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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Bringing 'The Heart' to life

'Batman Azteca' wows Comic-Con

Comic-Con Panel Highlight: Graphic India

Little Fish students get work reviewed at Comic-Con
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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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The seventh annual Horrible Imaginings Film Festival wrapped this past Sunday. Here are interviews with filmmakers from around the globe who came.
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Something wicked this way comes! It is time for the seventh annual Horrible Imaginings Film Festival, which runs Sept. 7 through 11 at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.
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The comic-turned-playwright's latest work, "Meteor Shower," has its world premiere at the Old Globe.
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"Hell or High Water" is a throwback to 1970s indie films. Director David Mackenzie and actor Gil Birmingham talk about making a contemporary Western that delivers social commentary.
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There are less than three months until Halloween. Spirit stores are already posting signs looking for employees and I am still trying to track down tentacles for my Lovecraft haunt this year. So basically it’s panic mode. Fortunately, I spent this past weekend at ScareLA where my sense of panic was understood by fellow Halloween enthusiasts.
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Coming of age films are filling the theaters these days. Recently we have seen coming of age tales play out in 1980s Pittsburgh ("Adventureland") and Northern Australia ("The Black Balloon"), and coming up we travel to 1970s New Jersey ("Lymelife").
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Earlier this month "Fast and Furious" scored a surprising hit at the box office bringing in $72 million in three days. What's also surprising is that at the helm of this $80 million dollar Hollywood sequel is one time indie film darling Justin Lin. Today, "17 Again" -- the new film with Disney star Zac Efron -- opens, and in the director's chair is another independent filmmaker, Burr Steers.
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In "17 Again" (opening April 17 throughout San Diego) Mike O'Donnell (Disney star Zac Efron of "High School Musical" fame) is a star on his high school basketball court with a college scout in the stands and a bright future in his grasp.
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The San Diego Italian Film Festival may be the new kid on the block but they have been actively bringing films to San Diego both at their festival and for single screening film events. These are films that have not played in San Diego before and are unlikely to receive any kind of release here.
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Seth Rogen has become an unlikely star through a series of projects with Judd Apatow beginning with the TV series "Freaks and Geeks" in 1999 and reaching a peak with the feature film "Knocked Up" in 2007. Those projects played on Rogen's slacker appeal. Now Rogen tries something a little different with "Observe and Report" (opened April 10 throughout San Diego).
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For last year's closing night, FilmOut San Diego presented the world premiere of James Vasquez' homegrown film "Ready? Okay!" This San Diego-based charmer concerns a young boy named Josh who wants to join his school's cheer squad.
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Sugar (opened April 10 at Landmark Hillcrest Cinemas) is a baseball movie in the same way that Eight Men Out was a baseball movie. You cannot conceive of either film without the baseball backdrop but neither film is a formula sports movie in the sense of putting primary importance on the winning or losing of games.
Stripper Energy just received an Emmy for Journalistic Enterprise, you can watch the six-part video podcast now.