Striking Gold: SBIFF Scores at Globes 

Just three weeks after this issue hits newsstands, the 39th Santa Barbara International Film Festival launches 11 days of screenings, seminars, speakers and sensational opportunities for sightseeing of stars. As always, Academy Award nominees and other award show hopefuls will be gracing the stage at the Arlington for in-depth conversations about their art during the February 7-17 fest. Annual actor accolades are already rolling in: The Golden Globes last weekend gave statues to three actors lined up for SBIFF tributes in Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers) and Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer). SBIFF has also slated solo tributes to Maestro’s Bradley Cooper, Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things), and Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction); and Virtuosos honors for Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple), Colman Domingo (Rustin), America Ferrera (Barbie), Greta Lee (Past Lives), Charles Melton (May December) and Andrew Scott. Oscarologists aggregator GoldDerby.com has called out every one of these announced SBIFF attendeesasodds-on Academy Award nominees likely to be included among the 20 names (across four acting categories) to be announced on January 23 for the 96th Academy Awards.

Sally-ing Forth 

Indeed, SBIFF has arranged for a slew of hot-at-the-moment actors to sweep into town next month. But they don’t have what the Pollock Theateris having, which would be… Meg Ryan. The theater that is home to the Carsey-Wolf Center is celebrating the 35th anniversary of When Harry Met Sally as part of its “Revisiting the Classics” series, and somehow they’ve managed to land Ryan, who costarred with Billy Crystal as the title characters in the timeless American classic rom-com. She’ll be part of a pre-screening conversation with Brad Silberling, who earned his bachelor’s degree in English at UCSB before heading down to Hollywood, where he directed Ryan in 1998’s City of Angels among his many other films. Pre-registration for the January 23 event is filled, but you can join the standby admission line to replace no-shows for the free event. 

Also coming as part of the new Pollock series: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the innovative animation-juxtaposed-with-live-action comedy-thriller; with Bob Hoskins as the grizzled gumshoe Eddie Valiant pitted against Montecito’s own Christopher Lloyd as the villainous Judge Doom. The award-winning film’s associate producer Steve Starkey and screenwriter Peter S. Seaman – who later directed the Santa Barbara docs Citizen McCaw and West of the West: Tales from California’s Channel Islands – do the post-screening Q&A for the January 25 event. Details at www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/events.