We're into the final stretch of award show season, folks. The nominees for the 2012 Academy Awards (now hosted again by your grandmother's favorite, Billy Crystal, not Eddie Murphy) are out! more ›

Sigh. San Francisco Film Society just announced that beloved Executive Director Bingham Ray died today, January 23, while attending the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. In addition to manning the noted SF Film Society, Ray cofounded October Films. October, billed as "one of the foremost independent film companies of the 1990s," snagged two Oscars and scored 13 Oscar nominations and other cinema prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Some of October Films' credits include Secrets & Lies, The Apostle, Cookie's Fortune, The Celebration, Lost Highway, The Last Seduction, and Breaking the Waves. more ›

You may have loudly professed your love for food trucks. You may tweet with the utmost convincing gravitas about Occupy SF. You may like to gnaw on a sourdough loaf while taking a tour of urban-tinged street art. You may be a bottle of Fernet. You may even be Herb Caen reincarnate. But you are not a true San Franciscan until you've sat through multiple screenings of The Joy Luck Club. With much respect for Amy Tan's book—an excellent read, by the way—the film version of her acclaimed novel about relationships between Chinese-American women and their Chinese mothers is quite possibly one of the best pieces of entertainment ever made. more ›

Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles, who worked together on such gems as Borat and Bruno, just released a preview to The Dictator. According to the film's team, "The film tells the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed. It is inspired by the best selling novel Zabibah and The King by Saddam Hussein." (We are so ordering that on Amazon.) more ›

The just-announced San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards weren't as egregious and self-conscious as in years past. But not by much. The gaggle of local film aesthetes selected Terrence Malik's (overwhelming and divine) Tree of Life as the best picture of the year. Next to Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, it was our second favorite longwinded yet powerful and powerfully pretty movie this year about life's brevity and fragility. Malick also nabbed as Best Director. more ›

Jonathan Nolan, who wrote the short story "Memento Mori" (which later his brother, Christopher, turned into Memento) and helped pen The Prestige and The Dark Knight, has created some of the greatest cinematic works over the last few years using paranoia as a key theme. It should come as no surprise, then, that the envy-inducing writer has some major concerns with social media and Facebook -- brilliantly paranoid concerns, we might add. more ›

Contagion, the Soderbergh et al. outbreak thriller we've been keeping tabs on for awhile now is finally out in theaters today. And since you've already seen the trailer and read up on the reviews, why not enjoy this brief docu-mercial in which Warner Brothers' Canadian marketing team whips up two tiny billboards made entirely of bacteria. Although they didn't look like much on day one, by day five the two signs are fuzzy, disgusting and prominently displaying the name of the film. Now, please don't try to put your grubby hands on our popcorn. more ›

Disgraced former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans on making a return to the big screen. Sure to be as successful as Norma Desmond's Salome, his latest effort, titled, Last Stand, will be shot in New Mexico. According to Associated Press, "The movie is a modern day Western about convicts making their way to the Mexican border through New Mexico after escaping from a prison in Las Vegas, Nev." Exciting. more ›

What with so many cinema houses closing down, we always worry about our dear Castro Theatre, the Bay Area's best (if we may) theater. But, just like in April, it will go dark on Monday and Tuesday nights during August. Michael Petrelis reports: more ›

Lively Tumblr Bi Curios Dad came across a sight at the Metreon complex at Fourth and Mission, one that they've seen several times. Specifically, a man who comes in regularly and eats store brand vanilla ice cream with a plastic spoon while crouched in the same corner. BCD writes: more ›

Your days of enjoying a combo plan of getting a disc or two via those red envelopes in the mail and streaming content from California-based Netflix are numbered, kids. Starting September 1, the popular site is implementing separate plans for streaming and physical disc borrowing. more ›

A few notables will shoot movies in the Bay Area this summer. Valley kid Paul Thomas Anderson will start filming The Master in Vallejo mostly, with some shooting at sea. Anderson's latest flick is about a persuasive man who starts a new religion in the 1950s, assumed to be based on Scientology. Philip Seymour Hoffman is attached to the project, maybe Leonardo DiCaprio too. We're really, really looking forward to this one. more ›

The Academy Award-winning trilogy The Lord of the Rings, now featuring extra footage for an exclusive engagement, will return to theaters this June for a special run. Taking place over a three-week period, the movies will begin with a new an introduction for each film from director Peter Jackson "captured from the set of his current film, The Hobbit, followed by extended edition feature presentations which include "nearly 3 hours of additional feature footage carefully selected by Peter Jackson." more ›

We almost forgot! Before cementing any plans for the evening, we strongly suggest you head over to Coppola headquarters in North Beach for a choice pop-up dance party to help celebrate the release of Zoetrope's winter '10/'11 edition (designed by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore!) The issue, we should point out, brims over with works by Etgar Keret, Gerard Donovan, Ryu Murakami, Julian Barnes, and Robert Bloch. more ›

Well, both Mila Kunis and Barbara Hershey were snubbed for their work in Black Swan, and Christopher Nolan was nixed from the Best Director category for Inception at this morning's Academy Award nominations announcement. Other than that, the usual suspects were richly rewarded for their work. The King's Speech, a film about speech therapy and Britishness, received 12 nominations, including thespian honors for Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush. more ›

Once known a the framework for independent film to reach a wider audience, the Sundance FIlm Festival is now a showcase for the rich and famous to showcase stabs at cinema gold. More or less. Take, for example, Jennifer Siebel-Newsom, whose documentary Miss Representation premiered. more ›

Hollywood is coming to town again, with director Steven Soderbergh descending next month to shoot Contagion, an action-thriller starring Jude Law(!) involving disease and the CDC that's being shot in San Francisco. It also stars Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard and Matt Damon (wtvr), and they're having an open casting call on January 29th and 30th for PAID extra work in the movie. See further details below, but know that you'll need to be available for shooting between February 9 and February 19, which is when the crew will be here on location. And how funny, it's a Talented Mr. Ripley reunion! more ›

Locally-born and widely-loved actor/writer/artist/scholar James Franco will be adding "director" to his resume when he shoots his himself (with a camera, we mean) in an adaptation of Philip Carlo's true-crime book The Night Stalker about the titular serial killer Richard Ramirez. more ›

Speaking of Facebook accolades, the San Francisco Critics Circle Awards bestowed The Social Network, the non-gritty Harvard drama about barely-legal college kids, lawsuits and social media, with three awards Monday night, including best picture, best adapted screenplay (Aaron Sorkin) and best director (David Fincher). more ›

Have you always wanted to be an extra in a gay porn cinema? Well, call your parents and tell them the good news! On Tuesday, noted pornography thespian Chris Porter will perform with a punk band on stage at Cat Club for a scene in NakedSword's Golden Gate, a new original series on NakedSword.com produced/written by Jack Shamama. more ›

We're not short on choices for this weekend's Halloween festivities. Let's get to it! PARTIES Trannyshack Halloween: For everyone who misses the Castro Halloween street party, the 4th Annual Trannyshack Halloween, featuring best "ghoul-friends" Heklina and Peaches Christ, is the place to be on Sunday night at DNA Lounge. Lucha Va Voom: Also on Sunday night is the touring Halloween blowout & Cramps tribute at the Fillmore, featuring Lucha Libre, burlesque, comedy, and a costume contest. more ›

Gawker (via Hollywood Reporter) brings us a morsel of tempting celebrity news. Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper will star in an untitled action-comedy written by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) that takes place in San Francisco. The two will play cops who need to crack some sort of case with their daddies. They will also live in San Francisco. "Yes. It's like Full House, only less kinky," remarks Gawker's Richard Lawson. Have mercy. more ›

The Grease Sing-Along and Dirty Dancing have come and gone, but there are still a few more Film Nights in the Park this month and next. So, bundle up and head to the park, or there are also lots of additional options in the warm, non-foggy parts of the Bay Area that won't require blankets and winter coats. more ›

Welcome to our first installment of Midnight Movie Sign-Off. Similar to Afternoon Palate Cleanser, SFist will now feature one blithe clip at the midnight hour. It could be, say, something bizarre, borderline chortle-worthy, or delightfully awful. Or just awful. You be the judge. Basically, whatever our brain burps out at the end of the day. more ›

SFist reader (and Editorial Director of Frommers.com) David Lytle snapped these pics of Gizmo (the lovable, hungry-after-dark star of Gremlins) dotting a boarded building along the Central Market Corridor. more ›

Benjamin Bratt and his filmmaker brother Peter Bratt toured around the Mission with a NYT reporter for a Style section piece this weekend. They're pimping Peter's film La Mission which premiered here last year during the SF International Film Festival. (See the trailer here.) more ›

by Rachel Brodsky It's the event you've all been waiting for--another Tim Burton feature presentation! And maybe this one will actually work! Burton, the master of fairy tale reinterpretation topped with a haunting Gothic fetish is releasing his CGI-tastic Alice In Wonderland today. more ›

In case you missed the message of conservation and peace in theaters, James Cameron confirmed that he will write an Avatar novel. The novel will closely follow the plot of the film but... more ›

While San Francisco may not have the reputation for romance as, say, Paris or a beach in Hawaii, plenty of great love stories have unfolded here. To help you celebrate Valentine's Day, we'd like to recommend a few films that are set in the jewel by the Bay. But be warned, much like the streets on which they take place, the course of these true loves does not run smooth.... more ›