Yes, it was the bay area's very own Francie himself on hand to inform and entertain a packed theatre yesterday at the new Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in Japantown. As promised.

We know you. You're an "adventurous" filmgoer, right? Therefore, this picture is recommended. Here are the reviews in the New York Times and SFGate. Maybe FFC has a beef with the piece from SFGate? Find out about that, and the new digital filmmaking, after the jump.

So Chronicle Movie Critic Mick LaSalle goes "though there must be some reason for a running motif of scenes being shot upside down, it's hard to imagine a good one." Well this issue of upside-downedness was raised during the apre-film Q and A and a few audience members shouted out the answer as if it were fairly obvious and/or perfectly reasonable. It seems that most viewers would get, or at least suspect, the meaning of this technique. Anyway, upside-down = a dream sequence per Francis. Fair enough.

Youth Without Youth was mostly shot on digital videotape and then transferred to 35mm film. It appeared that one short scene shot at night had loads of digital-looking noise (as opposed to film-like grain). A viewer could easily imagine the tiny (literally thumbnail-sized) 2-megapixel (just like the camera on your new iPhone!) CCDs on the Sony HandyCam heating up despite the furious efforts of the cooling fans. But maybe it was just our imagination and digital is way more better, as they say. In any event, computers were king in the making of this picture.

Dude is the hardest working man in the film business, traveling hither and yon to promote this movie (and also make his next down Argentina way).

It's your call, but you should suspend your disbelief and then go see Youth Without Youth if you can.