You know that movie we're not talking about whose marketing campaign sucks? And the fine folks of SF parodied on 24th Street? That we reported on over a week or so ago? Well, now, in addition to Fametracker and Hollywood Elsewhere, Berkeley is getting in on the act. And in typical fashion, a week later. ...

Two words that kept going through my mind while watching Flight of the Red Balloon were "gentle" and "beautiful." The imagery that director Hou Hsiao-hsien includes in this movie was reminiscent of the film The Red Balloon of which it was loosely based on, but Flight takes the themes of that movie further. The movie follows Suzanne (the wonderful Juliette Binoche) and her son Simon in Paris, just as they hire a new nanny, Song,......

Forget starlets canoodling in the Marina. Ron Howard appeared at Stanford this week to screen Frost/Nixon. Coincidentally on the same day another famous redhead spoke there as well. Students had a chance to weigh in on the ending a bit, so if you hate the results, blame them.......

While we can't agree with Grandma Joy on her dismissive review of There Will Be Blood, because our love for self-indulgent vanity pieces knows no limits, we can agree that "Movies With Grandma Joy" is adorably informative, addictive. She even reenacts a violent scene from the PT Anderson gem, so be sure to check it out. While you're at it, Joy also reviews Juno and No Country For Old Men -- perfect viewing before......

We've watched Meet Me in St. Louis every Christmas Eve for the past million years. Perhaps an obvious choice, but nonetheless, Judy Garland's heart-wrenching version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas reduces us to sobs and snotty tissues every year. Not to mention the look on Tootie's face as she listens to her sister's melancholic words of comfort. What are some of your favorite Christmas scenes? Not just the stuff that makes you cry.......

When Francis Ford Coppola isn't looking lovingly over his cineaste dynastic family, running a cafe, publishing fiction, or distilling making wine [sorry! we're not a vintner!], we understand that sometimes he makes movies too. Where does that guy find the time?? Anyways, for those of you who either admire multitasking or great American cinema, Francis Ford Coppola will be speaking this Saturday after the 7:20 screening of his new movie, Youth Without Youth at the......

SFist interviews Crispin Hellion Glover, who is screening his films at the Castro Theater this weekend. ...

Japantown's new Sundance Cinemas Kabuki will offer the more discerning moviegoer (i.e.. people who self-consciously laugh out loud during Shakespeare comedies) something, well, more. Curbed SF has the full rundown on the new movie house that's sure to make you feel even that more self-righteous than you already do while braving the choppy waters of independent film. Check it: Designed by Berkeley-based ELS architects, the renovation of the former AMC Kabuki 8 utilizes post-consumer......

-- 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......

Perfectly paired with Scissor Sisters' "Filthy/Gorgeous," these iconic ladies of the '80s look that much more amazing/insane during this "Night of a 100 Stars" high fashion bit. Our favorite? Susan Lucci in Karl Lagerfeld. Because: wow.......

HBO bought the rights to Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sport, the infamous book penned by Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. According to a sister over at Variety, in it Bonds is "painted in 'Game of Shadows' as a gifted player who made a Faustian bargain to increase his power." (Might we suggest Damn Giants as a working title, then?) Ron Shelton -- auteur......

Bush Man Scares People - Watch more free videos Sure, he's old news, but his comedy is timeless. That's right, timeless. As much as we love The Office and 30 Rock, nothing pleases us more than the AFV-ish antics of people either falling on their asses or having the crap scared out of them. Do take a moment to enjoy the latter. (And people even pay him for it! Brilliant.)......

Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving, the day where big retail shoppers traditionally break even for the year! Traditionally considered the biggest shopping day of the year! Is it retail therapy? ....Or is it kowtowing to the gods of capitalism and binding the workers who long to be free? Well, if you're heading out to Union Square today but feel kind of guilty about it, you can at least make yourself feel a little better......

While it's no new thing for rock bands to come out with their own movies, they've definitely gotten more dramatic. Two films (that couldn't be on more opposite ends of the cinematic concert-film spectrum, if you ask us) are showing in the next two weeks: Sigur Rós' Heima (Icelandic for "Home" or "Homeland") and Daft Punk's Electroma. While Heima is more your traditional rockumentary (see band play. See band play in nice locations.), Electroma......

SFist Grace checks out a sneak peek of the new P.T. Anderson movie, There Will Be Blood. There will also be: greed, husksterism, rage, isolation and open-handed brawls. The Castro Theatre recently hosted a sneak preview of this film, which is slated for limited release in mid-December. Based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 novel Oil!, Anderson's latest film features Daniel Day-Lewis as David Plainview, an unpredictably violent and spiritually aimless oil-baron-in-the-making. Shot in the desolate......

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......

No not Plushies, you perv. Softies. Who doesn't like watching cute handmade creatures come to life? Created by Andrew Moran and yours truly. Happy Friday.......

Get this: the original cast of MST3K -- Trace Beaulieu, J. Elvis Weinstein, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl, and of course, Joel Hodgson -- returns with Cinematic Titanic. According to Hodgson, he's decided "to do a new project that is strong enough for our die-hard audience, and also gentle and easy to swallow for those that are new to movie riffing." ...

-- Laura Gibson: We'd hate to genre-ize her lovely sounds, but neo-folk songstress Gibson -- who uses such tools as trumpet, viola, and musical saw in addition to her sublime vocal cords-- sings delicate siren songs that will have you crashing at her feet. She performs along with Musee Mechanique (Portland) and Snowblink starting at 8 p.m. at Rickshaw Stop; $8. -- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: You know the man, the legend, the poet, the beret......

SFist interviews Charlie M. from The Happy Hollows. They are playing the Fillmore tonight with the Silversun Pickups...

[NSFW-ness, circa 1953]......

The film adaptation of the popular book The Kite Runner has been delayed. According to The Advocate, "Paramount Vantage delayed the debut for six weeks, until Dec. 14, after three of its adolescent male stars said they could be targeted for their participation in a homosexual rape scene." Even the book's author, Khaled Hosseini, supports the delay. Plus, the young Afghan actors have also been evacuated from their homes for fear of...I don't know,......

As mentioned in today's Chronicle, the idea of a safe-space in which intravenous drug users can shoot up -- without fear of arrests, beatings, rapes, or whatever happens in those movies after heroin's sweet release -- might become a reality. Or at least, discussed in length at this Thursday's all-day symposium hosted by the city Department of Public Health....

We'll admit, with a bit of shame, that the first time we became aware of Nick Drake, it was during a lame commercial for the VW Cabrio. Except, the commercial wasn't lame because the song in it was so awesome. We didn't buy a Cabrio, but we did buy some Nick Drake CDs, and that's pretty much the only thing we've ever been thankful to Volkswagen for. Nick Drake is the subject of Jeroen......

Now this is why we love DocFest so much! Eat At Bill's is a completely charming love letter to the famed local organic Monterey Market in Berkeley and its perpetually-cheery (and perpetually-free-sample-eating) owner Bill Fujimoto. The movie's set up in a series of small vignettes -- from the hotly-anticipated arrival of cherry season, to a tour of the back room where the chefs get first pick of the boysenberries and mesclun, to a tour......

We love it when events combine movies and music! So check out The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio, a documentary about the creation of a multi-ethnic world music orchestra from Italy. Diverse residents of the Piazza Vittorio neighborhood in Rome banded together and created the multi-ethnic world music orchestra in an attempt to save a historic movie theater from destruction. The movie then follows the orchestra's unlikely rise to success and the various musicians' stories.......

The Mission's an interesting place to screen a movie about gentrification, filmed from the eyes of the gentrifier -- so there was certainly no shortage of things to think about at last night's showing of New Urban Cowboy for DocFest at the Roxie. New Urban Cowboy is a documentary about Michael Arth, a kind of hippie-dippie former resident of Santa Barbara who moves to the small town of Deland, Florida, near Orlando, and more......

Sean Penn isn't the only person who was captivated by the Chris McCandless story (first made popular in the Jon Krakauer book, "Into The Wild," and now a major motion picture directed by Penn, promoted on Oprah, and playing at a theatre near you.) In the early '90's Chris McCandless abandoned all his worldly goods, took on the name Alexander Supertramp and embarked upon a Thoreau-esque adventure trekking around North America, ultimately perishing in an......

SFist Mihi runs with the canines! There's nothing like a celebrity appearance at a film festival, and Sunday night at the Roxie Theatre, the crowd went wild when it was announced that two of the wiener dogs who star in "Wiener Takes All: A Dogumentary" were in attendence. The Doc Fest crowd started oohing and ahhing and craning their necks as if Paris freaking Hilton herself had dropped by. Apparently, competitive wiener dog racing is......

SFist Wendy goes off the grid, and then comes back to the land of electricity to tell us all about it! We welcomed the return of DocFest, your local indie documentary festival, last night with Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa. It wasn’t clear we were actually going to make it in to the theater until about two minutes before it began. There was a long line for the film, which was showing in......