 Beth Accomando is the voice of film in San Diego—literally.
Since 1987, Accomando, has reviewed movies for the city’s
National Public Radio affiliate, KPBS, a job that taps skills and
insight cultivated as one of UCSD’s first film graduates.
Accomando’s class were both pioneers and guinea pigs—this
was the first time the UCSD Department of Visual Arts offered a
degree with film as its singular focus. “You felt like you
had a lot of freedom,” she says. And even though the technology
of filmmaking has taken great strides since then, some of the faces
in the film department are still the same. “Babette [Mangolte]
is still there. So is Jean-Pierre Gorin. I took a lot
of classes from them,” she says. “Cinematography and
sound editing from her, editing from JP, and film
theory from Manny Farber.”
And being part of that debut class had its advantages as well as
its disadvantages. “While there was always a line of kids
waiting to use the video gear, there were four movie cameras and
only five of us making movies,” Accomando recalls. They didn’t
really know what classes to make us take, so we all got to kind
of fashion our own curriculum.”
Her offbeat studies soon segued into an unusual, albeit educational,
film-industry gig. In the late 1980s, Accomando met other alums
who were working on a sequel to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes [See
Article].
They needed an editor, she needed a job. She ended up working
on three Tomato films, and still works
as a video
editor and producer on a freelance basis. Those skills help inform
her film criticism at KPBS, where she records and cuts her own
pieces. “You’re writing for the ear. I love crafting
a radio review where you have clips from the film and maybe sound
bites from interviews with the filmmakers.”
Accomando says that people don’t always understand what being
a critic is all about. “When people read a review, they want
someone to agree with how they felt about a film,” she says. “So
if a critic doesn’t agree with them, the immediate response
is, ‘What an idiot.’ Critics are like anyone else,
they just see a lot more movies.”
In fact, Accomando’s own tastes run counter to the film critic
stereotype. She would much rather see a bad horror
film than a romantic comedy and that’s probably why she became
an expert
in the unlikely field of extreme Asian cinema—those hyper
violent films exported from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. “I
saw a double-bill of Police Story and Hard Boiled at a Hong Kong
Festival that stopped here for four days in 1990,” she says.
(Police Story directed by and starring Jackie Chan is a detective
thriller set in Hong Kong and Hard Boiled directed by John Woo,
stars Chow Yun-Fat as a cop determined to avenge his partner’s
murder.)
“My jaw dropped when I saw them,” Accomando says. “They
were unabash-edly over-the-top, wildly energetic, and just had
an irresistible and joyous sense of action.” She started
building a collection, and the more she saw, the more she found
herself hooked.
Her interests led her to start interviewing the new Asian stars.
Back in the early ’90s, folks like John Woo, Chow Yun-Fat
and Michelle Yeoh were happy to have any media attention from the
United States, and Accomando began pitching freelance stories directly
to NPR and to the American Public Media show The World. That niche
and those contacts have served her well in recent years, as many
of those players have made the move to Hollywood.
She generally reviews two films a week, putting together a mix
of mainstream
and independent fare. By necessity she covers the mainstream Hollywood
movies, but Accomando also keeps an eye out
for smaller films or programs that might get overlooked. “That’s
part of what I like to think of as film activism,” she says.
And though she’s been on the air for
20 years, it’s only recently that her signature radio show,
Film Club of the Air, has settled into a unique and comfortable
groove. Along with another local critic, Accomando takes calls
from the film-obsessed in radio land, letting listeners share their
own critiques of current films or of the critics themselves. “It’s
the old ‘everybody’s a critic,’” says Accomando. “But
it’s true. Reviews are one-sided, and Film Club opens it
up as a dialogue. Lots of people have really strong opinions, but
I enjoy having the discussion. I come from a big family where we
argue a lot.”
Anders Wright is a freelance journalist in San Diego.
Past shows and Accomando’s reviews are available online
at kpbs.org.
10 Gotta-See South Korean Films
Film critic Beth Accomando is a huge fan of South Korean films
and offers this handy cheat sheet. But she warns that many of these
aren't for the faint of heart.
1. Shiri: "The film that beat Titanic at the Korean box office and launched
the Korean new wave."
2. Tell Me Something: "A lyrical love story wrapped in a 'hardgore' murder
tale."
3. Joint Security Area: "Goes to the divided soul of a divided country."
4. Nowhere to Hide: "One of the greatest scenes cut to music, a murder
taking place to the Bee Gees' 'Throwing Stones.'"
5. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance: "The first of Park Chan- Wook's extraordinary
revenge trilogy (Oldboy and Lady Vengeance are also worth watching)."
6. Bichunmoo: "Just a spectacular action film."
7. Peppermint Candy: "Heartbreaking. It takes us on a personal journey
through Korea's tumultuous past."
8. My Wife is a Gangster: "A mix of slapstick comedy and brutal violence."
9. A Tale of Two Sisters: "A psychological horror that looks at both sides
of Korea's divided nature."
10. 3 Iron: "Kim Ki-Duk's beguiling romance is really strange—but
all his films have an element of strangeness."
 MORE:
PHILLY FILMS
|
