From the folks who bring you the booming San Diego Surf Film Festival comes another three-day screening gala. The second annual, somewhat misleadingly titled ACTION! International Film Festival comes to La Jolla’s Misfit Pictures HQ …
What better way to cloud your vision of San Diego’s two largest theatre screens than by taking advantage of Grossmont Cinema’s new stocked bar? As if movies weren’t intoxicating enough, this weekend Reading Cinemas Grossmont …
This came about thanks to the kindness of Jean Walcher, public relations sage and President of J. Walcher Communications. Jean’s cousin is the executive producer of No Pay, Nudity, a delightful Broadway Danny Rose-ish comedy …
From Disney to Elvis(es) to Plissken and now Jimmy Harrell in Deepwater Horizon, opening Friday at a multiplex near you, those of a certain age would be hard-pressed to recall a period when they didn’t …
“Putting on a festival is kinda like having a baby,” writes Tonya Mantooth, executive and artistic director at the San Diego International Film Festival. “You don't remember the pain until you go into labor, aka …
Judy Davis had a bad cold, her normally husky voice pitched a few octaves lower. After a couple of postnasal one-word answers, the interview appeared destined to be the shortest on record. One mention of …
It’s funny the way fate has a habit of yanking the reins when it’s least expected. An Amish plow horse named Snowman was but a few laps away from the glue factory until Dutch immigrant …
A call came in from Shane P. Allen, a 53-year-old Tierrasanta resident and realtor by day, eager to talk about his performance in Clint Eastwood’s Sully. Here’s how the happily married father of three (“my …
Let’s start the week with a smile and a “heil!” with this video assemblage of Tinseltown’s Ten Best Fascist Dictators. Here they are arranged in order of rank. 10) Considering the variety of top-shelf candidates …
The title of Clint Eastwood’s latest, Sully, works as a two-edged nod to both titular hero and what the National Transportation Safety Board wanted to do to his reputation. There isn’t an American alive who …
Hugh O’Brian, the lantern-jawed cowboy star who apprenticed at the hands of several Hollywood mavericks and later rose to stardom as TV’s Wyatt Earp, has died. Born Hugh Charles Krampe, O’Brian dropped out of college …
A Frances O’Neill Zimmerman of La Jolla writes: “The first ten films (from 1967 to 1976) of famed aging documentarist Frederick Wiseman are being screened in Los Angeles at Cinefamily on North Fairfax beginning August …
Light is hardly the word to describe the melodramatic slog that awaits viewers in writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s The Light Between Oceans. After a tour of killing Jerrys in the Great War, bachelor Tom (Oscar®-nominee Michael …
Gene Wilder was such a brilliant actor that he fooled audiences into believing one of his most revered creations, Willy Wonka, was something other than a magnetizing Nazi goon offering kids a Golden Ticket to …
The last time Ralph DeLauro brought movies and music to the lives of his followers was at a screening of The Wrecking Crew held last November at the Central Library. It was one of the …
Last week brought news of Exitos del Cine Latino, a brand-new week-long film festival, running August 26 to September 1 at AMC Plaza Bonita, that boasts 14 San Diego premieres. Be on the lookout for …
If the Chuck Heston interpretation of Ben-Hur is comparable to a Classics Illustrated comic book, MGM’s new digital facelift should never have left Turner Network Television. The third (and hopefully final) theatrical reboot, this Ben …
It is the ultimate glorification of sports on film and a testament to the man Max Bialystock would later call, “The Hitler you loved, the Hitler you knew, the Hitler with a song in his …
Those who missed out on last May’s San Diego Surf Film Festival — I was surfing the net that weekend — are about to be tossed a life preserver. Huey, the God of Surf, has …
With the Lickona bunch vacationing in New York, this week’s aggregation of new releases falls on my watch. Speaking of aggregation, according to the generally aggravating Rotten Tomatoes, Hell or High Water is Certified 100% …
The Media Arts Center is nothing if not ambitious. Monday brought news of film curator Moisés Esparza’s inspired commitment to second-run bookings. Next week is a three-film tribute to the late Iranian master, Abbas Kiarostami. …
Second-run theatres appear to have gone the way of video cassettes. The once popular “dollar houses” offered audiences a chance to catch big releases on their way to home video, generally at a cost of …
It was 54 years ago today that Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her apartment of an apparent overdose. Suicide? Murder? Accident? Joe Kennedy? The debate rages to this day as the legendary sex symbol …
Who is our greatest (hardly) working director? Godard? Scorsese? Wenders? Arthur Hiller? Oh, yeah! Timpani! It’s Jerry Lewis! I’ve spent more of my adult life defending Jerry Lewis than any other pussycat mush genius on …
T-minus six months and counting before the 27th Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival comes to town, but there’s no time like the present to start the fundraising matzo ball rolling. SDJFF launches its Underwriter …
Aunt Fay had the hots for Elvis, and little Scotty loved going to the movies. So it was that many a Saturday afternoon found us hopping the 96 Lunt Ave. bus to Chicago’s Adelphi Theatre …
The banners are down, the fanboys back in their parents’ basements, and the convention center no longer a giant roll of flypaper used by corporations to ensnare the costumed souls that make it through the …
It was the part I was born to play. No, not Kristen Stewart, but the unenviable role of angry critic forced to endure the insidious brands studios impose on their “art” in the name of …
I ain’t afraid of no sequels, so long as they are not sequels to inferior remakes of films that were lousy to begin with. The all-girl, effects-powered reboot of Ghostbusters cost producers — among them …
Believe it or don’t, I was once a big fan of wrestling. Larry used to take me to Chicago’s International Amphitheater to study the squared-circle wizardry of such giants as Bruiser & Crusher, Bob Brazil, …
ArcLight Cinemas and San Diego Filmmakers have joined forces to establish the San Diego Women’s Film Network, a new forum to support, inspire, and educate women working in the entertainment industry or looking to wedge …
Changes are in the offing at Landmark’s Hillcrest Cinemas that include the addition of electronic seats, a lobby makeover, reserved seating, alcohol, and even newly designed finishes and fixtures to make every bathroom encounter feel …
Far be it from me to deride any exhibition chain that’s okay with showcasing repertoire fare a few weeks out of the year, but have we not heard the chimes at midnight? The last time …
It’s been five years since Dmitriy Demidov and the Oceanside Cultural Arts Foundation revived the Oceanside International Film Festival. In that time it’s grown from a few-day gathering to a weeklong celebration that lays claim …
What has four Renoir’s, two Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s, a quartet by Max Ophüls, Tony Bennett’s one and only acting performance (watch and learn), an ace high Diamond straight flush from Preston Sturges, Buñuel leading Brontë to …
Don’t Think Twice, opening August 12 at Landmark’s Ken Cinema, is Mike Birbiglia’s second feature as a director. The comedy introduces us to a six-person improv troupe that dwindles in size as the top floaters …
It could have been an ad for Mrs. Paul’s Fish Sticks. Instead, parents of California kiddies attending a screening of Finding Dory at the Brenden Concord 14 were in for a shock when the pre-show …
A promising young luminary beading together a string of pearly performances will gain my loyalty more effectively than yanking a thorn from my paw. After Little Murders and Elliott Gould’s first two pictures for Altman …
Antenna TV began airing nightly reruns of The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in January. Hour-long shows originally broadcast between 1980 and 1992 run Monday through Friday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. 90 minute …
She’s been praised for cutting-edge performances powered by an “assertion of total originality.” If that’s the case, why is Lady Gaga singing a familiar tune by entertaining a remake of the ancestral A Star Is …
You’ve heard of surrealism in the movies? Here’s a case of surrealism at the movies. Halfway to the lobby, with eyes half-adjusted to the light, you find the subject of the film you just exited …
For his first tour behind a camera, famed British stage director Michael Grandage chose as his subject nothing less than the Dean of American Literary Editors, Maxwell Perkins. The title Genius could have stood pluralizing …
Try analyzing comedy. The only thing more exasperating is sitting stone-faced through one. Discussing the evening’s drama consumes a drive home from the multiplex, but ask someone why a gag made them howl and all …
“I just got an email that Luis [Guzmán] has completely lost his voice so canceling all phoners and his NY press day for Puerto Ricans in Paris,” read the publicist’s note that arrived an hour …
He’s one of the sweetest, funniest “bastards,” art or otherwise, you’ll ever want to meet. And here’s your chance to do just that. Robert Cenedella, artist, social satirist, and subject of Victor Kanefsky’s moving and …
The April Fools is one of those terribly mod (and borderline terrible) late ’60s romantic comedies that for reasons both numerous and peculiar, earned its unit of storage in my memory bank. The one-sheet took …
Meet Robert Cenedella: painter, pictorial satirist, art teacher, and all around swell guy who also happens to be the subject of a new documentary, Art Bastard, opening June 17 exclusively at the Angelika Film Center …
My buddy, John Albert, posted a link to the trailer for the inescapable Monster Trucks with the following comment on my Facebook wall: “Remember this, the next time anybody says that Hollywood ought to stop …
Variety recently reported that Melissa McCarthy will star as celebrity-biographer-turned-literary-forger Lee Israel in Fox Searchlight’s upcoming biopic, Can You Ever Forgive Me? Israel had a knack for cranking out facsimile correspondences — numbering over 400 …
Once upon a time, a little girl walked into her parents’ bedroom to find Daddy in bed with a guy. Mommy promptly retaliated by having an affair that left her expecting another child. Mommy eventually …