The second annual Catalina Film Festival will be held May 4-6 on –where else — Catalina Island. Comic hero creator Stan Lee will be honored at the festival. Lee will receive the Great Communicator Award — an honor presented by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation — during the opening night ceremonies on Friday, May 4.
The next day, May 5, Lee will serve as host for the premiere of the documentary based on his life, “With Great Power – The Stan Lee Story,” at 12:30 p.m. He then will participate in the panel “The Anatomy of POW!,” along with Gill Champion, co-founder and CEO of POW! Entertainment. Lee will also introduce a special screening of the anticipated summer blockbuster “The Avengers.”
The Catalina Film Festival is a competitive event and awards will be given in such categories as feature, documentary, animation, student, short and screenplay. More than 70 films will be screened at various venues including the historic Avalon Theatre, which was the world’s first sound theater.
For more information, visit www.CatalinaFF.org; follow it on twitter: www.twitter.com/CatalinaFilm or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/CatalinaFilm.
Screening
For horror film fans, actor Tom Sizemore will be on hand Thursday, May 3, as Seraphim Films and UCLA’s Campus Events Commission (CEC) present a screening of the new movie “Slumber Party Slaughter,” 8 p.m. at the Ackerman Grand Ballroom on the UCLA campus. Director and co-star Rebekah Chaney and others will offer a pre-screening Q&A session.
As the title suggests, “Slumber Party Slaughter” is expected to have the standard ingredients for the mystery/horror/slasher genre. Sizemore plays Tom Kingsford, who along with some strippers he hires, have terrifying encounters with a sadistic, voyeuristic men’s club owner and real estate mogul, played by Ryan O’Neal, and Dave (Robert Carradine), a psychotic, obsessive club patron.
To view the trailer, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bPyqebkQhs
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DVD preview:
“Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol,” with Tom Cruise as IMF operative extraordinaire Ethan Hunt, will be released April 17. He teams up with Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg, going up against bad guy Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist). The high-rise scaling scene alone is worth the purchase of the DVD.
Also to be released on April 17: “Shame,” the NC-17-rated film with Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan; and Mark Wahlberg as a bad-turned-good forced to a thieving life one more time in “Contraband.”
On May 8: “Underworld: Awakening” features Kate Beckinsale doing her high-velocity vampire warrior thing. Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton face off in the light and breezy “Joyful Noise.” The romantic coupling of Rachel McAdams and Tatum Channing in “The Vow” also hits the DVD shelves.
Also coming up on DVD: “Chronicle: The Lost Footage Edition” (May 15); “The Grey” with Liam Neeson (May 21); World War II epic “Red Tails” (May 21); “Man on a Ledge” with Sam Worthington in a rare appearance as an ordinary guy not having to battle gods, titans or conquering hordes (May 21); “Act of Valor” (June 5); and Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law at it again as Holmes and Watson in “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” (June 5).
