-- Gross, sticky, exhausting, hot weather begins. But! Ride public transit for free tomorrow during a Spare the Air Day. [Examiner, SFMTA] -- Gang members, extortion, and THC.. [Bluoz] -- 12-year-old Jose Trujillo of San Leandro dies after a skateboarding accident. Sad. [Chron] -- Mick LaSalle laughs hysterically at cute, young, blonde girl's misfortune. [Chron Blogs] -- Closet-case Senator "has never been gay." He's just a guy who digs other guys, dude. [CBS5] --......

-- Michelangelo Antonioni dies; Mick LaSalle suspects Eric Rohmer will fade to black next. [Chron blogs] -- Chronicle wanted Gonzalez in the mayoral race. Alas. [BeyondChron] -- A baseball trader "shocker" happened involving the Giants. [Chron] -- Firefighters get raise. Hot. [Examiner] -- Murdoch to get WSJ. [Chron] -- Bay Bridge to shutdown during Labor Day weekend. Again. [Oakland Tribune] -- Overpass falls on FedEx truck and driver near Sacramento. [KGO7] -- CHP officer......

SFist Sara gets Knocked Up! (the movie -- the movie!) How can mainstream comedy be dead when Knocked Up is all about inventive delivery? (Get it? "Delivery?") Stronger than Judd Apatow’s last bluntly-titled summer comedy (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), Knocked Up stands up to both scrutiny and high expectations. The film is so funny it’s sure to have another life on DVD where you won’t be missing any of the punch lines because of the audience......

This week's Big Movie: Ocean's Thirteen! It’s a real surprise how divided the critics are about this one! Sure it’s franchising, sure it’s full of top shelf men in designer clothes and high-end accoutrement, but we thought it was all kicks and giggles. Groucho Reviews's Peter Cavanese however, says, “the plot of Thirteen is old, old news.” Many, like Roger Ebert, expressed their exhaustion with this trope -- Scott Floundas of the Village Voice......

SFist Sara surveys the local view of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Who knew it had a trenchant analysis of constitutional law? The current contribution to the mass spoon-feeding that is the summer blockbuster schedule is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. Not as strong as the first film and far stronger than the second (which stunk like dead kraken), World’s End is 168 minutes of pee-inducing ocean battles. Don’t think we’re hacking it;......

Now that we're doing the occasional reviews, we've begun to notice how external things can sometimes color what we're reviewing. Call it the unreliable critical narrator. What we mean is that what how we perceive the thing we are reviewing is oftentimes affected by things we bring into the show with us. For instance, we gave a glowing review to a Radiohead show that several people told us was a very off night for the band. The thing about the review is that we hadn't seen them in almost five years so we were so happy to see them that they could have played two hours of experimental noise collages followed by a note for note rendition of their first album and we still would have enjoyed it...

As our former co-editor Eve moves on in at the Chronicle as their Blogging and Interactive editor today, we do a little imagining about how her first day might be going! --9:30 a.m. Wander on into work. Remember to wear real clothes and not blogger pajamas. --10:00 a.m. Tour of the office Komodo dragon cage with Phil Bronstein. --10:47 a.m. Help Matier and Ross launch their new sort-of blog. "Now, how do I turn the......

When this SFist attended a recent press sceening of the animated feature Monster House, something wonderful happened. A writer we've always respected made a pointed crack about "movie reviewers from the dailies", which inspired another film journalist to darkly mutter "Uh, I don't like them animated cartoons", a joking impression of Nemesis of SFist and San Francisco Chronicle movie reviewer Mick LaSalle. After the laughter had subsided, several of us recounted our favorite idiotic lines......

This was the scene in front of the Metreon today at 10 a.m., for the 11:10 a.m. show of Superman Returns. As we had just finished gnashing our teeth over last night's texted invitation to a 10:30 p.m. private screening that we didn't recieve until 10:28 (thanks for ruining our life AGAIN, Cingular), we were tempted to join them, but the lure of Citizen Cupcake coffee (and our caffeine addict's headache) was just too strong.......

We've been hearing so much about The New World, Terrence Malick's retelling of the fourth verse of Peggy Lee's "Fever", but all we could think when we'd watch the trailer is "BORING!" Well, our disinterest has been validated yet again by our nemesis Mick LaSalle, who terms it "a masterpiece". Yeah, that tears it -- we won't be seeing that. Fortunately, there's lots of other cool movie stuff going on this weekend. For example, Joseph......

Not a lot going on this weekend! Nothing interests us on the big budget front, that's for sure. Fine, we were considering The Exorcism of Emily Rose. That was before we saw that Mick LaSalle liked it, so now we're sure it's crap. Instead, we're harking back to some classic cinema, stuff we've either seen before (or should have).......

We hate to sound like a broken record, but if we didn't already feel like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory looked kinda ass, Mick LaSalle's glowing review sealed it for us. We don't really care if they remake every single movie made since 1971, we still won't be sobbing "you raped my childhood" or anything, we promise. But when you have Johnny Depp apparently playing Anna Wintour instead of Willy Wonka, you can't expect......

We're bored silly just looking at most of the new releases this weekend, which have striken us with a malaise so severe we can't even summon the energy to make fun of Mick LaSalle. There's only one cure for the illness we're suffering from: the magical healing power of Madonna. That's right, folks, Midnight Mass at the Bridge Theater continues this week with Sing-Along Truth or Dare. (We can still remember sitting in the......

While our better half is very interested in seeing Cinderella Man, the Depression-era story of boxer James Braddock, we have been less convinced. We feel vindicated in our contempt by the fact that Nemesis of SFist Mick LaSalle loves Richie Cunningham's latest foray into directing so much that he's calling it "what is easily the best American film so far this year." Honey, please just admit that you are wrong and we are right.......

We're not going to insult your intelligence by implying that you might not have heard that Revenge of the Sith opened this weekend, or that you aren't already going to see something at the final weekend of The San Francisco Documentary Film Festival. So, with those "givens" out of the way, what else is out there? In one of those blue moon type events, we agree with Mick LaSalle that Layer Cake is an......

As you've probably figured out by now, SFist has a tendency to crush on people, especially people in the media. Granted, we're also known to have petty rivalries with people, again, especially in the media. Well, one object of our affection is Adriel Hampton, who's not only an actual journalist with the San Francisco Examiner, but a blogger as well. See, Meredith Brody and Mick LaSalle? Go start a blog and maybe we won't......

At first we were stunned by the fact that Mick LaSalle got something right, because he gives a glowing review to our Big Budget pick of the week, Assault on Precinct 13. Then, we read on: "Assault on Precinct 13" has the feel, the look and the energy of a really strong crime thriller from the 1970s. This is easy to say, as it's a remake of a 1976 John Carpenter film of the same......

SFist always feels vindicated when our nemesis, the Chron's Mick LaSalle, disses a movie we're interested in. As we might have mentioned before, he is our Bizarro-self when it comes to films, as everything he feels we feel in exactly the opposite. This week's tiny triumph of the SFist spirit (and our Big Budget Pick of the Week)is his dislike of Closer, which we have been (uncharacteristically, since there aren't any car chases, zombies, or......

There are so many reasons why Team America: World Police is our big budget pick of the week. Let us count the ways: 1)Dude, puppets. Who f**k. Yeah. 2)That pompous ass Sean Penn is lampooned in the film. We already thought his performance in Mystic River approached brilliant self-parody, but this takes the extra step into genius. Finally, there's 3) Our sworn Nemesis Mick LaSalle who gives it an empty chair. Given that our (and......