Looking Renewed, Xfinity Commercial, SF Ballet, Napoli

Movies/TV - Fruitvale Station winds Best First Feature at the Spirit Awards

Hollywood bids to lure filmmakers back to Tinseltown - Communities here are trying their own incentives to keep film productions. San Francisco offers a film rebate. Los Angeles doesn’t charge location fees on city-owned properties and tries to expedite permits.

Amazing! We would like one for our office, who made it? RT @jclee1230: this is pretty much everything... pic.twitter.com/MAWeARKGcQ
— SF Film Commission (@Film_SF) February 28, 2014

HBO Renews Dramedy ‘Looking’ for Season 2

'Looking' Renewed for Second Season at HBO -- The comedy, which stars Jonathan Groff, has also upped Lauren Weedman, Raul Castillo and Russell Tovey to series regulars for its sophomore season.

Jonathan Groff Stays Put On HBO! Looking Gets Renewed & Lea Michele Is Headed Its Way?!



HBO renews 'Looking' for second season - LA Times



Shot at Stonestown Galleria in January.

2015 Ford Mustang stars in 'Need for Speed' ad prior to movie premiere



'Breaking Bad' Aaron Paul New 'Need for Speed' Movie Trailer, Release Date and Spoilers [STREAM ONLINE]

‘Ant-Man’ begins filming in Atlanta this spring, could be headed to San Francisco too

Could Evangeline Lilly Be Playing Spider-Woman In ‘Ant-Man’?
Ant-Man Director Edgar Wright Blog Implies Hank Pym Was Ant-Man Once
Could ‘Ant-Man’ Be Marvel’s First Superhero Movie Miss?

A Film Lover's Tour of San Francisco

HBO’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Poster: Mike Judge Gives Jobs to His New Crew of Tech Nerds

Theater - S.F. Ballet review: Corps, solos soar in 3 revivals
Practical Magic: San Francisco Ballet's Beyond-Charming Cinderella

'Napoli!' review: Genuine WWII artifact, for better, worse

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Added to SHN's 2014-15 Season

Endangered Species - In Athens, the Last Man Painting

THE LAST MAN PAINTING CINEMA SIGNS IN EUROPE

Jim Lange, the original host of “The Dating Game, died on Tuesday a his home in Mill Valley, Calif.

Only in San Francisco - Bush Man No. 2 of Fisherman's Wharf, Gregory Jacobs, Dies -- This Time For Real

SF Ballet, SHN, Need for Speed, Looking, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Google

Call to Action: State Leaders Must Reclaim Film & Television Production Jobs & Keep California Competitive - Sign the Filmworks Petition
Theater - Val Caniparoli's "Tears": A World Premiere at San Francisco Ballet


Val Caniparoli - S.F. Ballet's 'Tears' one of many creations

'Matilda,' 'Kinky Boots' 'Motown' coming to San Francisco

Movies/TV - Need For Speed Movie Provides Quick Look At The Men Of The Film


All-new Ford Mustang will feel the ‘Need for Speed’
Need for Speed movie: The stunts are real
Aaron Paul calls ‘Need for Speed’ movie cast perfect in new featurette

The Fun of Having a Single Parent NBC Rolls Out ‘About a Boy’ and ‘Growing Up Fisher’

New Godzilla Poster Stomps All Over San Francisco

The Diary of a Teenage Girl filming on the streets of San Francisco

Conventions Speakers boycotting security conference to protest collaboration with NSA

There goes the Neighborhood Dept. -  Google To Take Over Space In The Mission - Does this mean The Soccer Cafe and Donuts and Chinese Food will get an upgrade?


Google to house startups in San Francisco's Mission district

Only in San Francisco  - San Francisco ranked most expensive city for yuppies

Smart Cookie: Girl Scout Sets Up Shop Outside Marijuana Dispensary - You don’t need a MBA to know that the key to sales is to know your demographic. That’s why Girl Scout Danielle Lei should earn a merit badge in business for setting up shop outside of a medical marijuana dispensary in San Francisco. Lei sold 117 boxes of Dulce de Leches and Tagalong Girl Scout cookies during a two-hour stint outside The Green Cross pharmacy over Presidents Day weekend.

Go West, Young Bank Bro - Wall Street has ceased to be the career destination of choice for a certain kind of status seeker. Guess where that person wants to work now.

ADG Awards 2014 Opening Film, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Looking, Tears

ADG Awards 2014 Opening Film from Dave Blass on Vimeo.

Movies/TV - "HER," "GRAVITY" and "THE GREAT GATSBY" Win at 18th Annual Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design Awards

The Diary of a Teenage Girl: Where They're Filming
The Diary of a Teenage Girl: A Day of Filming - "...10:26 a.m.: One, lone man is working on a door frame for the back door to Hamburger Haven. This film crew is obviously not a bunch of early risers… 12:30 p.m.: Classic cars start to arrive… 5:29 p.m.: The classic cars leave, which is weird because they didn't film them at all..."

Desperate Times Call for Her - Cate Blanchett Has Front-Runner Oscar Status - Video interview



Looking Season 1: Episode #5 Preview (HBO)

'LOOKING' BACK: EPISODE 4, 'LOOKING FOR $220/HOUR'
'Looking' Episode Four: That's It For Folsom?
Honey Mahogany Shantays Onto “Looking,” Releases “Shoulda Known Better”: WATCH

HBO Teases Mike Judge Comedy ‘Silicon Valley’ (VIDEO) - Mostly shot in LA with a brief stop in Palo Alto - HBO Shoot Shuts Down Palo Alto's University Ave.


Shirley Temple Black, Hollywood’s Biggest Little Star, Dies at 85

Theater - SF Ballet Program 2 - Tears, From Foreign Lands, Borderlands

National tour for 'Matilda the Musical' takes it to LA, San Francisco ...

American Conservatory Theater's 2014 Season Gala to Honor Three Founding Fathers, 5/18

Tony Winners Bill Irwin and David Shiner Take Old Hats to the American Conservatory Theater

Marco Barricelli, Seana McKenna: ACT's perfect pairing


NOBODY SAID THAT THEN! - POSTED BY HENDRIK HERTZBERG - Are there no production designers for language? There ought to be.

Only in San Francisco - San Franciscans Wait Two Hours in the Rain For Day-Old New York Bagels

Excellence in Production Design, James Franco, Need for Speed, Looking, About a Boy, America's Cup

Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design -  Rick Carter to receive Art Directors Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award

Art Directors Guild Award Nominations

Howard Cummings, Barbara Munch

and Patrick Sullivan at the Emmys

J. Michael Riva was inducted into the ADG Hall of Fame, and Howard Cummings  and his team won for TV Movie or Miniseries for Behind the Candelabra. Howard won the Emmy for Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie and shared the award with Set Decorator Barbara Munch.

Movies/TV - James Franco Project Returns to Bay Area roots Did a Silicon Valley childhood make James Franco a Renaissance man?

New Trailers Reveal More Of Need For Speed Movie: Video - Viknesh Vijayenthiran



In order to film Need for Speed, the filmmakers made their cameras very, very fast

From Breaking Bad to Need For Speed: Aaron Paul roars on to the big screen with new high octane film co-starring Kid Cudi

2015 Ford Mustang Confirmed For Need For Speed Movie: Video


Looking Season 1: Episode #4 Preview (HBO)

Looking Season 1: Inside the Episode #3 (HBO) Torpedoes from The Master plus Production Designer Todd Fjelsted welcoming Patrick to The Hornet

Designing a Fake Videogame for Television - BY RACHEL SWABY In a recent episode of HBO's show Looking, production designers had to create a fake video game for one second of screen time.
Looking recap: episode 3 – British people are awful

Podcast about Looking episodes "Talking"

LOOKING EP. 3: FINALLY, SOMEONE EATS A BURRITO!

.@LookingHBO #agustinandpatrick4ever #looking pic.twitter.com/xhMwoF0EiQ
— SF Film Commission (@Film_SF) February 7, 2014

Scenic Artists - Carrie Nardello, Tracy Boyko, Lauren Abrams, James Shefik, Jason Byers, Graffiti design by the writer/series creator Michael Lannan, I got to write on the wall.


'About A Boy' TV Show Pilot Films In San Francisco

If you're wondering what Scottish actor Gerard Butler's doing in San Francisco, strolling the streets in a fancy suit, well he's here to shoot a Hugo Boss commercial.

S.F. film festival taps a top figure from Toronto fest

Acme sculpture project

California Film Commission Locations Magazine

Theater - Janet Sassoon's moving account - a life devoted to dance - Janet Sassoon, who first danced in S.F. in the first full-length "Nutcracker" in the U.S., has published a memoir. - SF Chronicle

Events - S.F., Ellison can't let game of chicken sink America's Cup - Rich guys don't want to pay union wages - The first shot was fired by team Oracle, which said it had a simple proposal: Everything would be the same as last time. Free rent on the piers, no contribution to the public services and - oh, by the way - no hassles about not paying that pesky "prevailing wage" that labor unions were so upset about C.W. Nevius - SF Chronicle

Affordable Care Act -   Obamacare Opponents Freak Out At The Idea The Law Could Mean More Freedom

Yes, Obamacare will probably downsize the workforce. Economists explain why.

Only in San Francisco - It would take the salaries of 4.6 full-time jobs at San Francisco's highest-in-the-nation minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom.  - Aaron Sankin, The Huffington Post

3500 19th St #207 San Francisco, CA - $10,500/mo

Even with $4 Toast, SF Is Still a Great Place to Be an Artist - The results of a massive study by the National Endowment for the Arts using United States Census data found that per capita, San Francisco had the second-highest concentration of working artists in the country. At 4.3% of our workforce, we were just behind Los Angeles, which has 4.86%. Both West Coast towns are far above New York City—which although it has the greatest total number of artists at 140,915, had only 3.4% of its workforce engaged in the arts. These numbers reflected artists who were actually reporting income from their work, which excludes aspiring artists. - San Francisco Magazine

Google Briefly Tops Exxon as 2nd-Most Valuable U.S. Firm

Philip Seymour Hoffman - Act Wherever You Can and Wherever You Get a Chance to Act

...If you have acted as well as you can there's no way that the people who have watched you will forget it… go to 5:25

San Francisco - The City by the Bay

Video by RockBridge Productions for the San Francisco Association of Realtors. Come on and film here.

Giselle, Venus in Fur, Looking, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Need for Speed

Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Actor, Dies at 46

Theater - Review, S.F. Ballet's 'Giselle': Classic at its purest
SF Ballet’s ‘Giselle’ could use more dramaThrills and Chills: San Francisco Ballet in Giselle

American Conservatory Theater to Present VENUS IN FUR, 3/19-4/13

Movies/TV - HBO's 'Looking' looks for understanding
Looking, Sky Atlantic, review
A Tour Through the San Francisco of Looking, Episodes 1 & 2
Looking: "Looking For Uncut"


Looking Episode 3 preview
Ranking The Beards, Scruff, And Mustaches On "Looking"

Royal Oak scene of shoot for Kristen Wiig's "Diary of a Teenage Girl." Fern bar perfect for film's 1970 SF setting pic.twitter.com/Fk47VjRVVS
— Taylor Pipes (@thelocalist) January 28, 2014

NEW KRISTEN WIIG MOVIE LOOKING FOR '60S/'70S STYLED EXTRAS


Check Out The Expensive Supercars In 'Need For Speed'
Need for Speed Movie Featurette Explores Camera Cars
Sundance 2014: Aaron Paul raises 'Hellion,' talks 'Need for Speed' -- EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS

Only in San Francisco - Tourism for Locals: Macondray Lane Paves the Path for Tales of the City - SF Weekly
Welcome to Tours of the Tales!

Not Only in San Francisco - Progressive Kristallnacht Coming? -  I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich." - Tom Perkins, poor, unfortunate, mega-rich venture capitalist and 5th husband of Danielle Steel.

Kleiner Perkins ‘Shocked’ by Co-Founder Comment on Nazis

Rich Man 'Apologizes' For Nazi Comments While Showing Off Super-Expensive Watch

Tom Perkins' trickle-down defense of the 1% has huge flaws - Joe Garofoli, SFGate

...But Perkins' claim of trickle-down economics runs into some statistical problems - the lowest rung of the economic ladder has seen average adjusted gross incomes drop 18 percent over the same period. Worse, economic mobility of Americans isn't what it used to be: If you're born poor, you'll have a tough time getting rich - or even close. Forty-three percent of those raised in the bottom 20 percent of the nation's economic spectrum remain there as adults, according to a study by the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts Economic Mobility Project. Even more daunting: 70 percent of those in the bottom rung "never make it to the middle," according to Erin Currier, director of Pew's economic mobility project... The S&P 500 gained 30 percent last year, its best year since 1997. And roughly 95 percent of the nation's income gains during the first three years of the recovery went to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, according to a 2013 UC Berkeley study...

Venture Capitalist: Tech Activists Are Like Nazis - In a casual aside, John King, the architecture critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, had called the hedge “comically off-putting” in December. A columnist at The Chronicle picked up the attack, and called Ms. Steel a snob. Ms. Steel fired back in the paper that her hedge, which is indeed large, was necessary to keep the creeps out. And that she had done many good works for the people of San Francisco.

Danielle Steel and her comically off-putting hedge reveals much about her - SF Chronicle

A fan note from Danielle Steel. Sort of - SF Chronicle