Messieurs, madames and mademoiselles of all ages will find zemselves laughing uncontrolabee at ze antics of ze Bleu Blanket troupe as ze scènes dramatiques are conjured from audience repartee.  Imcredible!  Nonpareil!  Fantastique!  Vous will pis-pis votre coulettes!
Ze chamber opens at 7PM, with ze artistes mounting ze stage at 7:30PM. Ze reverie is finis at 9:30PM.

In ze best Bastille traditione, “Let them eat cake!” for refreshements pâtisseries and boissons will be for sale on premise.

JULY 14, 2012, 7:30 PM
526 Main Street, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019

8€ ($10) for Messieurs, madames
4€ ($5) for garçons et les filles (under 12)

Ze Liberté, égalité, Fraternité cartes permit 4 to attend for ze price of trois!

Tickets (and informaçion sans sille accent Français) availabel at http://www.blueblanketimprov.com

(Disclaimer legalistique:  Ze Government Francaise surrenders that it has zero to do with ze parution.  il est pure parodie.)

Coastside Adult Day Health Center will hold a Wine and Cheese Reception on Thursday, July 26 from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at 645 Correas Street in Half Moon Bay.

Community members are invited to meet staff members and learn more about the services that the Center has provided for the last 30 years to keep the frail elderly as healthy and independent as possible.

Don’t miss the screening on Friday, June 22 at 7:30 p.m. of two serious works of art in Half Moon Bay.

Short: Taylor, the Latte Boy (4 minutes)

A music video by Rikki Condos and her friends from Pacifica’s Terra Nova High School. Cut to a Kristin Chenoweth song. Who’d have thought that love could be so caffeinated?

Feature: Gold Diggers of 1933 (96 minutes)

“Gold Diggers is as savvy and hip a denouncement of the status quo as hard times can produce.” — Erich Kuersten, Film Experience blog.

This film was recommended to us by a panel of economists who saw it as a superb parable of how smart people should behave during the last jobless recovery.  An 80-year-old Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza that can teach us how to weather the current financial storm? We had to check it out.

The movie opens with Ginger Rogers leading hundreds of showgirls dancing their hearts out while wearing only strategically placed gold coins and singing one of the show’s big hits — “We’re in the Money” — sometimes in Pig Latin. Yes, it is zany, but serious folks also believe that deep currents run underneath all this kaleidoscopic glitter.

John Greco of Twenty Four Frames calls the opening “ironic and iconic ... a brilliant start to what is probably the grittiest musical ever made.” The grit begins when the sheriff arrives to shut the rehearsal down and seize the property and costumes — including the coins keeping Ginger modest — to pay off the show’s debtors. Plenty more goes wrong; after all, “it’s the depression, dearie.”

This opening scene sets up the tone for the rest of the story. The three leads (played by Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondel and Aline MacMahon) are singers and dancers forced to share a tiny apartment with a single bed and one good audition dress. Of course there is a madcap struggle to come up with enough money to bring their show to life. Along the way there are a few mistaken identities, madcap love affairs and lots and lots of outrageously lavish musical numbers.

This a movie that is light-hearted, sexy and witty — but also has an underlying dark undertone and richly drawn characters that gave it enough gravitas to earn it a place in the National Film Registry.

Is Gold Diggers 1933 just a bit of frothy fun? Or as John Greco asserts, is it “One of the strongest political indictments to come from, not just a musical film, but from any film”?  Come to the screening and judge for yourself .

Parents be warned, Gold Diggers was produced before the film code of standards took effect. Lots of chorus girls are shown in various states of dress and undress and the dialog can be risqué in a 1930’s sort of way.

Community United Methodist Sanctuary
777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay
(corner of Johnston Street)
Suggested donation: $8 adults, $3 for children and students

More info at: www.hmbfilm.org

Rob Pappalardo, member of the Cabrillo Unified School District board and Measure S co-chair, spoke on the Coastsider Podcast about the bond measure on Tuesday’s ballot.

In our conversation, Rob discusses the school board’s process in putting together the bond, the cost to the public, and addresses some of the criticisms of the bond measure that have been raised by the public.

Coastsiders have come out strongly both in favor of the measure and against it.  Others are confused about claims that are coming from the two sides. We hope that this interview will clarify the issue for those who are still on the fence.

Listen to this podcast (not available in Firefox) [length 38:20]

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes to get Coastsider Podcast interviews as soon as they're released, or subscribe using our podcast RSS Feed .

Or you can download Rob Pappalardo on CUSD Bond Measure S directly to your computer.

The Coastside Film Society presents four fabulous flicks.

Friday, May 25, 7:30 p.m.
Community United Methodist Sanctuary
777 Miramontes St., Half Moon Bay (corner of Johnston Street)

—Two shorts shot on the San Mateo Coastside—

Hot Stuff (6 mins)
Pacifica’s own Kayla Sanchez and Kari Biel’s short about a boy and his red pepper. The film is hilarious and won the silver prize at last year’s Coastside Teen Film Fest.

Just Another Day in Half Moon Bay (3 mins)
A video slideshow from poet/photographer Lou Solitske. This one features a selection of Lou’s beautiful local nature photographs of our coastside carefully cut to traditional music.

—Two Features from Far Away Lands—

Mine Story of a Sacred Mountain (16 minutes)
Mine tells the story of the battle between an underdog, the Dongria Kondh tribe of India, and Vedanta Resources, a huge mining corporation. As the beautiful photography in the film attests, the home territory of the Dongria Kondh is both remote and extraordinarily beautiful. Contracts were written that would allow Vedanta to strip mine the “holy” mountain tops to get at all that bauxite. When the filmmakers arrived to document this David and Goliath story, the assumption was that this Goliath was going to win. As everyone knows, that is not how this story was destined to end.

China: The Panda Adventure (48 minutes)

In 1936, a widow named Ruth Harkness arrived in China to settle the affairs of her husband Bill who died while observing a mysterious animal known as the giant panda. No surprise—everyone knew pandas were ferocious and dangerous beasts not the gentle herbivores described in Bill’s notes.  Ruth decided to follow in the footsteps of her husband and prove to the world that her husband was right. The Panda Adventure is a retelling of Ruth’s story, shot in the remote Chinese mountain terrain that pandas call home. The footage is breathtaking and the close-ups of these gentle giants in their natural habitat is heartwarming.

More info at:  www.HMBFilm.org

Memorial Day Weekend Soul/Funk/Blues & Dancing with singer, songwriter, musician Fred Ross [Vimeo video].  Fred has recorded with Aretha Franklin, members of Tower of Power, Santana, Chaka Kahn, the Commodores, and more, Toured US & Europe with Everyday People, and Fred Wesley of the James Brown Band.

His band is notorious for their tributes to favorites like Sly Stone and James Brown. We discovered him at his regular gig at the Starlight Room in SF, and this is the third year he’s come with a fantastic group of Bay Area musicians and boogied down the house.

Sunday, May 27, 2012, 4:30, $35
Douglas Beach House
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
info@bachddsoc.org

Azerbaijan-born Amina Figarova is a globe-trotting, Rotterdam-based composer/pianist/bandleader with more than a dozen recordings to her credit. With her husband, Bart Platteau, Figarova arranges and plays artful and heartfelt changes on the urbane, bluesy lyricism originally developed by the likes of Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, et al. Amina made her recording debut with Attraction in 1994, and was accepted into the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Colony in Aspen, Colorado in 1998. Her CD Sketches, was described as “a beautiful mingling of her talents, fleshed out through a blend of inviting grooving and ornate runs.”  She will be performing from her new CD, Twelve, to be released in May.
 
Sunday, May 13, 2012, 4:30, $35
Douglas Beach House
307 Mirada Road, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
info@bachddsoc.org