Arts & Entertainment

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Jill Soloway to Launch Topple Books Imprint

When Jill Soloway created TOPPLE Productions she did it to showcase LGBTQ+ and POC voices with shows like “Transparent,” which continues to represent the nuanced storylines of people from all backgrounds instead of silencing them. The multimedia brand is a tool to, as Soloway exclaimed during her 2016 Emmy win, “topple the patriarchy!” Now, Soloway’s company continues to transcend in popular culture with Amazon Publishing’s new imprint, TOPPLE Books.  The company will allow gender non-conforming, women of color, lesbian, bisexual and queer writers the opportunity to have an outlet specifically designed to spotlight their unique voices in storytelling. The imprint […]

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Analy High School Theatre Department Presents ‘Once Upon a Mattress’

  Once Upon a Mattress is a musical comedy set in a magical kingdom ruled by the devious Queen Aggravain and the mute, King Sextimus the Silent. Queen Agravian maintains all of the power in the kingdom ever since a curse was put on her husband that can only be broken when “the mouse devours the hawk”. In an attempt to keep her son Prince Dauntless single and preserve her rule, the Queen puts out a royal decree that states no one in the kingdom can marry until her drabby son takes a princess of true royal blood to be his wife. The queen has tested the eligibility […]

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Book Review: ‘The Sparsholt Affair’ by Alan Hollinghurst

Authors of fiction do something for us that goes far beyond the mechanics of plot. They create, or recreate, a time and a place drawn from both their own experiences and their imaginations. Few authors do that with the skill and dexterity of Alan Hollinghurst. He can imagine wholly fleshed characters as complex and detailed as an individual artist as well as his oeuvre—not only the vagaries of their personality, but the whole body of their work—as he did so effectively in his earlier masterpiece, The Folding Star. This understanding of an artist’s skills extends to his own work. He, […]

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Film Review: ‘A Moment In The Reeds’

For his debut feature movie, London based Finnish filmmaker Mikko Makela has returned home to tell his compelling tale of a romantic summer encounter between an unlikely pair that literally sizzles on the screen. Leevi (Janne Puustinen ) has been studying in Paris and comes back home to somewhat reluctantly help his estranged father (Mika Melender) renovate their old remote county cottage so they can sell it to help re-finance their ailing family business. The two men couldn’t possibly be more different with their opposing views on practically every aspect of their lives.  The father is a gruff conservative, and it […]

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Book Review: ‘The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America’ by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois have crafted an extensive oral history of the making of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America that is ingenious by design. Much like a play script itself, the book is structured in a series of “Acts” with chapters more like titled scenes and a cast of characters listed at the end, and documents through diverse interviews–edited in such a way as to create an on-going dialogue–the genesis, history, themes and reception of this queer masterwork. The “cast” for this metanarrative includes Kushner, the actors, directors, producers, and production team, as well as the scholars, historians, critics, and fellow […]

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Sarah Baker Slated for Occidental Center for the Arts Prformance

Saturday April 14 @ 8 pm. Occidental Center for the Arts presents Sarah Baker with Nina Gerber & Mona Gnader. Composer, pianist, teacher and blues/rock/soul singer-songwriter extraordinaire Sarah Baker is back on our stage! with the legendary Nina Gerber on guitar, joined by electric bassist Mona Gnader of The Waboritas. Don’t miss this exciting collaboration of powerful women musicians at OCA’s acoustic sweet spot! $22 Advance/$26 at the door. Reservations advised. Fine Refreshments. Wheelchair Accessible. Art Gallery open during events. 707-874-9392. www.occidentalcenterforthearts.org. 3850 Doris Murphy Ct. Occidental 95465.

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John Oliver’s Gay Bunny Book Hits #1 On Amazon

Guess who just managed to pull a best-selling book out of their hat? That’s right: it’s John Oliver and the staff of Last Week Tonight—specifically, writer Jill Twiss—whose picture book, the somewhat cumbersomely titled Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, is, as of this writing, the No. 1 best-selling book on Amazon. It’s a sweet victory, made even sweeter by the book that’s currently down at fourth place: Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a picture book written by Mike Pence’s 24-year-old daughter, Charlotte, and illustrated […]

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Bay Area Women Filmmakers at 8th Annual Albany Film Festival on Sunday, March 25.

Albany FilmFest is excited and honored to be able to showcase the work of Bay Area women filmmakers for the second consecutive year, particularly in this moment when women filmmakers in Hollywood are speaking loud and clear. Once again, we are so impressed by the  range of issues (gentrification and displacement, women construction workers in Burma, LGBT relationships, Down syndrome, and even the afterlife), genres, and breadth of these films and filmmakers. We look forward to discussion and audience interaction after the screening. Saturday, March 25 at 10am Albany Twin Theater 1115 Solano Ave, Albany, CA 94706 More information: http://albanyfilmfest.org/show-1-on-the-road/ […]

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Book Review: ‘The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988’ by Martin Duberman

In his new memoir, The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976-1988, Martin Duberman meditates on an era that, perhaps more than any other, proved pivotal for queer life, political, cultural, and otherwise. “Although most gay people did share the prescribed values and aspirations of mainstream culture,” Duberman writes, “a radical minority… firmly rejected the liberal view that our national institutions were basically sound and that a little tinkering here and there around the edges would make them better still.” As homosexuals serve openly in the military and get married from coast to coast, as the divide […]

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Writer Clayton Delery on Reconstructing a Hate Crime

Clayton Delery’s previous book, The Up Stairs Lounge Arson, was named Book of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities in 2015. His new book is Out for Queer Blood: The Murder of Fernando Rios and the Failure of New Orleans Justice. It tells the story of an anti-gay hate crime that took place in New Orleans in 1958 and chronicles a time and place in American history where such a crime was inevitable. In addition, Delery is a contributor to collections such as My Gay New Orleans and Fashionably Late: Gay, Bi, and Trans Men who Came Out Later […]

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