Jesus, have you seen those ads for this movie "Hancock"? Is it us, or is there something insaaaaaanely racist about them? Let's break it down: Will Smith plays an African-American superhero -- the first big-screen African-American superhero since, um, Robert Townsend in 1993's Meteor Man? Oh, that's right, there was that black sidekick in "The Incredibles." And Halle Berry as Storm. And Wesley Snipes as Blade ... so, okay, there've been four black superheroes in......

Well, he does not care for our image, but still: same thing. Well, we went to this last Saturday's open casting call for Gus Van Sant's latest project, Milk. (Based off of the life of former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, etc. etc...you know the story -- well, at least you should.) It was our first-ever open casting call, in fact. We were nervous. And totally unprepared. When we arrived on the scene, all......

We picked up on this over at All Shook Down today. It seems that a San Francisco convenience store cashier (or practical-knee slapper actor) received neither credit nor pay for his appearance in Will Smith's Oscar-baiting tear jerker The Pursuit of Happyness (2006). In this Daily Show segment ripoff, he goes into detail about being chewed up by the big, bad Hollywood machine. Also, anyone forced to appear in a scene with Mr. Smith's......

It seems like, all across the network, folks were up to no good. Maybe it was all the green beer from last weekend... Gothamist spent the week writing about New Yorkers behaving badly: at the post office, at the Garden, and at the fertility clinic. Calvin Klein may not be misbehaving, but he's just a little dirty, and in a completely different way than some NYC kitchens. SFist had its share of misbehave-rs, too, like......

strong>Total number of people pictured in this week's Swells society column: 76 people plus two dummies and one dog....

Our favorite society photographer Drew Altizer thoughtfully sent along these pictures from the Glide Memorial Church Holiday Event yesterday, featuring Will Smith and the Bay Area premiere of the new movie The Pursuit of Happyness. The Pursuit of Happyness is based on the true story of a homeless man in San Francisco named Chris Gardner who turned his life around in the 1980s with the help of Glide Memorial and became a successful stockbroker --......

SFist Central has been deluged by email from folks wondering what's going on in Union Square, citing a multitude of lights, craft service vans, and big-ass cables. Dumb us, we just thought it was H&M party hoopla, but nooo, apparently there's glamour beyond economically priced clothing going on this week. Who knew? We've heard from one source that some of the shooting is for Monk, that wacky series about the OCD-afflicted detective that is......

Remember three years ago, when all your media-employed friends had to suddenly go from pulling down a dot-com salary to working retail and collecting unemployment? We spoke to a manager at a North Beach postproduction house a year ago, and he told us that even though most of their competition had gone out of business, they were still struggling -- there just wasn't any work. It was a rotten time. Well, good news: the......

The scuttlebutt discussed over coffee and corned beef hash at the St. Francis this morning was about the film crews amassed on York street between 23rd and 24th. The set designers had already been working through last week to prepare the interiors at 1163 York and the exteriors along the block (one of SFist's favorite murals has a facade covering it now, and the facade is covered in some terribly fake graffitti). Will Smith......

Even after a couple of small technical glitches delayed the Saturday night start a little bit, The San Francisco 3-Minute Film Festival still managed to go off without a hitch (which is good, because that Will Smith/Kevin James movie was terrible, and way over 3 minutes). 22 movies were screened in total, with Adam Davis' Runner taking the first place trophy. Jeff Cleary's Searching For Billy Ocean Volume One finished second, and Jen Hoenigsberg's......

Seriously, is the only good Sucker Free City entertainment gossip coming to us via KRON-courting mayors past and present? When Gavin isn't giving Phil Matier the scoop on Rush Hour 3, Willie Brown is confiding to rabble rouser Jan Wahl that deposed royalty The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith, will be living and working in San Francisco while shooting the as yet untitled Chris Gardner story. Gardner, the highly successful stockbroker who was......

Now, this is what we're talking about. This is the week in which truly something kick-ass is released, the DVD we've been dying to have for our collection since we plunked down the $200 bucks five years ago for one of these DVD player-type-thingies and thought it was a bargain- the Top Gun Special Collector's Edition. Could it get any more awesomer? Oh yeah, there's also Tom Cruise bucking for an Oscar, Will Smith trying......