Cinema Junkie

Satisfy your celluloid addiction and mainline film 24/7 with Cinema Junkie’s Beth Accomando. So if you need a film fix, want to hear what filmmakers have to say about their work, feel like taking a deep dive into a genre, or just want to know what's worth seeing this weekend, then you've come to the right place. You can also find Beth's coverage of other arts and culture events here.
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'Park Opera' redefines opera in Balboa Park

Unpacking the virtues of Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners'

La Jolla Playhouse serves up audacious theatre to WOW you

Cinema Junkie recommends 'Sinners' and 'Gazer'
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The 17th annual San Diego Asian Film Festival runs through Nov. 12 at multiple venues with its home base at the UltraStar Mission Valley.
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Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz talks about films that highlights the best and worst in American politics.
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It's time for my annual check up with the Doctor of the Dead. Last year he diagnosed the self-aware zombie, this year he talks about Zombies for Humanity or zombies whose hearts have grown bigger than their brains.
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"Shin Godzilla" is the first Japanese film in 12 years to feature Toho's famous monster icon. On this podcast, I speak with professor Ramie Tateishi about the legacy of Big G and how this new film revisits the past and defines a potential new future.
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Another podcast from Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, this time checking in with horror authors about how to translate books to film and on what the written word can do that movies can't.
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FilmOut screens Clive Barker's "Nightbreed" on Oct. 12 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas. So for this podcast I spoke with Mark Alan Miller, who produced the Director's Cut and was key in locating footage that had been thought lost.
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I'm in the mood for Italian horror thanks to composer Fabio Frizzi coming to San Diego to perform scores from his films. So let's talk about Frizzi, Fulci and the fever dream of Italian horror.
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Sometimes there’s just too much good stuff to cover so this week I am going to talk with a pair of filmmakers from wildly divergent films but what makes them fun to combine into one podcast is that one is a real documentary — "For the Love of Spock" — and one is a fake documentary — "Operation Avalanche."
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A Valentine To Hong Kong's Rapturously Romantic Filmmaker
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Irish playwright Martin McDonagh makes his feature film writing and directing debut with "In Bruges" (opening February 8 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas), a darkly comic tale of two hitmen on holiday in the idyllic European city that calls itself “the Venice of the North.” Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell play the Irish killers. McDonagh previously worked with Gleeson on his Oscar-winning short "Six-Shooter."
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“There Will Be Blood” (opening January 11 at AMC Mission Valley and on January 18 at Landmarks La Jolla Village Theaters) is not the film fans of Paul Thomas Anderson may be expecting but it's a film that should please them nonetheless. The filmmaker who gave us “Hard Eight,” “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” and “Punch Drunk Love” now turns to an 80-year-old Upton Sinclair novel called “Oil!” as inspiration for his epic tale of greed and ambition.
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Let me just say up front what a pleasure it is to watch a well-crafted film in which not a word or a gesture is wasted. The Coens' No Country for Old Men (opening November 16 throughout San Diego) is such a film. You feel that every word has been chosen with care and everything from the type of boots a man wears to the cut of his hair has been chosen for a distinct reason.
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Beth Accomando speaks with actor George Hamilton about his role as Billy Flynn
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Indie Asian American film charms with homage to movie musicals.
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Ten canoes, three wives, one hundred and fifty spears... trouble. That's how Palm Pictures teases its new film "Ten Canoes" (opening August 10 at Landmarks Hillcrest Cinemas), an Australian film that sets a precedent by being shot almost entirely in the Aboriginal language of Ganalbingu.
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Born in Baltimore in 1946, Waters grew up in a comfortable, conservative Catholic family. He knew from an early age that he wanted to make movies and he began by making a pair of super 8 films,
Beth Accomando is taking a short break from film reviews and arts coverage to create a six-part video podcast called Stripper Energy. Check it out!