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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SD Fringe adds SDSU filmmaker showcase

'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
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Masked wrestlers, nunsploitation, monsters, and San Diego Latino Film Festival's Un Mundo Extraño — Cinema Junkie looks to extreme Latin cinema with Horrible Imaginings' Miguel Rodriguez.
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Turner Classic Movies launches its March spotlight program, Condemned, a look at more than four decades of censorship, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and the film industry.
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For almost two decades, starting in the late 1950s, you could count on Hammer Films for breathtakingly lurid Gothic horror tales that served up vampires, werewolves, monsters and luscious ladies. British author Antony Earnshaw talks about the studio and it legacy for the launch of a yearlong film series Get Hammered at the Digital Gym Cinema.
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Filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer talks about making documentaries from a subjective point of view in "The Act of Killing" and "The Look of Silence," which is up for a Best Documentary Oscar this Sunday.
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This year is off to a good start with "Bone Tomahawk" and "The Witch" (now playing throughout San Diego) serving up well-crafted horror tales that challenge expectations about the genre.
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"Bone Tomahawk" gets a one-time screening in San Diego on Feb. 21 at the Digital Gym Cinema. Writer-director S. Craig Zahler talks about ramping up his slow-burn horror western.
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Film Struck is showcasing eight classics of Blaxploitation Cinema so it's time to revisit the Cinema Junkie Podcast featuring David Walker, writer of the "Shaft" comic books. Walker loves the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s and says we're due for Blaxploitation 2.0.
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With "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" reanimating on screens this weekend, the time seems ripe to speak with Doctor of the Dead Arnold T. Blumberg about a recent strain of the undead — the self-aware zombie.
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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!