Yes, by popular demand, San Francisco Film Society's SF360 Film will once again bring you the one, the only, "Trapped in a Closet" sing-along, the awesomest sing-along this side of the Buffy "Once More With Feeling" sing-along (sing it everyone: "Bunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes/They've got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses...") The show will be Friday, January 25, at 7:00 pm at Mezzanine....

That's it for the SFIFF this year! As SFist Wendy wraps up SFist's coverage with part 2 of her marathon week, congratulations to the San Francisco Film Society for two weeks of great cinema and we're already looking forward to the 51st! And on to Mezzanine Thursday night for the SFIFF closing night party -- with a surprise performer . . . . but before the final sendoff, we headed over to the Castro......

The always-reliable and smartly-snapping Drew Altizer stopped by the SF Film Society's red carpet awards ceremony on Saturday and passes along these views of the scene! Award recipients this year included: Robin Williams and Spike Lee (both of whom were eye-catchingly dressed and whose pictures are after the jump), and George Lucas, who's pictured above with Ron Howard and John Lasseter from Pixar. Thanks, Drew! Extra bonus: if you go through Drew's pictures on......

As a Vans salesman recently told us, "Yo, Sis, this is fresh!" Maybe so. Tonight, learn about graffiti street artists as SF360 Film+Club returns to Mezzanine to celebrate the URB Next 100 Issue with a screening of Doug Pray’s film, Infamy. The film is an intense journey into the dangerous lives and obsessed minds of six of America’s most prolific graffiti artists. Doug Pray (“Hype!” and “Scratch”) teamed up with writer, publisher, and graffiti guru......

First there was the Sound of Music Sing-Along. Then came a whole lotta other Sing-Alongs. But this Wednesday, there might be the awesomest Sing-Along of them all: a sing-along of R. Kelly's epic magnum opus, Trapped in a Closet....

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 100. (It's all pictures and captions this week, with no dishy Catherine Bigelow text, we're sorry to report.) Total number of people pictured whom we recognize: 14 (including Vanessa Carlton and Stephan Jenkins, Joan Chen, and a Chron reporter we see from time to time when we go out for drinks with Eve). Minority count: 24 (24%). Hats, capes, tiaras: 2, 0 (but 5......

One of the countless trends in the non-profit arts world that we run across during the course of our day job is new initiatives by august institutions to ply their wares to younger audiences, kinda like Pepsi's "Choice of a New Generation" Campaign years back. SF360 is an effort of said type by the San Francisco Film Society. Tonight the Society presents the latest SF360 Film+Club a once-a-month evening of film and clubbing, featuring selected......

More shopping It's the 'In the Black' Art Sale at Triple Base Gallery (3041 24th Street at Treat). This special sale features affordable works of art by the talented artists featured in past exhibitions and the Triple Base Flat Files (e.g. unframed works on paper). Sales from the Flat Files are the main source of funding for the experimental exhibitions that unfold on a monthly basis in the project space. (7-11pm) Theater Just added......

Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 56. Total number of people pictured whom we recognize: 11. Minority count: 4 (7%). Hats, capes, tiaras:13, 0, 1. Hat count includes three wimples; tiara count does not include the festive plumage shooting out behind Elvis's head. Getty v. Traina: 2-0. The day next month's W magazine appears on newsstands, with an article exposing the SF social scene: 12/22. We're so excited! This week's......

It doesn't appear that there's anything planned to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, so we'll just slurp oysters and go flyfishing. No, really, this evening at the Ferry Building Marketplace Grand Hall, Hog Island Oysters, Cakebread wine and fly fishing. (5:30-7:30pm) Proceeds from the event will benefit CalTrout—an organization that started in the mid-1960s with a dozen avid trout fishermen disgruntled with the State of California's management of lakes and......

We're begging for your help here, readers -- begging! Can someone with a digital camera PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE go to this event and send us your pictures of Chris Daly getting thrown into a swimming pool? We'll throw in some SFist swag if you do! We'd go ourselves, but admission is $125 (and we don't have a digital camera anyways). The Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Center is sponsoring their 16th Annual Celebrity Pool Toss this Tuesday......

Tonight we're headed across the Golden Gate to see the The Tiburon Film Society's presentation of Johnny Berlin at the Bay Model (2100 Bridgeway in Sausalito). Johnny Berlin is essentially a monologue by a struggling writer/luxury train porter. While going about his business, making beds and cleaning toilets, he talks about not having a date in five years, trying to sell his liver for cash, asking his father to increase his life insurance policy......

The opening night screening of a film festival is like having sex with a celebrity -- the experience itself is never that impressive, but it makes for a fun memory and it's nice to be able to say that you did it. Such was our feeling at last night's opening of the San Francisco International Film Festival, which kicked off with the North American premiere of Perhaps Love. The marathon began with San Francisco......

As we find ourselves gearing up for this year's SF Indie Fest (of which we're a sponsor! whoo yay us!) we find ourselves wondering ... is it enough? All these festivals that SF has -- the Indie Fest, Frameline, the Int'l Fest, Hole in the Head, the recently-concluded Noir Fest -- sure, they're all swell, but is that all there is? No, apparantly, according to the SF Film Society. As a part of their recently-launched......

We can't explain it any better than SF Film Society Exec Direc Graham Leggat put it to us: "We're interested in creating a public/private partnership between the city, corporations, foundations, media arts organizations, the school districts, and other interested parties, to install a network of digital projectors in select high school auditoriums around the city. You would then use broadband or satellite or hard drives to supply independent content... non-Hollywood content, with lesson plans and......

Okay, this next component of the SF Film Society's new SF360 program is a bit low-concept, but you're a smart cookie so you should pick it up pretty quick. Listen: "We want to explore the way new platforms help us bring new work to new audiences," Graham Leggat, Exec Direc of the SFFS told us in an interview. So to that end, they're going to select one film, then work with distribution partners like the......

Hey, didja hear about SF360's upcoming website? The SF Film Society and Indiewire.com promise that the site (to be launched in March) will offer a slew of new tools for local filmmakers and audiences -- "blogs, video blogs, photo blogs, event planning, announcements, virtual production offices, project-based LANs," the SFFS's Exec Direc Graham Leggat told us, but what he said next is what really grabbed our attention: "We don't have a revenue model for this."......

We saw the saddest obituary last week in the Chron, for the death of Sarah Tucker, a 26-year-old Mission resident who was killed in a hit-and-run bicycle accident on Polk and Geary Street on Thursday January 12. Witnesses reported seeing a black Honda CRV run a yellow light, and heard Tucker loudly shout "Hey!" before she was struck. The driver, reported to be an African-American man in his 40s, then turned off his headlights to hinder the reading of his license plate and drove away. Tucker, who was wearing her helmet, suffered severe head injuries and died shortly afterwards. Tucker, as she was known, was returning home from the Tango, Tango dance party when she was killed. Tucker was a fundraiser for the Cal Academy of Sciences by day and a filmmaker/DJ at night, volunteering for the SF Film Society, screening movies for the SF Int'l Film Fest, and running the Pretty Young Thing dance party at the Make-Out Room, among many other activities. As the obit says, "Sarah loved pugs, soul music, dancing, acronyms, sticky buns, fashion and aesthetics." If you see a black Honda CR-V with a large dent in its side on the passenger door, call SFPD Inspector Pat Tobin of the hit-and-run division at (415) 553-1641 or the confidential tip line (415) 575-4444. There's a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Please, folks, ride and drive safely out there. You probably love pugs and sticky buns too. ...

Well, we enjoyed being all coy and evasive for a while, but now that the SF Film Society has officially announced their SF360 campaign, we're free to reveal to you all the juicy details, like a new broadbanded network of digital projectors that they're installing around the city; or a brand new film festial-convention-market for animation; or their new initiative to, as Executive Director Graham Leggat put it, turn all of SF into an "exploded......

We have to admit, we weren't buying it two weeks ago when the San Francisco Film Society invited us to a pre-Sundance rally at the posh Adagio Hotel. The haute couture, the DJ, the tiny appetizers and free beer -- "surely," we thought, "this must be nothing more than an excuse to have one of those bourgeois parties we're always protesting alongside our Communist friends." But no! No! Just like when we famously predicted that......

The San Francisco Film Society is hosting a special screening of Hoodwinkedat the Clay this Sunday the 11th at 7:30 p.m., and we have passes to give away to you! Hoodwinked, a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, features the voices of Anne Hathaway, Glenn Close, Patrick Warburton and Jim Belushi. (Stop smirking.) You can get tickets here, or enter below by midnight to win a pass for you and your guest.......

Hello, Mr. Fancy Pants! The San Francisco International Film Festival has chosen Graham Leggat to be their new Executive Director (replacing Roxanne Messina Captor). We just want to burn our resume after looking at his, which includes the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival, and Film Comment magazine. It'll be interesting to see what he brings to the 49th Festival (April 2006 - May 4, 2006), given the mixed response......

SFist stalks the stars at the San Francisco Internationsl Film Festival...

SFist usually experiences a frisson of excitement when we visit the Kabuki Theater, usually from the 38 that nearly hits us every time we cross Geary at Fillmore (apparently, red lights don't apply to busses). But this time our excitement wasn't the brush with death kind, it was the far more pleasant brush with celebrity type, as we were at the Kabuki to take in the red carpet arrival of several of the folks......

One of the many perks of SFist, (besides the private jet, sumptious office spaces, and Gavin calling round-the-clock "just to say 'hi'"), is that we are forced to get out of the house and go do awesomely cool stuff in the name of Web Journalism. The latest entry in this big-fun anti-hermit campaign is the San Francisco International Film Festival, which opens tonight and runs through Thursday May 5. You can see the entire......

For an actor known for his want of privacy, Marin's own Sean Penn seems to be making a lot of news lately. Locally, Penn has thrown himself into the murky world of San Francisco politics by filming a very short film coming out against Proposition L. The thirty-second trailer will play in local theaters starting this weekend. Proposition L, which bills itself as the "Save our Theaters" initiative, calls for taking $10.5 million that's earmarked......