Last night was the private premiere party for J.J. Abrams' new San Francisco-based time-and-space-bending TV show Alcatraz. As far as we can tell, no one other than Entertainment Weekly and the show's principal stars were in attendance at the shindig, which was held — where else? — on the Rock itself. We're kind of bummed nobody invited us along because we love television and have been saving up a ton of Jurassic Park jokes to tell Sam Neill for, like, years now. Anyway according to EW's party report, Fox and Warner Brothers "pulled out all the stops" for the party, which included making people eat off of prison-issue tin plates at dinner and interviewing the cast in the shower room. Because that seems fun. more ›

Alcatraz, the latest time-traveling island psychodrama from J.J. Abrams and company got picked up by Fox for the 2012 season. Wonderful, and now we have this teaser trailer. It looks very... mysterious? Kinda dark? Apparently J.J. Abrams' vision of San Francisco is as gray as Sam Neill's hair these days. Jump to around 1:34 for a cameo from those gunshots on Filbert Street from a couple months back, and it only took a minute and forty seconds for Hugo Reyes Jorge Garcia to utter "Holy crap! You gotta come see this!" Glad to see he's not a victim of typecasting, at least. [YouTube] more ›

href="http://londonist.com/2008/01/6_years_on_amne.php">Amnesty International bringing Guantanamo Bay to the American embassy to raise the profile of the continuing campaign to close the detention center.

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on SFist. more ›

The cherished Scott Beale brought to our attention the following bit of, well, awesomeness. We know, we know -- we’re no longer supposed to fall for ultra-annoying viral marketing bullshit. And producer JJ Abrams finally lost us. (Heh. Yeah. Sorry.) And, no, we have yet to see The Transformers, for which this clip is said film's trailer. But we're tired of doing the dance, so we give in, modern marketing scheme. And after several viewings, we can’t stop watching and wondering what the root cause is for this steroidal rage on poor, brittle New York City. Happy now? more ›

We went to WonderCon and all we got was this lousy MI:III baseball cap. But at least it will keep our War of the Worlds t-shirt company in the junk drawer. more ›

Remember that totally awesome scene in where the Witch King was leaving Cirith Ungol with the Orc army and Frodo started freaking out and then that big shaft of light shot out of the building as the people of Minas Tirith looked on with a dread that something great and terrible was coming? more ›