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 | A Little Something For Everyone Although only two months into the new year, 2005 already has the makings of a watershed year for Asian Americans in cinema. NAATA, the organization behind the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival and one of the most important sponsors of media for the Asian community, has reached its silver anniversary. And for the first time, the festival has found a presenting sponsor. That sponsor is 'Asia Street', whose debut on the International Channel, is slated for March 28. Devoted to Asian American programming, 'Asia Street' promises to be a vital medium for the community's growing legion of filmmakers.More |  | An Alternative to Mission Taquerias With its dimly lit interior, Velvet Cantina could easily pass for a restaurant hoping to capture the first date/twenty-something crowd. While its clientele does indeed consist of young urbanites, the four-month old Mexican restaurant encourages revelry rather than romance. This is somewhat in keeping with the space's prior incarnation, The El Zarape Room. Prior to the ownership and name change, Latino crowds danced salsa and held court with buckets of Coronas, while groups of hipsters slammed margaritas and suckled sangria.More |  | No more spilt milk, Part 3 If there's one point I've tried to communicate through this space week after week, it's that the Giants are not a playoff team. Forget the games-back column. Making up even a small number of games is something bad teams don't do.More |  | No more spilt milk, Part 2 Last week we tackled the infield, so now let's take a few steps backward and examine who will be manning the spacious outfields of SBC Park in 2006. [b]LF Barry Bonds, CF Randy Winn, RF Moises Alou, 4th OF Todd Linden[/b]. The only thing standing in the way of this lineup being official for the 2006 season is the ever-unpredictable effect of the injury bug. And since two members of this foursome will be in their forties by this time next year, it wouldn't exactly be a freak occurrence for one of them to fall down and not get up.More |  | No more spilt milk, Part 1 Every time the Padres lose a game, Giants fans should get just a little warm, fuzzy. Not because it means there's a chance the Giants will make September interesting, but that San Diego could be mediocre enough to allow San Francisco to compete in the NL West next year.More |  | So simple to decipher A year ago, Chan-wook Park's film [i]Oldboy[/i] opened in the US to much acclaim, firmly establishing the new wave of Korean directors as the darlings of Asian cinema. But while, [i]Oldboy[/i] arrived first in the minds of US audiences, it's actually the second chapter in Chan-wook's revenge trio, and a sequel of sorts, to [i]Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance[/i].More |  | Paid vacation In football, the purist is the fan who shows up shirtless, a green 'G' outlined in yellow painted on his torso for a December game at Lambeau Field. The mindset of the beer-swilling (or in the case of San Francisco, turtleneck wearing and zinfandel sipping) aficionado is not all that different from the 22 men running around the field.More |  | Dumb and Dumber Below are the stat lines of two regulars for the team that plays their home games at SBC Park. [b]Player 1[/b]: Batting Average, .276; OBP, .331; Slugging, .385; Age, 27; Salary $316,500. [b]Player 2[/b]: Batting Average, .275; OBP, .342; Slugging, .391; Age, 31; Salary $3,750,000.More |  | Traditional Thinking One thing can be said about Felipe Alou: He's not part of the new guard. You won't find him having roundtable discussions with Billy Beane and J.P. Ricciardi about the latest study performed by the Society of American Baseball Research. He won't be quoting Bill James in any of his upcoming postgame interviews.More |  | Bull Durham According to ESPN's Jayson Stark, the only Giants' player teams have shown interest in is Jason Schmidt. The Giants have repeatedly said no to moving him, however. And after this past Tuesday's performance by Schmidt, the Giants appear to have taken the correct stance on the issue.More |
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