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...

The crush to get a gander at HOFFMAN AS CAPOTE was so great yesterday that an extra press screening had to be improvised a half hour after the initially scheduled one in the Cinemaxx multi-screen theatre complex. Presumably, the half hour decollage allows reels of the film to be switched from one hall to the other without missing a beat. Unfortunately, the press conference time remained unchanged, so that those condemned to the later viewing (like myself), found the conference already well unde...