Theatrical Releases April 27, 2007 We’ve already told you to catch The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and Vacancy and Hot Fuzz, and the rest of this “week in movies” will be all about local wisdom, but before we disband with the national releases, we need to tell you to see Domestic Import at the Balboa. Domestic is a comedy of errors about a Russian nanny in a well-to-do family. The indie tackles immigration issues with biting but not terribly painful satire. Definitely worth the time and the Balboa is always a great place to see a flick-- free admission on your Birthday! And, hey, we're also giving tickets away to the movie. Just enter below and we'll announce the winner tomorrow afternoon ...

>Theatrical Releases April 13th, 2007 Of the major releases, we think the most interesting is Mike White’s directorial debut: Year of the Dog. White continues with his tradition of dealing with sexual/social awkwardness (a la Chuck and Buck), humor about the bizarreness of development (Freaks and Geeks, School of Rock) and the conflict of “where we come from” (Orange County and Nacho Libre). It’s well put together and worth the time. This film proves itself to be one in a long career: White will certainly direct again. ...

Theatrical Releases March 30th, 2007 We’ve got some decent choices this week: if you’re in the mood for comedy, it’s all about Blades of Glory, if we have kids Meet the Robinsons (3-D at the Metreon) is better than you’d expect, but if you want something saucy it is all about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and that movie he’s in…The Lookout. I heard someone postulate it was like Brick 2: Outta College but I think that was......

50 out of 50 Wednesday precincts reporting -- Tonight: Come see newly-anointed state assembly representative Fiona Ma, along with DA Kamala Harris, performing at the SF Black Film Festival's Urban Slam spoken word event tonight, at the Theater Artaud. My name is Fiona/ Janet Reilly is bologna..... The Urban Slam starts around 8:15, after the 6:00 p.m. screening of the movie Sp!t, a documentary about the hip-hop poetry slam scene. $10 for the movie, $10 for the slam. Theater Artaud is at 450 Florida (x Mariposa). Tickets here. Thursday: Screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who wrote that Sean Penn movie "21 Grams", will be at the Balboa for the 7:00 p.m. screening of "The 3 Burials of Melquidas Estrada," for which he won the Palme D'Or last year. Arriaga will be signing copies of his book The Night Buffalo starting at 6, and at 7, he'll be leading a discussion about screenwriting tips. The Balboa's at Balboa and 38th Ave. and Friday: Shoo-be-doo-waaaaaah -- the Pacific Mozart Ensemble presents an evening of a capella jazz and pop songs at the Green Room in the War Memorial Building on 401 Van Ness. $20. Finger-snapping is always our favorite. Download musical excerpts here....

There's something vaguely weird in reviewing a movie that came out in 1936 (Who is this young rising star Clark Gable? He's going to go far!), but we had a great time at the kickoff screening for the Balboa Theater's ever-popular Reel SF series, where the theater presents classic movies set in San Francisco. San Francisco is the famous disaster movie about the 1906 earthquake, and tells the story of a local hothead (Clark Gable) running for the Board of Supervisors. (Really! We're not making that up! Our favorite part of the movie, next to the earthquake, was the excellent election rally they held in what would have been District 3 if they'd had district elections back in 1906, where the candidate gives a boring speech about land use, announces, "free beer for everyone!", and then gets in a fight. We see a remake for District 6 with Chris Daly in the lead!) The hothead's in love with a showgirl (Jeannette MacDonald), who sings that famous "San Francisco/Open your Golden Gate" song they use now to kick off screenings at the Castro, over and over and over. Spencer Tracy is in the movie too, playing a priest. The Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) screenplay translates remarkably well into the modern day (what? Conflict between downtown corporate interests and the supervisor looking out for the little guy?) and everyone in the audience had a thoroughly good time. The Balboa is screening San Francisco tonight and tomorrow in tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Big Quake, and the Tuesday the 18th screening will be preceded by vintage fillms (some in 3-D) from 1906, live performances, and a "special surprise guest." Go check out San Francisco's Gone With The Wind yourself, and like us, spend the next day vainly trying to get "San Francisco, Open Your Golden Gate" out of your head. San Francisco, showing 12:45, 4:45, 7:00 p.m. tonight Special Tuesday earthquake centennial screening: 7:00 p.m. Balboa Theater 3630 Balboa (between 37th and 38th Avenues)....

When news came Friday that Fox had decided to pull "Arrested Development" from November sweeps and cut the order of the show from 22 to 13 episodes, all-but officially cancelling the series, we were despondent. We were still re-watching last week's one-hour show, catching some of the jokes we missed the first time around, and Mondays were looking a little brighter with "Arrested Development" back on the air. But here it is, Monday again,......

It's that terrible time of year where big studios dump the all the crap on a public that isn't necessarily unsuspecting, but wouldn't ordinarily set foot in a theatre showing The Pacifier (starring former fantasy fling to some Vin Diesel, at least until we saw him with hair) or The Jacket (another former imaginary flame, Adrien Brody until just about everything he did post Liberty Heights). So, since we've made a firm pact with......

You know your movie stinks when even SFist, worshipper of all things crap, watches the trailer to your movie and thinks we're watching a substandard parody. Such was the case when we saw a commercial for Alone in the Dark, a movie which has a detective played by (recently seperated) Christian Slater going to a place called Shadow (freakin') Island. We laugh, but it's actually the latest installment in an empire that includes a video......

This is the part of SFist where we talk about movies that are opening this weekend, but we're just so thrilled we can barely type since this weekend sees the opening of Alien Vs. Predator! At last we'll figure out how it could possibly make sense to have Lance Henriksen in this movie. Let's see where we can see this. Maybe it'll be playing in the Kabuki disco-ball theater? Everybody's favorite second run theater......