The Beat is on! Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi), the Japanese director, comedian, singer, actor, editor, screenwriter, author, poet, painter, former video game designer, and architect of a new breed of yakuza, has returned to form. Outrage is a violent, …

Letters, we get letters. Young Scotty falls off a bicycle and breaks his arm. With the plaster on my cast barely dry, I head off to class the next day to do battle with Miss Regina Greek, my third-grade Chicago …

Yeah, we're not that excited, either - and the jokes show it. But sometimes, you gotta take the easy shots... The design sensibility behind Captain America's costume...REVEALED! Yeah, they're both kinda preening here - and such impeccable grooming! "But we're …

This week, Steven Spielberg decides to ignore W.C. Fields' dictum of "Never work with children or animals," and includes both in War Horse. David Elliott wishes that Spielberg had listened: "War Horse is an absurdly picturesque load of mud, corn, …

Or: a lesson in creative bankruptcy. For starters, there is a certain sadness about a third installment. Your initial film establishes the idea. If it's a hit, well, then you go for a sequel, and in so doing, hopefully expand …

The documentary Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, about the band Fishbone and narrated by Laurence Fishburne, will be screening at the Whistle Stop on Thursday, January 12, along with a post-screening Q&A with filmmaker Chris Metzler. "It's about the …

Two questions I never thought I'd be contemplating when I awoke this morning: "Cheeta was still alive?" and "Carol Channing was married?!" Yes on both counts (even though for a brief moment the thought that Ms. Channing and Mr. Cheeta …

Cheeta, the most famous monkey ever to swing on Hollywood and Vine, is dead. Tarzan's tippling, chain-smoking sidekick was said to be 80. The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbour, Florida where the great ape lived out his remaining years …

Mr. Marks is one of San Diego's foremost critics. Specifically, he's one of our four most grumpy critics. Zing! Thanks, folks, I'll be here forever, try the veal. But seriously: I cannot possibly offer a competing list to match up …

Films are selected to join the National Film Registry based on their “culturally, historically, or aesthetically” importance. Note the billing: in a field of three art places dead last. This year's selections are particularly uninspired. Forrest Gump should be tossed …

You know it’s been a bad year for movies when neither Tintinnitus or War Hearse crack my bottom ten. Try as Steve might to earn a spot in the Hall of Shame, there were dozens worse to contend with. Normally, …

The greatest joy this lapsed Chicagoan finds in a San Diego Christmas will always be an ability to walk around the beach in a short sleeve shirt on December 25. Not that I do, mind you, but the fact that …

What should have been a mini-documentary bonus feature on a Sesame Street DVD instead becomes a Christmas release strictly for Muppet die-hards. Two bits of eternal knowledge gleaned: Kevin “Elmo” Clash is a blueblooded puppeteer in love with his calling …

World’s Largest Cataloged Archive: From a Regional Film Archive in Mexico, that had serviced twenty theatres over a 50 year span. Classic and Cult Titles from US, GER, FR, ITAL, MX…Japan, Russia, Hong Kong… 150,000 Original Vintage Lobby Cards from …

It is a momentous day. Not only will Hugo be held over for another week, but today marks Marks' (with the estimable help of Lickona) first Reader cover story! It's one thing to see it on line and another to …

All I want for Christmas/Reviews...maybe this year, Santa will bring me a weekly three-way podcast wherein I can discuss films with Misters Elliott and Marks. I would love to devote a segment to comparing the two versions (BBC and film) …

Another tidbit dropped from the heaped-up holiday table that is The Big Screen's Debut Cover Story: for reasons of both space and theme, I was unable to pursue the developing theme of the Chinese and Christmas that began with my …

Well, now, looky here: The Magic of Cinema meets The Magic of Christmas, as illuminated by a cinephile Jew and his Christian sidekick. Critics are calling it "the feel-good cover story of the season!" and saying that "if you read …

For years, it has been my strict policy to never read a review until after I’ve seen the movie. Decades of tell-all trailers, disingenuous print plugs, and various other forms of advance hype have left me at a point where …

Disney and Hanukkah: the two go together like a pork loin roast and a glass of eggnog. I'm all for niche marketing, but this type of pandering hucksterism simply doesn't compute. Aside from staffing a board room, I question what …

Notable Quote Whore Pete Hammond joins in the lazy good times with this gem in the YouTube banner ad for Tintin: "Now let's see, this movie has pirates, so...Pirates of the Caribbean! And it has a car chase that reminds …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTIJRj_hRao It's Lazy Day here at The Big Screen, and to start things off, we have the laziest intro to The Magic Geegaw at the Heart of the Story ever, as Earnest Young Fellow explains the famous magic beans to …

So the trailer for The Hobbit is out today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0k3kHtyoqc Seems solid, if you're into that sort of thing. Which I sort of am. But instead of riffing, let me share with you this delightful bit from a 1968 edition …

The finalists for the 2012 San Diego Latino Film Festival poster competition are now on public display. The festival received over eighty submissions for its 3rd annual poster challenge. In addition to the local entries, graphics arrived from across the …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs7fzOrUopc Hoo! Really, what is there to say? Except maybe this?

So a couple of days ago, I expressed a measure of surprise that the release of a teaser trailer could be dubbed "a launch event." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHAm9LUDpA I was so much younger then, so naive. Now comes word of a teaser …

I wanted so much to bring you a holiday edition of The Movie-Studio Logo Quiz, but alas, all I could unearth were two unique brands from Christmas movies. They lead off this installment which also includes a pair of Martys, …

How could have have known? He's Christopher Nolan, that's how. (Trailer here.)

Dept of Design Inspirations...

T-Shirt available here. Don't let your child grow up to be like Bane.

The trailer is here. The analysis starts...now. Apparently, director Christopher Nolan is finally ready to tackle the whole Bruce-Alfred issue. Here, Alfred says that Bruce is as precious to him as he was to his own mother and father...

The Pie Wedge. The Malone aka Tufted Polypropylene. The Claudette Colbert. Shemp aka The Hooker Hitching Post. The Set-It-And-Forget-It aka The JCVD. Roman Helmet aka Friar's Club Brown No. 5 Hubbard Extensions aka The Little Dutch Boy. Shat. The Hymie …

It's Christmas, so why not spread Yuletide cheer with a plug for my pal, former student turned eternal teacher, Rob Martinez. You may recognize Rob as "Colonna," the mad poster who ignites The Big Screen comments section with a blaze …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar_-v7dEEoo Ah, never mind. The capsule does a decent enough job. Just a couple of things. First: good gravy, was that trailer ever misleading. This is not a comedy, people. And while there are clearly moments designed to make you …

Just a reminder that there is no better time than Christmas to give the gift of quality cinema. Why throw your money away on gift cards to mulitplexes whose staff can't differentiate between a focus knob and a mylar? What …

Remember the Russians? No, no – not the Russian mobsters from The Sopranos, those free-market capitalists extraordinaire who threatened to make the Mafia look like amateurs. I’m talking about the communists – the ideologically opposed Evil Empire on the other …

Lickona's going to come through with some quality writing any minute now. In the meantime, I'm still off riding the curl of a permanent wave. The Cesarian Section aka Skunk, The Duke of Santos, and Lily Munster. The Agnes Moorehair …

SCENE: The bowels of the Hollywood Sequel Building, Kiddie Division. Screenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger have finished their monthly cocaine ration in only nine days, and are now crashing hard. But in checking the calendar to see when the …

Wednesday night saw the first of what I hope will be many appearances at the annual Reader Christmas party. Once I remember what happened, I'll never forget it. The bartender must have seen Written on the Wind. He had the …

No, that's not the real title. And you know what else? I'm not going to post the trailer here. You know why? Here's a press release to tell you why. SONY PICTURES TAPS UNIQUE GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION ASSETS OF THE COMPANY …

I'm guessing it's gonna come when he visits Antietam... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5W4RxGv4s

Fighting off a hangover brought on by having too much fun at last night's Reader Christmas party, I awake to the soothing news that Marty hath received a Golden Globe nomination for His great and glorious holiday offering, Hugo. It …

Critic fight! Big Screen blogger Scott Marks was none too fond of The Artist, calling it a "middling technical exercise" that proved that its director "can trace." But Reader critic David Elliott four-starred the thing, and dubbed it "a silky …

Any chance of Marty coming through town to accept the award He so richly deserves was dashed in favor of a middling technical exercise. The Artist, proof that Michel Hazanaviciuscan can trace, took home the San Diego Film Critics' best …

Yeah, yeah, I know, it's not out yet. So no spoilers. But if you had to guess whether our bad guy, Professor James Moriarty, likes to attend operas or bawdy house vaudeville, which would you pick? Opera: the choice of …

After seeing this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXLuExO6j8Q ...you may find yourself wondering, "What the hell happened to Sacha Baron Cohen? The guy who eviscerated middle America with Borat was finally going to do a comedy with some edge!" No more poop in a …

Famous Movie Poster Rejects You've Never Seen Part 7 Here's the latest from our never-published private collection of movie poster rejects: parts one thru six linked below. This batch includes unused concept art for horror hits Halloween III, Wolfen, and …

The San Diego Asian Film Foundation holds its final quarterly screening of the year tonight. Isao Yukisada's ambrosial drama of marital discord, A Good Husband play for one night only at UltraStar's Mission Valley Hazard Center. The bad news is, …

I knew it was a mistake to mention G.I. Joe yesterday...speak of the sequel, and it is there. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSX2oxLdcWA Only a few things to note here... Dollars to doughnuts, this is the image that got this project the greenlight. CO-BRAAAAAAA! …

What a way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of what many consider the greatest motion picture of all time. The best screenplay Oscar awarded Orson Welles for Citizen Kane is once again up for sale. Welles misplaced the Oscar after …

What would Christmas be without Bob Hope? I'll have a lot more to say about Old Ski Noses' uncanny ability to transform war into house payments in the Lickona/Marks Christmas cover story, coming soon to a Reader near you. In …

The new poster for The Dark Knight Rises rather reminds me of another dark knight... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

This year's "think lists" -- each member of the San Diego Film Critics Society submits a slate of suggested nominees in all the major categories -- were cause for alarm. Was I going to have to spell out for the …

Really, everything you need to know is right here: But just in case, here are a couple of bonus screen caps from the trailer: Oh my God - is that my career? I count two, maybe three sequels. Actually, it's …

The Sitter opens with Jonah Hill performing oral sex on Ari Graynor. Talk about trying hard to establish a fantasy universe — I'd sooner believe Dumbo flew. If it wasn't for plot coincidence there would be no plot at all …

During my first ten years living in San Diego, I could count on two hands the number of times a visit had to be made to the box office to complain about projection problems. More and more it's been my …

Though they look nothing alike, it remained a major point of childhood consternation. Did Harry Morgan lend Cara Williams henpecked-support as Pete Porter on Pete and Gladys, or was that Henry Morgan, the droll, chain-smoking jokester who frequently sat with …

Actually, you know what? No. I'm gonna let this guy do this one.

Every year or so, the New York Times pretends not to be trading on purest celebrity appeal by doing one of these "actors are artists, and we understand that better than you do" pieces in their Sunday magazine. This year, …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4IoUo_ZJkY&feature=relmfu I dunno, guys. Only five eye-pokes in a nearly two-minute trailer? I have to question the Farrellys' commitment to the form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRF_Bzuwtk Don't look now, but this trailer actually contains a secret, subliminal message especially for readers of the Big Screen!

Famous Movie Poster Rejects You've Never Seen Part 6 Today's unpublished rarities from our stash of movie poster concept designs include Force III, Meatballs III, plainclothes cop thriller Off Limits (Willem Dafoe, Gregory Hines), sci-fi McDonald’s commercial Mac & Me, …

So I went and saw Shame: "Shame succeeds less as a work of dramatic fiction than of cinematic pathology. Sort of an illustrated medical casebook — a clinically minded viewer might be tempted to check off the symptoms as they …

Another day, another delightful holiday oddity from the imaginative animation stands at Van Beuren Studios Trust me on this -- you have never seen anything quite like James Tyler's Christmas Night aka Pals (1933). (The same can be said of …

A shameless plug. Holiday Inn, the delightful Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby musical for all seasons, is one of the films up for discussion in the hotly anticipated December 22 Lickona/Marks Christmas cover story. Needless to say, I revisited the …

It looks as though I'm going to have to start packing a ball peen hammer in my movie theatre survival kit. A multiplex in Bellevue (Washington, not the New York mental hospital) is considering encouraging texting during movies. Why not …

By the time Amedee J. Van Beuren got around to heading up his own studio, the animated film producer already had 8 years under his belt as Paul Terry's partner on the successful Aesop's Film Fables cartoons. Between 1928 and …

...and that means (as previously noted) another Christmas cover! Marks set the bar perilously high with his first post, so I won't even try to top it. Instead, I'll get all ruminatey about The Theology of Rankin-Bass as Illuminated by …

Comedy and Tragedy: The Two Faces of Bud. The generally accepted consensus among Scorsese proselytes cites this sequence, from John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) as Robert DeNiro's prime source of inspiration behind Travis Bickle's legendary mirror scene …

Famous Movie Poster Rejects You've Never Seen Part 5 Hey again, we're back with more never-seen rejected movie posters, from a private collection I photographed some 20-odd years ago. Links to previous entries below. As detailed in part one, the …

Sorry for the PhotoShop rush-job, but Herman and Mindy move so fast these days. You get the point.

Good tidings, people. David Elliott is fond of Hugo -- not as fond as Mr. Marks perhaps, but then, it's entirely possible that director Martin Scorsese himself is not as fond of Hugo as Mr. Marks. I kid, I kid. …

A few months ago, my editor -- the hopelessly misnamed Ernie Grimm -- asked if Mr. Lickona and I would like to do a back-and-forth cover story on Christmas movies. My parents prohibited me from watching Christmas movies as a …

Big Screen contributor Jay Allen Sanford has been doing yeoman work with his series on unreleased movie posters. Movie poster designers: they're just like us! Don't believe me? Check out these wonderful Fake Criterion Collection efforts. Enough to bring on …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tystuRBlmac Mercy, but that looks bad/boring/derivative. And the writing! "You are ugly...but you are beautiful." "That don't look like a fair fight." "Get on." "We did not cause this...but this very night...we will finish it!" Still, my favorite part has …

Progress continues apace on Baz Luhrmann's adaptation, and new set photos continue to trickle onto the web, including these of Leo as Gatsby and Carey Mulligan as Daisy, and Tobey Maguire as Nick. First, the meme: Then, a quick visit …

For the first time since the Nielsen Company began compiling data in 1970, the number of American households with television sets will drop between 2011 and 2012. It makes sense to cancel your cable -- most of the derivative crap …