Travis Bickle's Rules for Everyday Living, Lesson #1: How to Shine Your Shoes
My dad was big on Simonized shoes. Decades before Marty and Nick Pileggi popularized the term, Larry Marks had a wooden shinebox parked on the floor of his closet. I'm warning you: no cracks about Larry picking up a few …
An Open Letter to Thin Ice-Stomper, Elizabeth Redleaf
The watered-down version of Jill Sprecher's The Convincer is currently playing at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas under the name Thin Ice. I suggest you hurry and see it if for no other reasons than cinematographer Dick Pope's exceptional night work and …
Review: Post Mortem
Were it not for the San Diego Latino Film Festival, I might never have been given a proper introduction to Tony Manero. No, not the disco-dancing Guido of Saturday Night Fever fame, but a John Travolta impersonator/serial killer who quietly …
Complete Rundown of The San Diego Latino Film Festival's Opening Night Celebración!
Get ready for 11 jam-packed days and over 150 films: the San Diego Latino Film Festival kicks off it 19th year tonight. Kudos to Ethan van Thillo and his staff for putting together another el supremo festival de cinema internacional. …
Dig a Hole: Robert B. Sherman, Disney Songwriter
Robert B. Sherman, who along with his younger brother, Richard M. Sherman, was responsible for numerous cherished Disney classics, died Monday, March 5 in London. He was 86. Robert B. Sherman. Before answering his musical calling, Robert B. Sherman was …
The San Diego Asian Film Festival Encourages You to Let the Bullets Fly
Let the Bullets Fly begins its run this Friday at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15, and the San Diego Asian Film Festival wants you to attend. Directed by Jiang Wen (Devils on the Doorstep, The Sun Also Rises) and starring the …
Promotional Tie-Ins 101
How's this for a brilliant bit of joint promotion? What better than The Lorax to give its seal of approval to children's diapers? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Aren't parents and their children the ones to absorb the …
Michigan Man Files Suit Against AMC Theatres Over Costly Concession Prices
A security technician from Livonia, Michigan is taking AMC Theatres to court over the high price of popcorn. Joshua Thompson, fed up with being gouged at the concession stand, retained the services of an attorney and decided to send a …
Dig a Hole: Bruce Surtees, The Prince of Darkness
He was the Prince of Darkness, the man who lowered the bar when it came to low-key lighting. Most cinematographers fear “losing the light” come sundown. Bruce Surtees’ motto was lose the light. Bruce Mohr Powell Surtees died on February …
Short Takes: The Lorax
Color Dr. Seuss’s “earth-friendly” children’s book gloomy-green and Illumination Entertainment’s animated counterpart a blinding shade of pestled-pastels. (Consider sporting two pair of 3D specs.) The environmental fable holds firm, only this time our young hero does it all to impress …
Tim and Eric's $275.00 Interview
Bad taste stalks me with a near John Warnock Hinckley-like intensity. I sat amongst the opening-nighters when Pink Flamingos premiered and was the first kid on the block to discover Jackass. Having never seen an episode of Tim and Eric …
Review: John Carter of Mars
Relax everybody: no review embargoes have been broken, no colleagues beaten to the punch. Civil War veteran-turned martian-hunter, John Carter, was born in 1912 when Edgar Rice Burroughs' stories first began appearing in the pages of the pulp magazine The …
Watch Walt Disney's The Story of Menstruation (1946)
I know what you're thinking: 'Disney' and 'menstruation' in the same headline means Marks is making funny again with a Jib-Jab video of Jiminy Cricket singing When You Wish Upon a Bladder. Maybe there will be a mild attempt at …
Blogfight: Interview Inequity!
I don't want to come off sounding like a complainer, but haven't things gone a tad out of focus at The Big Screen? Here are the people I have interviewed so far this year: Wim Wenders. Tim & Eric. Look …
Apart Together: Asian Film Screening Tonight
Tonight ushers in the San Diego Asian Film Festival's first quarterly screening of 2012. Wang Quan'an's Apart Together, a bittersweet love story about sacrifice and second chances, was the opening night film of the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival, where …
The Interviewer's Anxiety at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla: An Interview with Wim Wenders, Pt. 2
I used to get it a lot more. Nowadays, most people seem to forget I have a first name and simply call me Mark. After the publicist said, “Wim, I’d like you to meet Scott Marks,” he shook my hand …
Dig a Hole: Dick Anthony Williams, Cinema's Premier Pimpologist
On a busy Oscar Sunday comes sad news: we lost one of cinema's pioneering Pimpologists. I am forced to be uncharacteristically brief. For a period in the '70s, you couldn't buy a better celluloid whoremonger than Dick Williams. With his …
There's Always Hope for Tonight's Live Oscar-Blog
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Bob "For Hugo" Hope speaking to you from the grave, right here, putting in my annual Oscar-day appearance for The Big Screen. Hey, how 'bout that Martin Scorsese's Hugo, huh? Wadn't that something? …
Wim, Vigor, and Vitality: An Interview with Wim Wenders, Pt. 1
Few filmmakers display the care, handling, and respect for cinema quite like Wim Wenders does, and after 40 years behind the camera, there are no signs of slowing down. The director of such acclaimed films as Paris, Texas, Wings of …
Review: Act of Valor
DISCLAIMER: No Navy SEALs were harmed during the making of this picture. The Navy granted “filmmakers” Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh permission to play with their toys and the result is a gung-ho recruitment film that’s as incompetently acted and …