The Sin City: Dame to Kill For trailer makes you want to re-read the entire Sin City comic and revisit the first film. It's going to be hard for directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller to follow up the first film, but luckily most of the original cast members agreed to reprise their roles nine years later. The sequel will release on Aug. 22 in theaters everywhere.

If you’re in the mood for greased up muscles and copious amounts of sword, shield and spear, today is your lucky day. This evening you can catch a 300 double feature at Cinemark El Con, 3601 E. Broadway Blvd., and at Cinemark Park Place, 5870 E. Broadway Blvd., at 5:45 p.m. It starts off with Zack Snyder’s 2006 film 300, and it’s followed by the 2014 sequel 300: Rise of an Empire. Let me know how many over-enthusiastic fans shout “SPARTA!” while waiting in line. Visit cinemark.com for ticket prices and more info.

This Sunday, March 9, the Loft Cinema presents Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, part of their Essential Cinema series. A sweeping film about power and passion in 1930’s Italy, The Conformist is often regarded as one of the most beautiful films ever shot. Francis Ford Coppola obviously thought so - he scooped up it’s cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, for Apocalypse Now. Warren Beatty did too, for Ishtar, but don’t hold that against Storaro. It was the mid-80s and we were living in funny times. Cola Wars, people. You can this film where it was intended to be seen, on a gigantic screen, at 11 a.m., or on Tuesday, March 11, at 7 p.m. Admission is free with a $5 suggested donation.

On Monday, March 10, the Loft’s Mondo Mondays series presents the 1984 sexploitation shocker Savage Streets, where Linda Blair takes on an army of sleazy punk rockers. After a gang of hoodlums savagely rape her sister (played by Scream Queen Linnea Quigley), Blair arms herself to the teeth with crossbows and sets out to avenge her on the neon streets of Hollywood. Charles Bronson would be proud. The fun starts at 8 p.m. and $3 will get you in the door, $2 if you’re a Loft member.

20 years ago, Marvel's best artists quit so they could have control of their ideas and reap the financial benefits of their work. Their departure spawned a revolution for independent publishers and creators that changed—for better or for worse—the comic book industry forever. The filmmakers that brought you the critically acclaimed Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods and Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts are back with The Image Revolution:

Image began as more than just a publisher - it was a response to years of creator mistreatment, and it changed comics forever. The Image Revolution tells the story of Image Comics, from its founders' work at Marvel, through Image's early success, company difficulties during the comics market implosion, and ultimately the publisher's new generation of properties like The Walking Dead. Filled with colorful characters, the film includes interviews with Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, as well as Walking Dead cast members Andrew Lincoln and Norman Reedus. The Image Revolution is a documentary about the American ideal of entrepreneurship and personal freedom, and the challenge of maintaining integrity in the face of success. It is also a clarion call to all artists to take control of their own destiny.

You can catch this film on the big screen for one night only on Monday, March 24, at The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. There will be a mini comic-con located in The Loft's patio before the showing at 5:30 p.m. You can meet local comic book writers, artist and cartoonist that have self-published their own comics. The special guests include Adam Yeater, Danny Martin, Arnie Bermudez, Ryan Huna Smith, Thomas Keith, Gene Hall, Jacob Breckenridge, Ross Demma and Jenn Hopkins. Mitch Moen will showcase some art by Rob Osborne and other local fine artists.

Red Meat Creator Max Cannon will be the guest of honor.

There’s plenty of great offbeat screenings in town this week, including two indy films making a stop at The Screening Room, 127 E. Congress St. Both films are directed by up and coming director Geoff Marslett, who’ll be on hand to introduce ‘em, and both premiered last year at SXSW. First up is Mars, an animated film about robotic and manned journeys to the red planet after alien life has been discovered (with Tucson’s own Howe Gelb holding down the fort at mission control!). Mars plays tonight at 8 p.m., and there’s a second screening on Saturday, March 1, also at 8 p.m. Marslett’s second film is the much hyped Loves Her Gun, starring Trieste Kelly Dunn (of Cinemax’s criminally underrated series Banshee) as an NYC refugee in Texas whooping it up with Austin firearm aficionados. This plays on Friday, Feb. 28 at 8 p.m. and on Saturday, March 1 at 6 p.m. Both films are $6. Check out facebook.com/tucsonfilm for more info.

The Loft Cinema is wrapping up their February series Our Fair Audrey: The Films of Audrey Hepburn, tonight with Breakfast at Tiffany’s. If you’re looking for a quality date night, you can’t go wrong with this one. Based on a novella by Truman Capote, director Blake Edwards and screenwriter George Axelrod created an endearing classic about young socialite Holly Golightly (Hepburn) finding true love in the Big Apple. Have fun trying not to bristle when Mickey Rooney shows up as a Japanese landlord. Ohhhhh boy, times were different. Sail down the “Moon River” tonight at 7 p.m. Tickets are general admission.

• Photo courtesy of Warner Bros.
• 'Godzilla' is scheduled to hit theaters on May 16.

Bryan Cranston steals the show in this latest Godzilla trailer. Hopefully, this is a refreshing take on the 60-year-old monster that has seen endless retellings and sequels. The film is scheduled to be released on Friday, May 16 in 2D and 3D in theaters everywhere.

It’s Rodeo Weekend, but unfortunately there is no motherlode of cowboy cinema classics to be found. It’s a dry gulch out there, lil’ doggies. Fill your hand, Tucson!

The Loft Cinema presents Fateful Findings on Friday, Feb. 21 and Saturday, Feb. 22 at 10 p.m. I caught this flick last fall when it premiered at the Arizona Underground Film Festival, and I gotta tell you, this makes the barometer of so-bad-it’s-great cinema, The Room, look like Citizen Kane. Watch what happens when a computer programmer gains supernatural abilities, deals with his drug-addled girlfriend and exposes government secrets. I’m gonna guess that this was made on a $10 budget and free donations from Winchell’s Donuts. Forget Sharknado, test some truly dangerous waters with Fateful Findings. You’ll be talking about it for days. Tickets are regular admission.

On Sunday, Feb. 23, the Loft presents the 1966 film Daisies as part of the Loft Staff Select series. Daisies is a high-water mark of the Czech New Wave film movement, and people who view it for the first time have a tendency to fall in love with it’s two leads, Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová. The two teenage girls both play characters named Marie, and the film recklessly captures their free-spirited attempt to strike against bourgeois society with a series of fun pranks. See what all the fuss is about and prepare to be smitten at 7 p.m. Tickets are $6 for general admission and $5 for Loft members.

Veteran grizzled actor Bruce Dern is currently receiving a lot of (justifiable) accolades for his performance in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, but I’ve always thought every Dern performance is worth it’s weight in gold, especially his wacko tour-de-force performance in the 1974 sci-fi classic Silent Running, directed by special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull. Dern plays a space botanist who would rather spend time with the his three robot friends in the Biosphere 2-like containment center aboard his spaceship. It beats playing cards with the other guys on the ship who eat Hungry Man dinners instead of fresh fruit, I suppose. This extremely eco-friendly movie (complete with a Joan Baez soundtrack!) plays at the Loft on Wednesday, Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. as part of their Science of Fiction series. After the film there will be a Q&A with several science experts. Tickets are regular admission. For more information, visit the Loft’s website at loftcinema.com or call 795-0844.

Experimental filmmaker Godfrey Reggio is best known for his Qatsi trilogy. The trilogy started with 1982’s Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for “Life Out Of Balance), and is followed by 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“Life In Transformation) and 2002’s Naqoyqatsi (“Life As War). Each film does away with conventional narration; in it’s place are slow motion and time-lapse shots of people, places and things, all set to a spellbinding score by minimalist composer Philip Glass.

He has a new film out today called Visitors. It’s opening at the Loft Cinema, and you can read my Tucson Weekly review of it here. While it’s similar to his past three films, and Glass is still responsible for a masterful score, there are some remarkable differences. It’s shot entirely in black and white, and there are only 74 shots in the picture. There are times where it’s like watching a photo suddenly spring to life. This is as slowed down as Reggio can get, and you’ll find out why in this rare interview.

I spoke to Reggio on the phone, and we discussed some of the themes of the films, the shooting process, and his unique relationship with Glass.

I noticed a bridge between Naqoyqatsi and Visitors. It’s the human relationship with technology. Do you think I’m on the right path with that?

You know, there’s a very famous saying in Latin that says “Quidquid recipitur," meaning "one receives according to their bowl or to their cup or their form." With Visitors the person who sees the film is herself/himself the storyteller, the character, the plot, anything’s possible in terms of how it can be seen. Does it have a relationship to Naqoyqatsi? I think so. All of the films are an attempt to go around the same tree as often as possible, but in a different cadence, in a different form. So, they do all relate in some way to each other.

In Visitors, everything is distinctly slowed down, in contrast to how our culture and how our lifestyle is vastly accelerated. Was that purposeful?

Very purposeful. Indeed. It was done deliberately for that reason. We’re on speed in rush hour, as it were, running our future. As a result of that, the stiller a person can be, or attuned as senses can be - if you look at a normal theatrical film the average cut is anywhere from three to six seconds, so there’s not much time to dwell, because the images are telling you a story. In this case, the story is to behold, and in that sense the longer it’s on, the more there is to behold. It’s like if you went to see a sunset, you don’t look at it for three seconds and disappear. What the meaning of the sunset is, is probably the sunset has no meaning but it can be immensely meaningful. In that sense, slowing things down can be at once unnerving, confrontational, and difficult given the speed. Everything is in a nanosecond at this moment.

I read that some in of the shots, particularly the children, that they were filmed while playing video games and watching television. Was that also intentional?

Oh yes, definitely. The film, it has no words, it’s like a speechless narrative because the people on the screen are looking directly at you. I didn’t want those people acting in any way, so what you see on the screen is nothing more than their ordinary activity. The second the TV comes on, or video games or any kind of screen for that matter, it’s like a tractor beam, it holds our attention. While they knew they were being filmed, as soon as that TV went on, they went inside the TV. These are images from the outside in, being drawn by a screen that’s not present except at the end of the film. So yes, screens are very important, and nobody was told “can you make this face?” It was simply having to shoot an awful lot in order to capture those moments when people have these kinds of expressions or stares. All of that was unacted and non-self conscious.

I assume that some of the footage, such as the abandoned amusement park and ruined buildings, was in New Orleans?

Yes indeed. I wanted to go down there - I’m from New Orleans - and I wanted to go down after the hurricane, but I couldn’t get the backing for the kind of project I wanted. Those locations, having sat there for five years, no longer look like the result of a massive hurricane or flood. They look more like Pompeii or the ruins of modernity. In that sense I couldn’t have a set built better for the point of view for this film.

Did Visitors stem from wanting to capture post-Katrina New Orleans?

No, Visitors started in 2002 actually. I was finishing up Naqoyqatsi, and this idea of slow, very slow, of black and white, of something in another dimension - other worldly - came to me. I don’t don’t know how it came to, let’s just say it was an intuition. Then, taking years to find the money, of course those intuitions mature, and become more reflective because if I’m thinking about them, they’re thinking about me everyday, I’m really focused on it. There were seven years in prep and then a over three year period for the shooting, editing, and musical score.

Sorry folks, looks like I made a mistake last week! Funny Face was not the Audrey Hepburn film playing last week at the Loft Cinema, it was the 1954 film Sabrina, starring Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Tonight is Funny Face, the 1957 film version of George Gershwin’s musical with Hepburn and Fred Astaire. It starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are regular admission.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and a few of Tucson’s theaters are delivering up the goods for you and your special someone. Over at the Loft you can check out the 1971 cult classic Harold and Maude, starring Bud Cort as a morose young man and Ruth Gordon as a senior citizen bursting with life. Not only is it one of the best love stories on celluloid, but I often forget how funny this film is. Good luck with getting the Cat Stevens soundtrack out of your head for the next few days! The film starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are regular admission.

If you’re a couple that fancies yourselves as a modern day Bonnie & Clyde, might I suggest you check out True Romance at the Loft, also playing on Valentine’s Day. Released in 1993, True Romance was directed by action-film auteur Tony Scott with a script by a then white-hot Quentin Tarantino. This was a year before Pulp Fiction and two years after Reservoir Dogs. True Romance stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette as a young, pop-culture obsessed couple on the run from all sorts of seedy types. Going along for the ride are Dennis Hopper as Slater’s rent-a-cop dad, Christopher Walken as a terrifying hitman for the Mob, Brad Pitt as a stoner who never leaves the couch, Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis/Slater’s moral conscious, and Gary Oldman as a scene-stealing psychotic pimp. True Romance starts at 10 p.m. Tickets are $6 and $5 for Loft members. There’s a repeat performance at the same time on Saturday, Feb. 15. For further information, visit loftcinema.com or call 795-0844.

Over at the Fox Theatre, they’re rolling out When Harry Met Sally, the 1989 romantic comedy starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. Shhhhhhh… I have a secret. I don’t think I’ve actually seen this movie. I’ve never been a fan of Crystal, but I hear it’s pretty good. You can judge for yourself or see it again at 7:30 p.m. Visit foxtucsontheatre.org or call 624-1515 for more information.

So, someone sent me this ambiguous youtube link with no preview, and I had to click it to find out what she was was trying to tell me. I'm glad I did because it lead me to the latest trailer for Epic Pictures Group's new horror film: ZOMBEAVERS. It's not The Shining or Exorcist, but it looks hella fun.

The trailer says this movie was brought to you by producers from the Cabin Fever, The Ring and American Pie.

In it, a group of college kids at a riverside cabin are menaced by a swarm of deadly zombie beavers. The film is helmed by first-time director Jordan Rubin from a script he wrote with brothers Jon and Al Kaplan.

I demand that someone screens this film in a theater near me. I mean, come on, look at the freaking offical movie poster:

Here’s The Trailer For ‘Zombeavers’, Destined To Be The Greatest Movie Of 2014 http://t.co/PyaGlO8AKj pic.twitter.com/1Eru6zaA96
— Lauren O'Neil (@laurenonizzle) February 8, 2014

Valentine’s Day is fast upon us, and The Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., is giving us the gift of romantic comedies starring Audrey Hepburn all month long! Tonight at 7:00 p.m. you catch the delectable Ms. Hepburn along with Fred Astaire in the 1957 film version of George Gershwin’s musical Funny Face. Tickets are regular admission. Stay tuned for next week’s entry in the Loft’s Our Fair Audrey: The Films of Audrey Hepburn series.

Starting on Saturday, Feb. 8 at the Loft is a new multi-month film series called The Human Rights Film Festival. The festival starts with a discussion on documentary films titled Talking Docs: An Introduction to Documentary Film Theory. At 11:00 a.m., Loft film programmer Jeff Yanc will hold court and discuss the art of watching and critiquing documentaries. On Tuesday, Feb. 11. at 7:00 p.m. the Loft will present a screening of deepsouth at Casa Libre, 228 N. 4th Ave. Deepsouth is a 72-minute doc on HIV and poverty in the Southern region. All festival films are free admission.

Also on Saturday, Feb. 8 is the triumphant return of The Internet Cat Video Festival. I love cats and all, but jeez people, you must really like watching videos of cats to warrant a second screening. The festival starts at 7:00 p.m., but you can come early and say hello to your little feline friends at 5:00 p.m. when the Hermitage No-Kill Cat Shelter brings cats available for adoption.

On Sunday, Feb. 9, the Loft will screen David Gordon Green’s debut film George Washington as party of their Essential Cinema series. I remember watching this when it first came out, and I was absolutely floored. I thought Green was the second coming of pastoral filmmaker Terence Malick. Since George Washington, Green’s gone on to direct All The Real Girls, Pineapple Express and Your Highness, plus that goofy Maserati commercial last Sunday during the Super Bowl. Ok, maybe he’s not the second coming of Malick, but George Washington is damn near perfect. It plays at 11:00 a.m. and there’s a second screening on Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7:00 p.m. Both screenings are free admission with a $5 suggested donation. For more information, you can go loftcinema.com or call 795-0844.