*MUSIC: Kelley Stoltz, Grand Archives, the Morning Benders, and le Weather Underground sing some songs for you over at the Independent. (Part of Noise Pop 2008.) COMEDY: Get ready to hee yourself silly. Kenny Altman hosts Ron Vigh, Kelly McCarron, Maggie Newcomb, and Morgan Ryan Kasmier at "Gays and Dolls," a homosexually-charged night of stand-up hilarity. You can catch the queers killing it over at the Clubhouse. (BYOB, people. For reals.) CLUB: New York-based......

*FILM: The final release of Ridley Scott''s love-it-or-hate-it science fiction noir thriller Blade Runner: The Final Cut — now with added footage, re-mixed sound, and minor improvements on visual effects! — screens at the Castro. COMEDY: SF Supervisor Tom Ammiano attempts a return to stand-up comedy at the Makeout Room's "Laughing Liberally Local 415 with Will Durst" tonight. MUSIC: Indie folk/country jazz duo Dean & Britta (former Luna members) perform at Yoshi's-SF. "Mazzy Star-like"......

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......

SFist interviews Jeff Ross, founder of Indie Fest...

In case you missed the packed ReadyMade party last night or were too distracted by all the cute people and free drinks to actually get any holiday shopping done here are some more events where you can spend some money and get your buzz on. Tonight Post-Postcard 11th Annual Small Format Art Sale The LAB 2948 16th Street @ Capp 1-7pm Free Originally starting out as a postcard show, the LAB now invites artists to......

-- The Life of Reilly: He starred in Hello, Dolly, won a Tony and an Emmy, a Broadway director, and had one hell of a mother, but Charles Nelson Rilley will always be remembered for his Match Game PM innuendos and Brett Sommers trashing. His one-man show was filmed (thank God) for posterity just before he died, and you have the privilege of seeing a star of such magnitude tonight at 7:30 p.m. and......

-- Litz Plummer, the Opera Lady: Wow. This should be an interesting combo: Coming to the Eagle this evening is the opera lady. You know? The one who sings on Maiden Lane, near the Hermes store. (Where you buy all of your blue separates, just like us?) She's part of tonight's "Thursday Night Live" along with All My Pretty Ones and Carletta Sue Kay. 10 p.m., the Eagle Tavern, 12th St. & Harrison; $5.......

-- Dreamgirls: Jennifer Hudson's performance as Effie White won her an Academy Award, and her end of Act I nervous breakdown ("And I Am Telling You") blew audiences to the back wall of the theatre. . She is the reason to see this movie. It also features Anika Noni Rose, a former A.C.T. student. Check out this musical loosely based on the rise of the Supremes tonight at 7 p.m. at the Castro Theatre,......

This weekend is gonna be ginormous, with Bay to Breakers,the Maker Faire, the Prince and Bjork shows - so dive right on in with tonight's top picks: Party with Viv! and celebrate the Jolika Collection at the de Young. Experience the art of the Polynesian islands, from 5-8:45. Sample Kiwi wines from 6-8pm and stay to check out a live dance performance by a professional Maori dance company at 8. The Vivienne Westwood exhibit......

San Francisco artist Scott Campbell is probably the busiest Scott Campbell there is. This is a tall order, since there seem to be pretty ambitious Scott Campbells in every town. (And, no, actor Campbell Scott doesn't count.) We even venture to say that Scott Campbell is also probably the happiest and cleverest person there is, and as his paintings illustrate, the two definitely go hand-in-hand. Scott is the Art Director/Concept Artist at Double Fine Productions, creators of the acclaimed Psychonauts computer game, and he's a regular contributor to the Hickee comic anthology, the latest edition of which is due out this June. His work has also been featured in several various publications. April is especially busy for Scott. He is currently showing his solo work at Cowboys & Angels through June 5th, and the opening is tonight from 7 to 10 pm. Scott is also part of four different group shows this month. Here's an exhaustive list: • "Picks of the Harvest" at Thinkspace Gallery in Los Angeles, opens this Friday and runs through April 27. • "I Am 8 Bit" at Gallery 1988 in Los Angeles, opens April 17 and runs through May 12. • "The Indie," part of the grand opening of Gallery 1988 in conjunction with the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco, April 21 through May 12. • "Music of Hickee Mountain" at Red Bird Studios in Montreal, April 26. Then, hopefully Scott can take a break until June 7th, when he and the Hickee gang have another show in Portland at the Pony Club. (Jeez, we're just tired from typing all of this out!) You can also buy some of Scott's prints online for a mere $20–30! That is, if we haven't snatched them all up already. ...

The SF Asian-American Film Festival hosts not only ten days of the latest and greatest in Asian and Asian-American film, but two nights of current highlights from the Asian-American music scene too: one of hip-hop and electronica, and one of indie rock. Every year these concerts sell out, so get ready, get set, and get those tickets! Hip-hop/Dance: Friday, March 16, at the Independent, 5th Platoon's Neil Armstrong and Vin Roc, and SF MC......

Unholy Women, a Japanese horror movie played at the unholy hour of 11:45pm on Saturday night. We brushed our teeth, put cold cream on our face, bundled up in our jammies and trundled over to the Roxie for the last Indie Fest showing of the U.S. premiere of this movie. Unholy Women is comprised of three shorts featuring some scary-ass women. Two of the vignettes employed the usual horror movie tropes; knife wielding ghosts, dead children, mothers who have gone bonkers and the always scary, looking-in-the-mirror-and seeing-something-frightening (besides your own bad hair-do) looking back at you bit--that makes us jump in our seat every damn time. ...

The two SF Indie Fest films we watched on Friday night at the Victoria Theatre made for a very thought-provoking juxtaposition. The short film Mischief at 16th and Florida captured the rich history of an industrial area (and the river beneath it) located just a mere five blocks from the film screening. The feature film The Ballad of Greenwich Village was related to us through the countless anecdotes of the many amazing artists, performers......

We've been doing far too much reading about relevance and contemporary classical music as of late, so we're looking forward to the opportunity to hear it in a nice room with other people. The SF Tape Music Festival going on all weekend at ODC Theater (3153 17th St at Shotwell) features three distinct programs of audio art over a pristine 16-speaker surround sound system. We like the mix of legends (Brian Eno, with a world......

This week's giveaway comes from The Finches, a local duo who play endearing folk pop. The songs are refreshingly gentle and Carolyn's voice rings with a true sincerity. See them Saturday afternoon at 2pm when they play a free in-store at Amoeba, or celebrate their CD release at Cafe Du Nord on Wednesday night with The Moore Brothers, Colossal Yes and The Mantles. We're giving away a copy of their brand new CD Human......

How DARE you suggest that independent movies are pretentious, self-satisfied, masturbatory, and heavy-handed? What an outrrrrrrageous accusation. Just glance at the SF Indie Fest's puke-green website, which just struggled to life a few days ago; here's a few of our favorite excerpts from the films' descriptions. ... a gritty cinema-verite-style drama that journeys headlong into San Francisco's dark underbelly. ... This verité documentary shows a day in the life ... ... a broad stylistic......

SFist interviews JL Aronson, director of Danielson: A Family Movie...

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly. First, Dianne Feinstein came for the animal rights activists, and we said nothing. What are some of the election day losers doing now? Well, Krissy Keefer has been offered $100,000 to run against Gavin Newsom. Cover article: Chron blogs editor (and SFist editor emerita) Eve Batey must save the Chronicle!! (In a travesty of justice, Eve is not mentioned in the piece. Boooo!). It's actually a pretty decent article......

We can't count the number of times we've left a movie announcing "That sucked! This is what they should have done..." And then we'd go on in great detail to our long suffering better half, who had to sit through both the flawed work AND our backseat screenwriting and direction. If we were the kind of person who took proactive steps toward bettering her relationship (oh, we're so not, trust us), we'd shut our damn......

SF Indie's Another Hole In The Head is the film fest we enjoy the most (that's why we sponsor it), and we couldn't be happier to see it back for its third year of blood, guts, and mayhem. Last year, we saw nearly every film at the fest, and have the post traumatic stress disorder to prove it. This year is no different, with SFist's crack film fest team at the Roxie Film Center nearly......

In all honesty, for a good portion of this movie, we weren't sure what to make of it. Among other things, the description of the movie on the Indie Doc Fest Web site was a little wrong. This movie is sort of about how Israel deals with suicide bombers, but not really about how they prevent them, but how they deal with what happens. For another thing, here we were, at the Roxie right off Valencia in the Mission, the theater of the leftier-than-thou in the neighborhood of the leftier-than-thou watching a movie that at times seemed like something AIPAC would produce. We know because we've seen those movies and did the tour in Israel. Did the makers of the movie pull a fast one on the Roxie? Will the audience of primarily leftier-than-thou types walk out due to being faced with something that doesn't jibe with their "Free Palestine" buttons? ...

San Francisco grups were in full effect Friday night, as the hot demographic of 30-something indie-yuppies swept into the Cafe Du Nord Noise Pop event of the evening. For the record, it was singer-songwriter night, with Jason Collett (from the Canadian Broken Social Scene crowd) headlining, but the crowd had that vaguely open-minded/not-as-plugged-in-as-they-once-were feel of "let's go check out some New Indie Rock on Friday night after work." (We totally put ourselves in that group! We read that article about the Broken Social Scene in the New York Times!) When indie rock is no longer your life, and is instead your after-work hobby, you approach the whole concert thing differently. For instance, we saw folks IMing on corporate Blackberries and having loud conversations about office politics throughout the entirety of the Submarines' delicate set. No one was shouting out the names of obscure B-sides for any of the performers. It was actually kind of nice to have all that indier-than-thou pressure off, though we did feel bad for the Submarines. Etienne de Rocher's set was notably enlivened by an old-fashioned really-into-it indie rock fan, who flung out her Solid Gold dance routine, all thrashing head and horse-kicking calves. It was especially cool because de Rocher's set was actually kind of medium-tempo and introspective, like Jeff Buckley. Highlight of the evening: at the climax of one of de Rocher's songs, this woman let out a triumphant shriek, and the entire audience involuntarily took a half-step back. She definitely brought an indulgent smile to the faces of the crowd. I used to love indie rock that much!, you could see people thinking. Collett's set of rainy Sunday afternoon songs closed out the evening at around 1:30 a.m., as folks on the 9-to-5 stifled back their yawns of fatigue from the end of the work week. It's hard committing to the indie rock lifestyle when you've got bills to pay! ...

So many moons ago, we wrote a post about Other Magazine. We were still young, unknown punks on this here locally scribbler scene. Nearly a year and a half later, we're still young punks at least (though we'll just be punks before long), mostly by virtue of being accepted by actual literary luminaries like Charlie Anders and Annalee Newitz. Granted, they're not hard to find, with Charlie MCing Writers With Drinks at the Makeout......

We snickered to ourselves when we learned that the Initial D movie was selected to be screened at the SF Indie Fest this year. The anime/manga/arcade game phenomenon from Japan featuring import car racing down Japanese mountain roads using drifting techniques (steering though corners while maintaining the highest speed possible) was the be scourge of our existence a couple of summers ago. With other pre-pubescent import car enthusiasts, we obsessed over the finer points......

You look at the SF IndieFest logo, it says February 2-14. Look at the schedule, and you only see films to February 12. What gives? We called our friends at Larsen Associates, and got the scoop: February 13 and 14 are devoted to TBA screenings and Indiefest favorites. Well, we're ready T A the lineup, right now! Monday, February 13 7:00 pm Fast, Funny, and Short 9:30 pm Our own co-presentation, Fuck Tuesday, February......

SFist reviews the world premiere of "Pirates of the Great Salt Lake" at the Roxie in San Francisco...

A review of Twitch, a short playing at the SF Indie Fest....

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......

You may have noticed that we're giving away 'Fisties this month. Did you read about our 'Fisties in the music category? We declared that the local boys in Two Gallants made the Best Career Move this year by signing with iesteemed indie label Saddle Creek Records. One of the perks of signing with an indie is artistic freedom, which the band exercised on the b-side of their just-released "Las Cruces Jail"/"Long Summer Day" 7-inch. Enter......

Best Musical Event: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Best Local Venue: Golden Gate Park Were you among the tens of thousands who attended the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival this year? We cannot say enough good things about this event. If you're a fan of folk, Americana, country, bluegrass, or roots music of any ilk, you should have been at Golden Gate Park on September 30th and October 1st. This year's Hardly Strictly drew over 50 acts,......