres, presented in the Japanese language with English subtitles. The film festival runs September 1st through 10th, ending with...