Hundreds packed the Del Mar on Saturday night, April 14, for the Seventh Annual Secret Film Fest, a delectable 12-hour run of movies from around the world. Among the eclectic mix were Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, Morgan Spurlock’s surprisingly poignant documentary about the annual convention of comic book geeks, and The Raid: Redemption, an Indonesian martial arts thriller wherein a rookie cop must bust out of an apartment building full of underworld thugs after a special task force mission goes horribly awry.
Articles
Dance Week in Santa Cruz
National Dance Week kicks off (pardon the pun) in Santa Cruz Thursday, April 19, at 5:30pm right outside Santa Cruz Weekly’s doors—lucky us!—with performances in front of the Civic, City Hall and the Church Street Library. And what do the organizational wizards at Dance Week Santa Cruz have in store for the dance fans of Santa Cruz?
National Poetry Month Ramps Up
T.S. ELIOT’s The Waste Land opens with this: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain.” Had the great modernist complained of September, National Poetry Month might have been lost amid county fairs and the first weeks of school.
Firehose’s Surprising Journey and Santa Cruz Connection
Firehose will always be associated with Mike Watt’s beloved hometown of San Pedro, but the truth is that if it weren’t for Santa Cruz, the band never would have existed.
Juncos Bend Genres
In 2001, Joshua Lowe walked into More Music, his George W. Bush economic stimulus money in hand, and bought his first mandolin. He knew a few chords on the guitar, but he had never taken it seriously, and on the heels of a breakup from a longtime girlfriend he needed an outlet. He liked the instrument’s percussive chk chk chk.
2012 Gold Awards — Arts & Culture
Santa Cruz Weekly readers voted on the best arts and culture in Santa Cruz County, and these are the results.
2012 Gold Awards — Music & Nightlife
The results of our 2012 reader survey on the best of Santa Cruz County music and nightlife
A Conversation With Chris Rene
When Chris Rene isn’t writing or recording songs for his new album, he’s traveling around the country promoting new projects, playing guitar and singing for various radio programs. “I’ve been on a radio tour for I don’t know how long,” says Rene, a Santa Cruz native who finished third in television’s The X Factor in December. “But I’ve been to a lot of different states—basically almost every state in the United States.”
The 2012 Gold Awards Index
It’s an annual tradition: We tip our hats to the best of what Santa Cruz has to offer. The fashionable cocktail lounge, the venerable date-night institution, the yoga studio everybody loves, the cutting-edge graphic that’s given downtown a fresh edge—they all get props here.
First Friday Art Tour Holds 100th Monthly Event
It’s hard to believe Santa Cruz will celebrate its 100th First Friday Art Tour on April 6. The tour, founded back in 2003 by intrepid artists Kirby Scudder and the single-named Chip, has since exploded into a citywide phenomenon that attracts thousands every month. “It’s far exceeded my expectations,” says Scudder.
