The Santa Barbara International Film Festival will honor Ryan Gosling with the first Independent Award at the 23rd edition of the Fest, which runs January 24-February 3, 2008, it was announced today by SBIFF Executive Director Roger Durling. The Independent Award, an award SBIFF established to recognize an actor who has made a significant and unique contribution to independent film, will be presented to Ryan Gosling on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. “In my opinion, Ryan has become the best ac...
The Sunday morning edition of the Santa Barbara News-Press was covered with color photos of a happily smiling Forest Whitaker posing with his pretty wife and pressing the flesh on the red carpet at the final gala of the fest, where the tall, heavy-set, shaven-craned Afro-American "actor’s actor" with the drooping left eye was honored with the festival’s American Riviera award for his overall career trajectory, but especially in recognition of his "role of a lifetime" performance as African ...
The 22nd Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival announced the winners of the 2007 festival competition at the Closing Night ceremonies, hosted by KTYD’s Julie Ramos. The festival, which ran from January 25th - February 4th, attracted more than 60,000 visitors to the area, bringing attendance to an all-time high.
The esteemed jury for the 2007 SBIFF included: Jury Chair and film editor Dave Stein and filmmaker Candace Schermerhorn judged documentaries; actors Peter Riegert (“Anim...
Off the street customers shelled out sixty bucks a shot ($60 USD) last night to pack the mighty Arlington Theater from wall to wall and stem to stern, for a privileged view and hearing with former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Al Gore, in town with director Davis Guggenheim to present their landmark Global Warning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth". Festival director Roger Durling, barely able to contain his excitement at pulling this off -- (i.e., getting Gore to swing up to...
Film festivals come in various shapes, sizes, formats and orientations. The currently ongoing 22nd installment of the Santa Barbara Film Festival is a bit off-beat in certain aspects. Lasting eleven days and presenting some 200 films it is certainly not small -- more like "medium to large."
In terms of importance, however, while it is not considered to be quite in the same class as the North-American majors, Sundance, Telluride, Chicago, New York, Toronto and Montreal, it can nevertheless ce...
Santa Barbara is a very upscale seaside paradise a scant 90 miles up the coast from Los Angeles, distinguished more for its socio-economic exclusivity, high rents, distinctive Spanish architecture and sprawling beachfront university than for the modest international film festival to which it has been home since 1985. Slowly building year by year and able to draw easily on Hollywood based talent because of its relative proximity to Tinseltown, the Santa Barbara fest has now come into its own and ...
MIRREN AND WHITTAKER SHINE AT S.A.G. AWARDS
by Alex Deleon, Santa Barbara
This is the jolly season of awards in Southern California -- seems like there's a different one every week somewhere in L.A. or vicinity. Following the Golden Globes (Foreign Press Awards) a couple of weeks back we now have the Screen Actors Guild (S.A.G.) awards which are similar and yet a bit different. Both sets of awards go to both film and television personalities, but the Globes recognize all kinds of categories (w...
The rain in Spain is mostly on the plain, but here in California it seems to be mostly in Santa Barbara, throwing a bit of a chilling damper on the opening festivities of the 22nd Santa Barbara International Film Festival --
SBIFF.
Dame Helen Mirren, the regal 61 year old actress of "The Queen", wowed a sea of admirers and undoubtedly won many new ones (Yours Truly among them), on Friday night at the palatial Admiral Theater on upper State Street, and throngs of Will Smith fans braved the gu...
Debuting its slate of local and international films, and welcoming filmmakers and stars to town, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival opened over the weekend to enthusiastic audiences.
Sienna Miller, Guy Pearce, and director George Hickenlooper were lauded by a packed house at the Arlington Theatre on Thursday as “Factory Girl,” a film about 1960s “It Girl” Edie Sedgwick, who was born and tragically died in Santa Barbara. Also in attendance were Edie’s brother Jonathan Sedgwi...
