Tiger Beat

Loyal to the Sky - Marisa Handler

When I was briefly introduced to Marisa Handler by Chris Cook at the January  27th anti-war march, she had just received a copy of her first book, Loyal to the Sky: Notes from an Activist.

She's been on a tour for the book and will be in the bay area over the next couple of days before heading to Seattle (, Portland, and LA.  She'll have a conversation with Rebecca Solnit (who wrote the foreward) on Thursday, March 1st at 7 pm at New College (details).  On Friday, March 2nd at 7:30 pm, she'll be reading at Black Oak Books in Berkeley.

A brief interview and a longer interview.

Series she wrote for Salon from the 2003 Miami protests.

The New Amazon, Orion Magazine

Interview with Larry Bensky on Sunday Salon (download MP3)

Tilda Swinton on the State of Cinema

Tilda Swinton
Originally uploaded by Steve Rhodes.

I'll pull some quotes from it later, but I wanted to let people know they can read Tilda Swinton's Saturday State of Cinema speech on sf360.org.

It isn't the same as seeing and hearing her deliver part of a Robert McKee monologue from Adaptation or talk about her experience with Derek Jarmen, but it  should be read by anyone interested in film (as well aspeople who aren't interested in film, but have too much influence over what we see).

Her Letter
to Derek Jarman which she said she may have been the reason Graham Leggat invited her to give the address is also online.

More photos of her giving the speech as well as the projections on City Hall.

B Ruby Rich's 2004 State of the Cinema talk is also online (as a PDF).  And Michel Ciment's 2004 speech (google cache).  Photos of Brad Bird's more off-the-cuff 2005 speech.

Sean Penn in Iran

tehran 07
Originally uploaded by hoder

Sean Penn travelled to Iran before the election with Reese Ehrlich and Norman Solomon.  Penn's  first article is in the San Francisco Chronicle today and the series will continue through Friday. He earlier did two stories for the Chron on visiting Iraq (it would be nice if the gate linked to these and included the info in the paper previewing the rest of the Iran series - they've now added the preview text).

Penn writes about meeting with the grandson of Ayatollah Khomein.

Ehrlich who went to Iran with Penn did a piece for Day to Day on NPR about film in Iran.

For more on Iran, see Hoder's weblog and Iran Scan. I'll also try to pull together a page with Norman's writing about Iran.

A couple of photos of Penn from last year.