Super-Select Highlights from SBIFF

Last week, we said we weren’t going to tally up the total number of current Academy Award nominees coming to SBIFF this year. But I couldn’t resist reporting on the deluge of such Oscar-decorated actors and others who showed up on a single day last Sunday. We got to hear from the producers of all 10 Best Picture hopefuls, the directors of all five of the nominees for Best International Feature, and six performers up for Oscars in the four acting categories as part of the Virtuosos. That matched Saturday’s total, adding up the participants for the Women’s and Casting panels and Artisan’s Awards. That’s 42 in all. Yikes!

SBIFF’s nod to the new Oscar category of Casting Director via a panel was a welcome addition to the slate, as we heard a number of fascinating behind the scenes stories about things like writer-directors changing scripts to incorporate talents of actors that brought something they hadn’t expected (e.g. the final scene of Hamnet), and just how far and wide the casting heads will go to find someone to play a role, including well beyond normal auditions. Such was the case with Sinners’ Francine Maisler, who “discovered” Miles Caton due to a directive from director Ryan Coogler for an unknown to play blues guitarist Sammie. But it was odd that One Battle After Another’s Cassandra Kulukundis’ early line about “We want people to know what we do,” wasn’t accompanied by any kind of explanation of what it is that casting directors actually do. 

The Virtuosos tribute is invariably the best event at SBIFF year after year (Roger Durling called this year’s edition, which began about an hour after the Super Bowl ended, “SBIFF’s halftime show”), and Sunday’s show was no exception. Not in the least due to Teyana Taylor, the One Battle After Another actress who not only wore the most astoundingly gorgeous dress in the history of the SBIFF’s tributes but simply stole the show with her responses and sheer presence, beginning with her kicking the gown’s long train out of the way in order to sit down for the interview. She then handed interviewer Dave Karger a piece of the fabric that had fallen off, telling him it even smells like her, before the host sniffed it and stuffed it in his coat pocket. 

While Hollywood is surely a youth-oriented town – and at the Virtuosos, save for the great Amy Madigan (Weapons) – we had a trio of big-name octogenarians occupying stages and red carpets on SBIFF’s first full day last Thursday. Uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, 82, (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc.) dished with Durling after a special screening of F1; Jane Fonda, 88, returned to town less than two years after being honored by the CEC at Earth Day, to discuss the enviro-film Gaslit, and Dustin Hoffman, 88, was the surprise presenter of the Modern Master Award to Adam Sandler. 

The honoree, by the way, expressed gratitude to In-N-Out Burger’s “Flying Dutchman” in his acceptance speech. True to his word, Sandler then eschewed hanging with the hoi polloi at SBIFF’s post-party at the Tamsen Gallery (which is exhibiting Jeff Bridges’ Widelux-camera images) to chew on a late dinner at our In-N-Out on Turnpike Road with some of the festival’s volunteers. A man of the people!

Coming Attractions at SBIFF

Although most of the celebrity tributes, filmmaker panels, and major movie premieres took place over the festival’s first eight days, there’s still lots more to come before SBIFF 41 wraps on Saturday, February 14. On the marquee, SBIFF’s Outstanding Performer Award goes to Michael B. Jordan, who had dual roles as the twin brother protagonists in Sinners. That film set an all-time record for Oscar nods with 16 on Thursday night, while Kate Hudson, nominated for Song Sung Blue, accepts the Arlington Artist Award on Friday night. Saturday morning brings the final panel of the year in the always illuminating “It Starts with the Script” writers, this year featuring six scribes, three from each category (two others were part of Tuesday’s Directors Awards. 

On the film front, Brishkay Ahmed’s In the Room, which has its U.S. premiere February 12-13 – one of several films from our northern neighbor making stateside debuts at SBIFF this weekend – shares resistance stories from five Afghan women who come together to bear witness to acts of defiance, sisterhood, and the enduring fight for women’s freedom in Afghanistan. Five celebrities of the Afghan diaspora will be on hand for Q&A sessions, including Nelofer Pazira-Fisk, award-winning Afghan Canadian author, journalist and filmmaker who starred in the film Kandahar (2001), and Mozhdah Jamalzadah, an Afghan Canadian singer, actress, talk show host and women’s rights activist who was known as “The Oprah of Afghanistan.” 

Also up for viewing: Not Made for Politics, about Belarusian women challenging a dictatorship that has lasted for nearly three decades; and Shakti, about a single mother and her daughter seeking redemption while fighting for justice in the aftermath of trauma in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Three of the shorts programs – with themes of “Fallouts & Frailties,” “Perilous Journeys,” and “Festival Circuit Faves” – debut on Thursday, with second screenings on Friday. The latter program is comprised of shorts that have been notably lauded by prior festivals’ test audiences. That roster includes Watching Walter, with all-time fave character actor Stephen Tobolowsky portraying an elderly Holocaust survivor who experiences a series of haunting memories when a customer drops off a pocket watch for repair. The Mitch Yapko-directed short has won a dozen awards in its myriad previous festival dates. 

Two of the three Montecito-connected world premiere features have their second screening still to come, including Kerrilee Gore’s experimental enviro children’s film Stand By, Mother (9 pm, Friday) and Dale Griffiths Stamos’ Imbalance (9:20 am, Thursday), which stars Sharon Lawrence and Nicholas Gonzalez, the latter of whom starred in one of the better-reviewed Super Bowl commercials for e.l.f. Cosmetics opposite Melissa McCarthy. Eternal Stoke, Joshua Pomer’s tribute to Santa Barbara surfer Chris Brown, screens both days. 

Note to Reader… My mess up in the Montecito at the Movies department: We neglected to write about two short films that have members of the Zemeckis family involved. Committee Animal is directed by Robert Redfield (of the Spencer the Gardener doc More Than Just a Party Band), and stars our MJ book columnist Leslie Zemeckis, while son Rhys directed Nuns with Guns. Both have finished their respective runs. Sorry. Unless…

Be sure to check the schedule updates, as many of the most popular movies and/or jury award-winning films will screen again on Saturday, February 14, when the majority of the 32 daily slots have yet to be filled. Among the films already slotted are a reprise of opening night’s charmer, A Mosquito in the Ear, and the very worthy closing night film Laundry.Of special note is this year’s 10-10-10 Student Shorts, slated for 2 pm Saturday at the Arlington. PLEASE NOTE: The already-highly-regarded screening – 10 films created by 10 teams of professionally mentored writers and directors, each film 10-minutes in duration – has now been augmented. By what?  By 10 composers’ respective original scores. We’re sure to see some future SBIFF professional returnees among the entries.