CCI-IFF 2009 Judges
More properly known as the Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (or
CCI-IFF), this popular programming track continues to present the best in genre-related
filmmaking. The juried event, which consists of films in seven
categories—action/adventure, animation, comics-oriented, documentary, humor,
horror, and science fiction/fantasy—will culminate in trophies and prizes given
out at a ceremony on Sunday, July 26. The Festival will run all four days, with
the popular "Comic-Con Film School" preceding it. This year's celebrity judges
are:
Beth Accomando
Beth Accomando has been the KPBS film critic for 20 years and is the author of
the blog Cinema Junkie. She edited three sequels to
The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.
She's president of the San Diego Film Critics
Society and director of Film School Confidential: A Showcase of San Diego and
Tijuana Filmmakers. She covers independent and international cinema for National
Public Radio and Public Radio International. She's received numerous Society of
Professional Journalist Awards and San Diego Press Club Awards as well as 11
southwestern area Emmy Awards. She's been attending Comic-Con for almost 30
years.
Mark Altman
Mark A. Altman is currently a writer/producer on the hit ABC television show
Castle. His films include the award-winning comedy classic
Free Enterprise,
starring Emmy Award winners Eric McCormack (
Will & Grace) and William Shatner
(
Star Trek, Boston Legal), for which he was awarded the Best New Writer award at
the AFI International Film Festival by the Writers Guild of America (WGA), where
the film was also honored as Best Picture. Altman has written and produced
numerous other popular genre films, including Dimension Films' adaptation of the
bestselling video game
DOA: Dead Or Alive. Altman is also the founder and former
publisher of
Geek Monthly magazine, the leading magazine devoted to popular
culture and all things geek chic. He has spoken at myriad industry events and
conventions, including ShowBiz Expo in Hollywood and the Variety/Final Draft
Screenwriters Panel at the Cannes Film Festival, and he has been a juror at the
prestigious Sitges Film Festival in Barcelona, Spain.
Marc Bernadin
Marc Bernardin has, in his 13 years as an editor for
Entertainment Weekly
magazine, worked on hundreds of stories and written nearly a thousand reviews—of movies,
TV shows, books, comics, DVDs, videogames, websites, CDs—almost everything
under the sun. In his increasingly sparse free time, he also writes
comic books with his longtime bestie, Adam Freeman:
The Highwaymen and
Push for
WildStorm,
Genius for Top Cow, and
Monster Attack Network for AiT/Planet Lar
(soon to be a major motion picture from Disney).