Linden filmmaker releases second film

Linden auteur Matthew Marconi, who wrote and directed the 2005 film “Truce,” is releasing his second film at the upcoming San Joaquin International Film Festival.

“Sally” will have its world premier at 2:00 PM on Saturday, February 20th at the Empire Theater. It will be shown as part of the “Shorts 1″ block. It will also screen on the following Saturday at 8:30 PM in Modesto at the State Theater.

“It is a real honor to have Sally included in this year’s festival!” Marconi writes. “I have been impressed with the quality and diversity of the films that Sophoan Sorn, and the San Joaquin Film Society have selected for the festival. This years line up is extremely impressive. I feel lucky to be included.”

“Sally,” the story of two men’s inability to get over a young woman’s accidental death, “is the first film I have written and directed since spending nearly six years working on my first feature film, ‘Truce,’” Marconi writes. “Sally was my attempt to get back in the saddle again both literally and figuratively. (I played one of the roles and had to ride a horse.)

“My friend and collaborator, Takuji Murata, flew from Tokyo  … (We) decided to shoot our own “Dogma American Style” film using primarily natural light with a loose/hand held approach to camera work and overall style. After making a straightforward and traditional narrative film with Truce, Takuji, Harvey Jordan (co-writer & actor) and myself decided to experiment with the film’s narrative and the manner in which the story was told.

“I really felt the need to push my own boundaries as a storyteller with this film,” Marconi said.
 

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Reader: City Hall will ruin the Thunder

Reader Jack Smith writes:

“I feel that if the City of Stockton were to purchase the remaining teams left at the arena, the teams would suffer.

“I have season tickets for the Thunder.  Many families have adopted this team, purely because it is good fun, and most importantly, it is affordable for a family.  I could easily see the blundering city bureaucrats trying to immediately recoup their past losses by hiking anything and everything up, especially the ticket prices. 

“In doing so, in a typical bureaucrat’s manner, they would be driving income down, as people would stop going.  It would no longer be affordable.  …  Most likely the entire family will then stay home, reducing income from ticket sales and resulting vendor income. The same would possibly happen to any one that purchased the teams, as the city would hike the arena fees, making the ticket prices rise also. ”

I reprinted this letter because it is typical. People don’t trust City Hall to steer the Thunder and the Arena to a better financial footing. But what’s the alernative? To allow the IFG’s mismanagement to cost the city $3 million a year? Getting rid of IFG does involve risk. But surely that’s preferable to municipal bankruptcy.

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Legal pot: not so lucrative?

I’ve featured experts who say growing legal marijuana could be an economic bonanza for the San Joaqin Valley. A Harvard economist disagrees. 

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Fritchen disagrees

Councilman Dale Fritchen, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, disagrees with one point in today’s column.

Fritchen cast the sole vote against hiring pricey consultants to help re-negotiate the money-blowing Arena contracts. The consultants may also help the city buy out the contracts and flip the Stockton Thunder hockey team to a new owner.

Given how city staffers ignorant of the sports and entertainment industry mucked things up the first time, I opined foregoing experts is “penny wise and pound foolish.”

 Consultants are appropriate, Fritchen counters, “I think when it gets to the point that doing things we have little or no expertise doing,” Fritchen said. “Things like writing the contract, making sure it meets the standards for entertainment venues.

“But we brought in consultants just to read the contract. To tell us it’s  bad contract. We knew that going in. And to negotiate? Well, we have staff to negotiate, as long as we know the value of the teams.”

Point taken. Consultants might have been employed more judiciously. Some might call that nickel and diming, but I’m grateful for anyone being as prudent as possible with tax dollars, especially in these times.

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What the cannabis dispensary used to be

Floyd Perry Jr. responds to an item about the cannabis dispensary.

“Being a longtime Stocktonian, I fondly remember when the Pathway’s Pot Dispensary at 20 East Acacia Street used to be the original location of MEADOW’S CAMERA SHOP. It was located there from 1945 until 1987. The original Victorian store stood there until it was torn down in 1964 for the current building. I have attached a photo of the building when it was Meadows that i took in 1987 when they were closing down.”

Thanks, Floyd. That a Victorian was torn down to make way for that bland nonentity of commercial architecture says everything you need to know about Stockton redevelopment in the Sixties.

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Keep the postal station open

Midtowners who want to keep the Tuxedo Park Post Office open will hold a noon rally and petition drive Saturday at the station, 2621 Pacific Avenue.

The head of the Miracle Mile Improvement District, Emily Ballus, ticks off some reasons for saving the station.

· A walkable city is good for local business, it helps the environment, and it preserves an area’s identity. Our area is one of the best in town for walking to work, dining, shopping, the market, entertainment, and our post office, which has been here for over 50 years.

·The replacement post office for post office box renters is West Lane, a 6.90 mile round trip.

·Over 225 businesses on the Miracle Mile alone use the post office, and over 2000 households in the University Neighborhood are within walking distance.

·Out of the 38,000 post office retail centers nationwide, the Post Office plans to cut less than 250 stations.  This is just over ½ of a percent of all stations, which means there is room for debate on which stations will be closed.

 ·The lease at Tuxedo Station doesn’t expire until 2015.

These are valid arguments. Big deal, one reader told me, we can drive to the Calaveras Station on Robin Hood. This is old-fashioned autocentric thinking. Walkability is a key design element of the city’s future. 

Besides – this may be a less valid argument — we don’t owe the feds any favors. They give us fewer tax dollars than the national average, their worforce bailed on downtown, and Uncle Sam’s latest round of Neighborhood Stabilization funds included nothing for Stockton. What services they offer they should maintain.

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The incredible shrinking campus?

Amid concerns CSU Stanislaus is retreating from its Stockton Center, the university announced it is scaling the satellite campus’s bookstore back almost to the point of closure.

Barnes and Noble ran the store, and it was losing money, said CSUS spokesperson Eve Hightower.

The store ran in the red even when the campus was at peak enrollment in 2007. Last year, the store cost B&N $13,400. This year, it has cost $31,400, Hightowre said.

“B&N has been trying different things for a while hoping to turn a profit to no avail,” Hightower writes. “It has found textbook sales fall off after the first week. For the rest of the term, sales mostly consist of candy, snacks and other incidentals that amount to about $100 a day. I guess that wasn’t even enough to afford the B&N employee’s salary and benefits.”
 
B&N will open the store only for the first and last weeks of the term, Hightower said.

 

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Help Joshua Mompean to live

Joshua Mompean, the cystic fibrosis sufferer who needs a double lung transplant – a young man I knew since he was a little nipper – was released from Stanford Med this week and housed nearby to await a donor.

“He is still number one on the list and waiting for lungs,” Reports his father and stepmom Kim and Heather Mompean. “Joshua’s lung capacity is slightly higher than the 12% he was admitted to ICU with, however, he is constantly on oxygen and still in dire need of the lungs.”

Josh also needs money. He’ll have to live an apartment in pricey Palo Alto for months to be near Stanford Med as he recovers from the transplant. If you eat at BJs Brewpub this Monday, February 8th, they’ll donate 15 percent of your tab, if you just give the server a Josh flyer when paying.

Flyers are available at:

Replay Records – 7560 Pacific Ave.

Exotic Java – 526 W Benjamin Holt Dr Ste. A

Cesar Chavez Library Community Board – 605 N. El Dorado Street

and by contacting Heather Mompean at (209) 244-4549.

 

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From Pollardville to the Oscars

Jeremy Renner, the Modesto actor who used to play in the melodramas at Pollardville, got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination yesterday for his role as a bomb squad member in “The Hurt Locker.”

Renner, whose star is on the rise, played the dumb but virtuous hero in Pollardville’s 1992 production of “The Drunkard,” among other roles.

After “The Hurt Locker,” Renner played a detective in the now-canceled ABC series “The Unusual.” He’s in a crime drama called “The Town” with Ben Affleck this fall.

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The Juggalos respond

 Area Juggalos (fans of Detroit Rap duo Insane Clown Posse) object to a local prosecutor’s characterization of some Juggalos as gangstas.  

“We’re not a gang,” says Jeremiah Parker, 17, who goes by the ICP name Ringmaster.

Ringmaster paints his face wicked clown style, dons a Wraith (ICP’s grim reaper) t-shirt and fingerless gloves. But he denounced anybody who translates ICP’s violent lyrics into action.

“We’re just a family – mostly a fan-based family,” he said. “We love to listen to our music. We love to hang out with our family members.”

Hatchet Man and Lil Que also called. They concur.

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