› a&eletters@sfbg.com
American Conservatory Theater, the Magic Theatre, and Marin Theatre Company all turn 40 this year. Accordingly, these three regionally and nationally preeminent Bay Area companies are rolling out ambitious celebratory seasons. Read more »

FEST REPORT Because I'm psychotic, I jammed 22 movies into six and a half days at the Toronto International Film Festival — and was actually pissed at myself for not seeing more. Read more »

(1) Sarah Polley makes her public debut as a director in the glitzy embrace of a Roy Thompson Hall gala for Away from Her, with the seats packed to the rafters, and gives the audience a manifesto on the importance of government funding and support for Canadian cinema. Yeah! Sarah Polley for cultural ambassador. Read more »

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Dancer-choreographer David Dorfman is a poet of the ordinary. He digs below the commonplace and lets us see what's underneath. Early in his career, with Out of Season, he paired football players with highly trained dancers. Ten years ago he invited his ensemble's family members to join in performances of Familiar Movements. Both pieces revealed fresh ideas about dance, community, and beauty. Read more »

› kimberly@sfbg.com
Looking for hints of San Francisco's renowned underground nightlife? It pays to keep your eyes and nose to the ground — and to be textable. That's one of the few subtle signs that the hottest underground party in town is happening right here on an early Sunday summer morning: reedy, peg-legged hipsters standing out by the curb on this barren, bulldozed Hunters Point artery, busily texting and talking up fidgety, insomniac friends about their next landing strip. Read more »

FEST REPORT I'm writing hours after the start of the Toronto International Film Festival's 31st edition. Opening nights are a ritual for film festivals, and this one is no exception. The big show is always a Canadian feature: this year it's Norman Cohn and Zacharias Kunuk's The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the follow-up to the same team's hit from five years ago, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Read more »

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
There's a crisp fall edge to the heady pee-asma of the Tenderloin as huddled, roaming packs of theater scavengers move hourly among the tolerant local traffic — two unmistakable signs of the SF Fringe Festival. Read more »

ACTION HERO Soft-spoken and dare I say, petite, Tony Jaa hardly looks like the kind of guy who could annihilate a room full of underground pit fighters. Of course, anyone who's seen Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior knows this appearance is deceiving. The 30-year-old Thai superstar's latest film, The Protector, features elephants and a one-take sequence of, as Jaa describes it, "me fighting the bad guys from the ground floor to the fourth floor" — but, as in Ong-Bak, there are no CG, wires, or Jaa stunt doubles during the fight scenes. Read more »

La-di-dah di-dah-di-dum, ’tis autumn, and after reaching a decision with birdielike precision, the birds have made a beeline for the south. Yet nonfeathered friends of the Bay Area might also have to fly in order to cover all the art openings, concerts, stage shows, movies, and more in store over the next few months. Read more »

› cheryl@sfbg.com
Most of 2006's blockbusters (wannabe and otherwise) have already blown by in a sugary cloud of Sour Patch Kids dust. Poseidon's already on DVD; The Da Vinci Code was totally boring; X-Men: The Last Stand killed off Professor X (or did it?); Superman Returns was stomped on by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest; and Snakes on a Plane did only so-so business despite widespread prerelease hyperventilation. Frankly, my teeth hurt and I'm ready for some meatier cinematic fare — especially the 10 picks that follow. Read more »