Tag archives: film
Roger Ebert once said that “the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” If there’s one writer-director currently working from a place of empathy, […]
Are you a big Josh Brolin fan, especially ever since his character Llewellyn Moss got his buff cowboy body blown away by Javier Bardem’s methodical and passionless hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, one of the Coen Brothers’ finest films? Or perhaps your taste runs to Jeff Bridges, another locally resident actor […]
Hot on the heels of the milestone 25th Ojai Film Festival, and just a week after the launching of the new SBIFF Film Center in the former home of the Fiesta Five, the historic Ojai Playhouse is reopening on November 22 after being closed for a decade. Similarly but on a much smaller scale than […]
The world of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival keeps expanding. What started as a tiny weekend film festival 40 years ago – a way to draw tourists to our seaside berg during the winter off-season lull – has exploded into a juggernaut of a festival that boasts more star power than any place outside […]
Tim Matheson has been acting since he was a teenager and has a list of credits that runs to many pages, but the onetime Montecito resident (1994-2010, the only time he lived more than minutes from Hollywood) might still be best known for playing rush chairman Eric “Otter” Stratton in National Lampoon’s Animal House – […]
Trick question: Is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – one of this summer’s hits –twice as good as the 1988 original? Not so much, which is why seeing Tim Burton’s now-classic 36-year-old Beetlejuice on Halloween seems like a special sort of holiday treat as it opens the Ojai Film Festival with a free screening in Libbey Park. The […]
Academy Award-nominated French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve gets SBIFF’s superstar treatment via a curated career retrospective of seven of the director’s important movies, including Incendies, Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune Parts One & Two. The films – which have garnered a collective 28 Oscar nominations (with Dune 2 still pending) will screen in […]
Orlando Bloom, British actor fiancée of singer Katy Perry, took his body to the limit while filming The Cut, about a retired boxer returning to matters pugilistic. The new movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this month and Bloom told People he “literally thought I was gonna die” because the role was so […]
This weekend offers an additional opportunity to aid area first responders in their mental/emotional health challenges — which is also a big part of One805’s oeuvre — via a world premiere event of the documentary short film 9-1-1 Project Harmony at the Lobero on September 8. The film covers the program of the same name, […]
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival is not only adding a 12th day for its 40th incarnation, slated for February 4-15, but is also finally employing the Riviera Theatre, SBIFF’s recently refurbished state-of-the-art year-round home, as a venue for the festival. The Riv will have its own dedicated film pass. All of the 2025 SBIFF […]
If you’re at all familiar with the French provocateur, Catherine Breillat, you’ll know that the 75-year-old master does not shy away from the taboo. In fact, she embraces it with gusto and sincere pathos. It’s what makes her films wildly compelling, even if they make you squirm, gasp, or look away in shock and shame. […]
Back in the day, mention of home movies got folks scattering as fast as they could. After all, who wanted to watch other family’s foibles or vacation videos on some flickering screen in a living room? But the term takes on a different meaning in the new “Santa Barbara Home Movies’’ series launching July 20 […]
It’s also time for the 15th Asian American Film Series, whose films speak to the Asian American experience as an exploration of the history and cultures of the Asian communities that once thrived in and around the Santa Barbara Presidio area. Held at 6 pm on Fridays in July at the Alhecama Theatre, the 2024 […]
Back in 2018, Dawa Tarchin Phillips, resident teacher of Bodhi Path Santa Barbara and co-founder and former Director of Education of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential, led two dozen people on an around-the-world pilgrimage, visiting 17 sacred sites in five countries on four continents in 30 days. “The intention was to learn about […]
Do you remember the pre-streaming, pre-Tivo, pre-DVD, pre-VCR days when Santa Barbara was among nearly every artsy city in the country that had cinematic art houses showing classic movies and curated retrospective among screenings of indie and foreign films? Now with its new After Hours weekend series, SBIFF’s Riviera Theatre is in many ways returning […]
The results are in and the awards handed out at the second annual Montecito Student Film Festival on March 23 at Westmont’s Porter Theatre. About 150 people attended the festival throughout the day to watch 41 films, pared down from the more than 500 that were submitted. Chase Olivera, an 18-year-old student at College of […]
Santa Barbara certainly has no dearth of film festivals, but until now there hasn’t been a festival that directly addresses the region’s rare confluence of people who are both cinema-savvy and socially conscious. If Illuminate hadn’t come along, perhaps someone would have had to invent one to interact at that intersection. Fortunately, the Illuminate Film […]
This month, as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of women, the legacy of Ruth Kerr, who co-founded Westmont in 1937, continues to shape lives with a vision ahead of its time. She encouraged women to embrace the world beyond the idyllic Montecito campus, inspiring them to pursue their dreams and make a difference on a […]
The second annual Montecito Student Film Festival has exploded in popularity and gone global. Student filmmakers from 65 countries have submitted more than 500 films for the free event. Attendees can watch films throughout the day, Saturday, March 23, from 10 am – 5 pm in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. Festival producer Tamia Sanders (’24) says […]
Web-slinging hero Miles Morales returned last year in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, released five years after the smash hit Into the Spider-Verse claimed the Academy Award for animation. The sequel, which features breathtaking animation that pushes the limits of the form and also received a nomination, features a large cast of Spider-People, paying homage to […]
