Cinequest Comedy Short Films

Last weekend I was fortunate enough to catch Cinequest Shorts Program 7: Comedy Favorites, and the films were thoroughly hilarious. While I enjoyed them all, I have to particularly point out my 2 favorites. The Action Hero's Guide to Saving Lives and Ducked and Covered: A survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse.

The premise behind Hero's Guide is that a police officer's sister was kidnapped and the hero--Patrick Warburton (Elaine's car salesman boyfriend on Seinfeld)--has to charge in Die-Hard style and save her. The catch is that every time the action hero or one of the good guys dies, the story resets and takes you down an alternate path until they succeed. The story gets more hilarious with every failure, and by the end I was laughing so hard there were tears in my eyes. Since the last showing was 2 days ago, there is no way to watch the full version of the short although there are some talks about potentially making a full-length feature based on it. You can watch the trailer over here, but it doesn't do this masterpiece justice.

Ducked and Covered is a post apocalyptic survival guide as if it were made in the early 80s. No actors, just a few images and a voice-over... simple yet extremely effective. The person that put this together is brilliant! Fortunately I don't have to describe this one much because you can watch it in full OVER HERE.

The icing on the cake was that at the end of the shorts, several actors and directors from the films came to the front of the theater and did a Q&A session. It was like being in the middle of a DVD bonus feature =). The extra layer of icing on top of that were the free gift bags.

The moral of this post is that there are many awesome things to see and experience at Cinequest, and you still have 7 whole days to enjoy the film festival. This is one of the top 10 film festivals in the world, there's no reason no to head down!!

The Sobrato Tower May FINALLY Get a Tenant!

In today's San Jose Business Journal, there is an article saying that PricewaterhouseCoopers is considering moving into the shiny blue Sobrato tower at 488 Almaden downtown. Nothing is set in stone, but they are looking to expand into a larger building when their lease expires in Dec. and this building is on the shortlist.

I've been in the Sobrato tower once, and the view from the top floor is stunning. The fact that this building has been vacant for more than half a decade now is just plain sad. This is the nicest office tower in all of downtown San Jose and PWC would be lucky to call it home!

Joint Venture Index of Silicon Valley 2010

The latest Joint Venture report evaluating the current status of our region has been unleashed. Thankfully it's not all doom and gloom. Here are a few of my favorite statistics:

• 30% of ALL Venture Capital invested in the US, is invested in Silicon Valley (Pop: 2,900,000, less than 1% of the US population). 
• The proportion of VC funds we're receiving in relation to the rest of the country actually increased in 2009 (so we're getting an even larger piece of the funding pie).
• 12% of ALL US patents originated in Silicon Valley.
• In 2008 more patents were filed in San Jose than any other city in the US (and by a wide margin).
• 3% of vehicles registered in Silicon Valley are hybrids or electric (as opposed to 2% in the rest of California)

Click here to read the entire report (Warning: PDF link).

Old Little Italy Archway Concepts

It tuns out that I never posted the original archway concepts for San Jose's Little Italy. Sorry about that! Here they are:

To see the latest render click here!

Cinequest Kicks Off Today!

One of the 10 greatest film festivals in the world kicks off today in Downtown San Jose, and there is an excellent post on San Jose Metroblogs providing some great insight as to what Cinequest is, and is not. Have a look for yourself here!

San Jose 2010 State of the City Address

I would highly recommend that everyone reading this blog take a look at the transcript of the 2010 State of the City Address. It's long, but has a lot of important information on the current situation San Jose is facing as well as the future vision of our city. You can read Chuck Reed's speech in full here.

Some of the main topics are:

• Balancing the Budget
• Building a Strong Economy
• Safe Neighborhoods with Good Schools
• Protect and Preserve our Environment
• Creating a Vibrant City

Here's the link one last time!

New Potential Little Italy Arch Render

Below is another rendering of what the Little Italy arches could look like (this one was put together by Acadia Architecture). Also the first restaurant in little Italy, Paisano's Trattoria Italiana, is opening up within a couple months!

February 2010 Downtown Dimension Highlights

Here are my notes from the latest edition of Downtown Dimension:

• Mayor Chuck Reed addresses the Redevelopment Agency
• Financial situation is not good, may be able to borrow $30M this year.
• The 2 highest RDA priorities right now are the downtown Baseball Stadium and the Convention Center expansion. These are the 2 with the biggest bang for our buck.
• Regarding building heights and the airport, he indicated that the airlines have choices and we can't just tell them to do it our way shove off. They can cut flights and move to other airports in the Bay Area, we don't want to give them any more reasons to not fly out of San Jose.
• The High-Speed Rail Authority is again reconsidering the potential of an underground HSR station in San Jose, although they made it clear it is not their preferred alternative.
• Some additional news regarding the San Pedro Square Market:
• They want to have a weekend farmer's market instead (or in addition to) the Friday one.
• The targeted tenant distribution is 80% food and beverage and 20% hard goods.
• A special area for kids is also in the works.
• The 20th annual Cinequest Film Festival kicks off Feb 23 and runs all the way through Mar 7. This year it will feature over 200 films from 40 countries.
• On March 5 from 5:00-7:30pm, there will be another high-rise condo open house. This will coincide with both Cinequest AND South First Fridays. Another great reason to spend March 5th downtown (you'll also get free pedicab rides between the high-rises and art venues).
• The 141 W Santa Clara building should be revealed any day now (building under renovation housing Starbucks and La Victoria).
• The Rental Market downtown has been booming. 90% of The Globe is leased, 80% of the Sainte Claire Apartments above Original Joe's are leased, and 94% of the Twohy Lofts are full.

To read the full newsletter, click here!