FILM: SF Indiefest wraps up tonight with Ben X, 7:15 p.m., and Paranormal Activity, 9:30 p.m., at the Roxie Cinema. For more info, go here. *MUSIC: We love the the Donnas. Seriously. Not only are they ever so much fun, but they're from the Bay Area and brimming with hot young(ish) girls playing guitar. The kind of girls with whom you want to go shopping and talk about boys, but also who you want......

MUSIC: San Francisco's favorite crooner, Utah-born singer/songwriter Spencer Day, performs tonight at the one of the city's newest music venues, the Rrazz Room located at Hotel Nikko. COMEDY: Let hilarity wash over you with the comedic stylings of Arj Barker, Kristopher Tinkle ("Tinkle" = hee!), and Matt Morales. They hit the mic tonight at Punchline. *FILM: SF Indiefest is going on, folks. Tonight check out La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, 7:15 p.m. at......

It's almost Academy Awards® time and whether or not the writers will still be on strike, it seems that each year the movies are less and less relevant to the show itself. Between the Valentino dresses, Armani suits and pregger rumors, we feel Oscar® (or at least media coverage) has lost its focus. Enter Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International and their Indie Movie-loving glory: they're teaming to showcase this year's Academy Award nominated short......

One of the greatest misunderstandings in the history of US cinema -- oh please, as far as repeated viewings go, Ordinary People is a superior and more devastating film than Raging Bull -- is the genius of Sophia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. A fantastic flick, really. It's gorgeous, laced with a few Bay Area inside jokes, oddly nerve-wrecking to watch, and the ending is perfect. Brilliant. In every way. And, yes, while many would (with much......

-- Aimee Mann's Second Annual Christmas Show: Paul F. Tompkins, Sean Hayes, Chuck Prophet, and Morgan Murphy join the delightfully blond songstress for a night of holiday warm fuzzies. Because X-Mas is coming and there's no way around it, come catch this wonderful singer/songwriter during the, um, recording-a-holiday-album period of her career. Show starts at 8 p.m. at Bimbo's 365; $35.50. -- Margot at the Wedding: Fantastic movie. Just great. And whatever. It totally......

-- Cinema Soundscapes: This evening of "voice, music and cinematic exploration" features mezzo-soprano vocalist Silvie Jensen and woodwind musician Bodhan Hilas headlining a night of sound oddities and Stephen Parr film such as "A Dream of Wild Horses," (1971) and "“Symphonies in Stone" (1942). Starts at 8:30 p.m. at Oddball Films; $10 (RSVP) -- Ingmar Bergman Tribute Night: The Castro Theatre seems to have an Ingmar Tribute Night every week. And we love it!......

Eater SF uncovered something new and morally-questionable -- two of our favorite topics -- TablePronto, an online service that scalps restaurant reservations. Basically, it's a site that allows you to buy and sell reservations for a price. As of now they have a scant few available for SF: - Perbacco, 11/16, 9pm, $18; Foreign Cinema, 11/16, 8:30pm, $15; Town Hall, 11/16, 9:15pm, $10; Aqua, 11/16, 8:45pm, $10 Oh, all prime dining hours, too! But......

Tonight, for one night only, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts will be featuring two sneak previews of Dirty Country, a highly entertaining documentary about the underground world of raunchy music, directed by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher, founders and hosts of the Found Footage Festival, which sold out four shows at the Red Vic last month. Dirty Country, which won the Audience Award at this year's South By Southwest, is part of Yerba......

The International Animation Festival starts tonight, kids. And speaking of them, don't bring yours to tomorrow night's wonderfully smut-filled orgy of animated shorts, Top Drawers. What's more, one lucky soul will get a free pair of tickets to tomorrow night's screening. You will have the chance to see such "playful, sexy shorts" as Signe Baumane's Teat Beat of Sex and Kelly Sears's Drift. So, the fifth person to send us an email to editor......

So much to do, so much not to do. What's a girl to do? Well, here is just a smattering of what's going on tonight. (An aside, is there any reason to buy bags of fun-size candy anymore to hand out to costumed tykes? We haven't seen a trick-or-treater in ages. Sob.) -- Hellgate Halloween: Vice magazine (SF's no. 1 fan) is throwing a bash with a complimentary bar (!) and tunes by Chromeo......

-- Lust, Caution (2007): Ang Lee's new espionage flick is rated NC-17 (i.e., the pretentious thinking person's X). Hot. Oh, and it's actually really good -- at least we think so, anyway. Screens tonight at 8 p.m. and 9 at the Embarcadero Cinemas; $7.50-10. -- Shout Out Louds, Johnossi, Nico Vega, DJ Omar: Sweden band takes the stage tonight, along with three equally stellar aural outfits, starting at 8 p.m. at The Independent; $15.......

-- Bachelorette, 34: Oh the manic behavior of being on your 30s and still single. Check out Kara Herold's personal film about mothers, daughters, marriage, and being single. Starts at 8:30 p.m at Other Cinema at Artists' Television Access (ATA), 992 Valencia. -- Diplo: Edgewater-born electronic genius (and the one who introduced MIA to the US) pumps out his work all over the dance floor along with Switch, Eric Sebastian, and Vin Sol at......

Hey, wanna see The Ten? No, not the LA freeway, a movie of ten short films illustrating each of the Ten Commandments, featuring such of-the-moment actors as Jessica Alba, Paul Rudd (yay!), Adam Brody (pictured above; we have no idea what commandment it illustrates but the picture's funny), and The Daily Show's Rob Corddry, among many, many others, and directed by the guy who directed Wet Hot American Summer. Well, you can if you......

SFist interviews HP Mendoza and Rich Wong of "Colma: The Musical"...

SFist Sara's back, with your weekend picks in indie cinema! We are always going to tell you to see Other Cinema. You can set your watch to it, we promise. This week’s Incredibly Strange Music program is packed with punk rock/bad music video genius. We’re particularly into the experimental film Foucault’s Pendulum but there’s oddity for every taste, as curator Craig Baldwin’s program religiously offers. This week, however, the OC schedule has a staunch competitor......

Everyone say hi to our newest correspondent, SFist Grace. Hi, SFist Grace! Sunday night, the SF International screened the world premiere of the film Fog City Mavericks at the Castro Theater. There were shades of Sundance as many of the films featured filmmakers and actors, including George Lucas and Robin Williams, casually red carpeted-their way to the theater, complete with flashbulbs and film cameras documenting the night. Mavericks, a new documentary by Gary Leva......

Theatrical Releases April 13th, 2007 We haven’t seen everything on the roster for this week but we have seen Hot Fuzz and we strongly suggest it. Hot Fuzz does for cop/buddy action films what Pegg, Wright and Frost’s Shaun of the Dead did for zombie films. Fuzz is every bit as researched and diligent as was Shaun. Afterwards you can hit the pub and discuss which you think is funnier. ...

Here's a listing for tonight's events...

It's been forty-nine years of great cinema for the SF International Film Festival (SFIFF), and starting April 26 through May 10 2007, it'll be fifty! To celebrate their gold anniversary, the SFIFF is not only presenting the always-dazzling film festival itself, but hosting a huge array of events as well: from tributes to Spike Lee (and a screening of When The Levees Broke), and awards to locals George Lucas and Robin Williams, an address about......

Theatrical Releases March 30th, 2007 We’ve got some decent choices this week: if you’re in the mood for comedy, it’s all about Blades of Glory, if we have kids Meet the Robinsons (3-D at the Metreon) is better than you’d expect, but if you want something saucy it is all about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and that movie he’s in…The Lookout. I heard someone postulate it was like Brick 2: Outta College but I think that was......

SFist Sara S's got the jujubes! Please don’t mistake us for fans of human suffering but it’s high time a film was made to tell the uninformed public about the genocide in Rwanda. Beyond the Gates, at the Embarcadero, is a smart, engaging, often (rightly) painful view of the conflict from the view of a Catholic training college manned by John Hurt and Hugh Dancy. It’s a tearjerker but it’s really edifying to see how......

SFist Sara S. on this weekend's movie offerings. She tells us "There is nothing good coming out in mainstream movies this weekend," so it's all the little microcinemas around town this week! C'mon, what about Sandra Bullock in "Premonition"? Okay, Sara, point taken. At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Wednesday the 21st, the Film Arts Foundation is presenting a documentary on twenty years of the SF Graffiti scene, called Piece by Piece.......

Anyone been to the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater in El Cerrito yet? The Cerrito is the sister theater to the fabulous Parkway Theater in Oakland and opened this past November. ...

While the Castro has that fabulous organ, the Red Vic (1727 Haight St at Cole) wins the prize for best popcorn, a very important aspect of our movie-going experience. Tonight the Red Vic screens the D.A. Pennebaker documentary, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, a cinema verité cult classic depicting David Bowie getting ready for and playing one of the last Ziggy-era concerts, featuring glam rock guitarist extraordinaire, Mick Ronson (who grew up Mormon).......

If the Chillin' show at the Mezzanine was any indication of how busy this years crop of Craft shows is going to be, we're in for a great December. With about 60 designers, several DJ's and what seemed like thousands of people, Saturday's show was one big, bumpin' party. At times it got a little too crowded for our tastes, making it hard for people to get to tables and actually see what designers were selling. But most of the designers seemed pretty happy, and really, it was just the beginning for many of them. ...

We get a lot of e-mails about various events for good causes and most of them we'll list in our events posts but some of them, the one's that look really fun, we'll do a big post on. This one is definately deserving of a big post-- Dine Around. The basic gist of which is that if you eat at a selected restaurants in the Castro, Noe Valley, Mission, Potrero Hill, and Soma-- in other words, prime eating areas-- Wednesday night, money will be raised for the Aids Emergency Fund (AEF) and the Breast Cancer Emergency Fund (BCEF). And there's some great restaurants listed too like Foreign Cinema and la Mediterranee and Firefly and, well, just check out the list yourself. A raffle will also be held to help raise money. How could this not be a great thing as for the most part, all you need to do to support something is eat. We like eating. ...

First, the excitement of the election, and now the excitement of a (for many people) three day weekend. More excitement! Movies: Third I South Asian Film Festival, In Debt We Trust by Danny Schecter Friday and Saturday night, Hardcore Viewmaster on Saturday night, early Werner Herzog shorts at SF MoMA, Saturday afternoon, and New Italian Cinema all day Sunday. Book Parties: Friday at the Cartoon Art Museum, Just Like Heaven, which is a children's......

Call it the calm before the storm, or a brief respite from the dudely bravado of the District 6 and other election campaigning, but we are thrilled that we have multiple women's literature events to attend tonight: The Madrone Lounge (500 Divisadero at Fell) presents a joint reading with The May Queen contributors and editor Christina Amini and contributors from Before The Mortgage. The May Queen describes itself as a "fascinating collection of 27......

A few years back, it seemed like everyone we knew was vacationing in Thailand. To keep ahead of the curve in fashionable Southeast Asian travel destinations, we're heading over to the Main San Francisco Public Library (100 Larkin @ Grove) to see Wendy Yanagihara, author of “Lonely Planet’s Guide to Vietnam,” talk about her travels in said country and learn all about the off-the-beaten-path gems so we can nod sagely and make intelligent comments......

It's been five years since SF Camerawork, a non-profit dedicated to photography and digital media, had its own gallery. Since 2001, Camerawork has shared exhibition space with New Langton Arts, but no longer. SF Camerawork has moved back to its old hood, and is celebrating its new location at 657 Mission St. (at 3rd) with a Grand Opening party from 5-9pm. Check out the inaugural exhibition at the new gallery, Ghosts in the Machine,......