FanFare

You probably know the drill by now (comic book starting sixty years ago, moving media starting in 1978): scientist, gamma rays, anger, hulk out. This is the Ang Lee movie from 2003, starring Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott, and Nick Nolte. It is not part of the MCU proper, and sadly, was not a smash. [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack on Oct 19, 2022 - 13 comments

A meddlesome Mark Twain (Jerry Hardin) interferes with the Enterprise crew's efforts to save Earth's history, and Data's severed head, from shapeshifting psychic vampire aliens. Picard nevertheless manages to squeeze in a Shakespeare scene. [more inside]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil on Jun 17, 2021 - 18 comments

An engineering team finds evidence of an alien presence on Earth in 19th century San Francisco: Data's severed head, buried five hundred years ago. (Season finale) [more inside]
posted by hanov3r on Jun 14, 2021 - 26 comments

This week once again comes to us from the White Void of Sad Facts. The Supreme Court is on track to review Roe vs. Wade, to the chagrin of practically every non-conservative. In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, running in favor of police reform, won a primary for D.A. and is set to go against Republican Charles Peruto. Along those lines there is a brief recap of cartoon character candidates in the news, such as Andrew Giuliani. And Now: San Francisco City Council Meetings' Public Comments Are A Joy To Behold. The main story: sponsored content (21 minutes), specifically in local news programs, revenue source for local stations that, due to vague FCC rules that suffer from lax enforcement, often is insufficiently identified as paid programming. Many examples are given, including three that Last Week Tonight produced themselves and got placed for a mere few thousand dollars, for the "Venus Veil," a fake product that is the "world's first sexual wellness blanket." [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 24, 2021 - 10 comments

Fascinated by gorgeous Mrs. Bannister, seaman Michael O'Hara joins a bizarre yachting cruise, and ends up mired in a complex murder plot. [more inside]
posted by Carillon on Apr 16, 2021 - 9 comments

[Series Premiere] At his vineyard, retired Starfleet Admiral Jean-Luc Picard and a mysterious young woman have an encounter, and she makes a fair point. [more inside]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil on Jan 23, 2020 - 159 comments

A young man searches for home in the changing city that seems to have left him behind. "An unhurried tone poem with no guns and next to no blood, Last Man is a tale of race and the city, not Race and the City. First-time director Joe Talbot is white; his collaborator, Jimmie Fails, is black; they grew up together in Fillmore. This is Jimmie's story, and he plays himself." [NPR review - trailer] [more inside]
posted by cosmologinaut on Jun 16, 2019 - 8 comments

Big Bill finds himself compromised by his gambling excesses, but discovers a possible solution after an opium-den raid. Penny reveals the circumstances that prompted her to marry Mayor Blake, who's determined to show voters he won't tolerate San Francisco's "Yellow Peril." [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on May 8, 2019 - 3 comments

Accused of assault and perhaps worse, Ah Sahm gets a cold shoulder from the Hop Wei, with his fate in the hands of an unexpected ally. Buckley talks to Mai Ling about straining the relationship between the Long Zii and Hop Wei, while Leary pressures gentleman industrialist Byron Mercer, Penny's father, to hire his men for the cable-car track job.
posted by filthy light thief on May 2, 2019 - 6 comments

The veteran Wall Street Journal science reporter Marilyn Chase’s fascinating account of an outbreak of bubonic plague in late Victorian San Francisco is a real-life thriller that resonates in today’s headlines. The Barbary Plague transports us to the Gold Rush boomtown in 1900, at the end of the city’s Gilded Age. With a deep understanding of the effects on public health of politics, race, and geography, Chase shows how one city triumphed over perhaps the most frightening and deadly of all scourges. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Mar 17, 2019 - 1 comment

When a mad man calling himself 'the Scorpio Killer' menaces the city, tough as nails San Francisco Police Inspector Harry Callahan is assigned to track down and ferret out the crazed psychopath. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on May 14, 2018 - 10 comments

An All-American trucker gets dragged into a centuries-old mystical battle in Chinatown. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Apr 5, 2018 - 31 comments

A documentary celebrating one of the world's most beloved storytellers, following his evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to re-claim their lives. [more inside]
posted by roger ackroyd on Jan 14, 2018 - 4 comments

Earth is threatened by a mysterious deep space voyager. To save the home planet of the Federation, the exiled James T. Kirk and his crew must boldly go to the year 1986 on a desperate mission. [more inside]
posted by CheesesOfBrazil on Sep 8, 2017 - 38 comments

Life is apparently pretty good for a talented young Starfleet officer fresh out of the Academy: nice San Francisco apartment (small, but with a hell of a view), beautiful fiancée, promising budding career as a propulsion engineer with the Starfleet Engineering Corps, even a local barista who knows his favorite drink order by heart. Sure, he didn't get that shipboard assignment that he wanted, but given Voyager's disappearance in the Badlands with all hands missing, even that's for the best. So... what's the matter with Harry? [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack on Mar 13, 2017 - 12 comments

Rosemary and Rue is a modern urban fantasy set in both San Francisco and the Faerie Kingdom of the Mists which overlays Northern California. It was released in North America by DAW Books on September 1st, 2009, and has been translated into German, French, and Russian. [more inside]
posted by Pendragon on Aug 4, 2016 - 14 comments

Patrick returns to San Francisco for a friend's wedding, and in search of closure and resolution regarding his relationships with Richie and Kevin. [more inside]
posted by dnash on Jul 25, 2016 - 5 comments

Frank Bigelow, told he's been poisoned and has only a few days to live, tries to find out who killed him and why. Full movie on YouTube found here. [more inside]
posted by MoonOrb on Feb 26, 2016 - 2 comments

H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Nov 22, 2015 - 10 comments

A New York socialite, deeply troubled and in denial, arrives in San Francisco to impose upon her sister. She looks a million, but isn't bringing money, peace, or love... [more inside]
posted by gemutlichkeit on Mar 31, 2015 - 13 comments

Patrick buys an enema. Augustin gets his beard trimmed. Dom plays rugby. Doris gets laid.
posted by dnash on Jan 26, 2015 - 3 comments

Mindy is suffering separation anxiety until sparks fly with an old flame (Lee Pace). [more inside]
posted by Etrigan on Jan 14, 2015 - 1 comment

A drama about the awakening of the painter Margaret Keane, her phenomenal success in the 1950s, and the subsequent legal difficulties she had with her husband, who claimed credit for her works in the 1960s. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Dec 28, 2014 - 8 comments

An intimate and moving documentary about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco, told through interviews with just five people who lived through its beginnings. [more inside]
posted by latkes on Dec 8, 2014 - 1 comment

A San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac killer. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Oct 31, 2014 - 9 comments

A hapless store clerk must foil criminals to save the life of the man who, miniaturized in a secret experiment, was accidentally injected into him. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Sep 13, 2014 - 11 comments

A growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth's dominant species.
posted by mathowie on Jul 11, 2014 - 22 comments

The world's most famous monster is pitted against malevolent creatures who, bolstered by humanity's scientific arrogance, threaten our very existence. [more inside]
posted by mathowie on May 16, 2014 - 69 comments