FILM: SF Indiefest wraps up tonight with Ben X, 7:15 p.m., and Paranormal Activity, 9:30 p.m., at the Roxie Cinema. For more info, go here. *MUSIC: We love the the Donnas. Seriously. Not only are they ever so much fun, but they're from the Bay Area and brimming with hot young(ish) girls playing guitar. The kind of girls with whom you want to go shopping and talk about boys, but also who you want......

MUSIC: San Francisco's favorite crooner, Utah-born singer/songwriter Spencer Day, performs tonight at the one of the city's newest music venues, the Rrazz Room located at Hotel Nikko. COMEDY: Let hilarity wash over you with the comedic stylings of Arj Barker, Kristopher Tinkle ("Tinkle" = hee!), and Matt Morales. They hit the mic tonight at Punchline. *FILM: SF Indiefest is going on, folks. Tonight check out La Trinchera Luminosa del Presidente Gonzalo, 7:15 p.m. at......

Hal Holbrook in "Mark Twain Tonight": Julia Sugarbaker's husband and Oscar nominee for this year's Into the Wild, Broadway veteran Hal Holbrook won a Tony Award in 1966 for playing satirical American writer in this performance, and he's been doing it ever since. This one-man show draws on observations taken from Twain's own material. A real treat for admirers of American literature. The show starts tonight at 8 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center......

We love documentaries -- they're like reality TV, with a popcorn stand! So you know we're totally psyched for SF Indiefest's sixth annual Docfest, which starts up tomorrow and goes through next week! Friday's big opening movie is "What Would Jesus Buy?", about the much-beloved street activist Reverend Billy and his Church Of Stop Shopping. Rev. Billy will be there in person with his message against overconsumption -- which we're sure is well worth spending......

Tonight, the SF Indiefest anschlüss continues, with a party celebrating the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski at Balazo Gallery (2183 Mission at 18th). Costumes encouraged. (9pm) Two great alcohol-accessorized reading events at the Make Out Room (3225 22nd St between Mission and Valencia): Friday and Saturday night is Mortified's annual doomed Valentine show with teenage stories of hopeless love, awkwardness and pain. (8pm) All this weekend it's the California International Antiquarian Book Fair at......

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......

Come late January, most national publications are usually too overwhelmed (and understaffed) to even consider covering any film fest outside of Sundance. Even SF publications are hard pressed to see past the flurry of Park City and look over their shoulders into The Mission. It’s a shame, because if they looked, they’d find a really meaty, crafty, saucy festival offering a smattering of hard to find films and some films even harder to miss. ...

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...

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......

Our first exposure to the work of director Takashi Miike was the film Audition. At the time, we were content for that to be our last exposure to Miike's work, because as soon as we saw what Asami had been keeping in that burlap bag in her apartment, we spent the rest of the movie with one hand over our eyes and the other hand on the fast forward button. We acknowledge that it's......

Way way way back in the day, when we were in school back east, people would ask us what our major was, and we'd reply, "film," then always found ourselves adding, "but we're not actually all that bad." But the truth is that ALL film majors are, in fact, "that bad"; and a Guffmanesque mockumentary called Filmic Achievement (screening in the SF Indiefest this Saturday at 4:30) shows us just how bad "that bad"......

"I want to put the awe back in superhero movies," says filmmaker Michael Sparaga, "The characters have sort of become blasé about what they could do, as well as the people watching them." His movie, Sidekick, screens as part of SF Indiefest on Thursday and Saturday at 4:30pm at The Roxie, has no shortage of awe: mild-mannered comic enthusiast Norman is bowled over to discover a coworker with superpowers. As a sidekick, Norman loyally......

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......

Our good friends at SF IndieFest are gearing up for their 8th annual festival (February 2-14), with their Benefit Party this Saturday at the Rickshaw Stop. Musical acts Potion, Teenage Harlets, Tom Jonesing, and The Sermon will be performing, festival previews will be previewed, advance IndieFest tickets will be sold at a 10% discount, and there'll be drink specials all damn night long. Tickets are a $10 suggested donation (come on, it's for the......

If you haven't bothered to click on the banner ad we've had running all this month for A Mighty Ruckus at Islais Creek, we will happily bring the scoop you you! Brought to us by some of SFist oldest friends, SF IndieFest, the local grass-roots arts organization is now broadening its horizons to produce this arts festival that featuring eight bands playing on an outdoor stage as well as an indoor DJ Lounge, art......

We can't even begin to tell you how tired we are, but it's a great tired, like we're running a marathon, if they had marathons where you're sitting down watching blood go everywhere and drinking beer. (If they actually had marathons like this we might find a reason to exercise, but until then, hello sloth!) After another carb-o-rific breakfast, the 22 took us back over to the Roxie for (yet) another day of (Yet)......

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.......

Oh holy cow SFist loves scary movies. Last year, before we had this glorious soapbox to teeter on, we spent two glorious nights at SF IndieFest's first horror film festival Another Hole in the Head. In fact, when SFist was stil in fetal form, we remember telling the folks who would be our fellow editors how much we were looking forward to covering this year's festival -- and now it is upon us! (We......

SFist is proud of our coverage of local events, including SF IndieFest, SF Noise Pop, and Cinequest. We're really happy to continue this tradition with our coverage of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, running in San Francisco from March 10-17, Berkeley March 11-20 and San Jose from March 18-20. While our coverage will focus mainly of the San Francisco screenings, most of the films are being shown in multiple locations. Brought......

SFist wasn't quite sure what to expect when we went to last night's screening of Antenna, and our mind continues to reel almost 20 hours after experiencing the film. With undeniable references to Lynch and Cronenberg, Antenna remains a strikingly original work. The story itself is slight: Yuchiro (played with great nuance Ryo Kase) is a grad student haunted by the childhood disappearance of his sister, Marie. His mother has lost herself in grief......

A funny little thing happened to the movie Blackball: before it premiered at SF Indie Fest, it became National Lampoon’s Blackball. Turns out that somewhere between the movie being indie enough to appear at an indie fest and its showing at said indie fest, it got swooped up by the National Lampoon people, the very same people behind Van Wilder. Of course, this movie shows just how wide the definition of "indie" is in......

SFist was met with quite the scene as we approached The Castro Theatre last night for our first SF IndieFest screening, Sons of Provo. The IndieFest dress code was apparently being enforced last night, with special dispensations made for Marc Jacobs and Tom Ford certified attire. We wish we had pictures, but you'll just have to trust us when we say that the beautiful people were shining bright. At first we thought these folks......