Tag archives: film
Santa Barbara International Film Festival Film Talk finds its way to the Montecito hills for a viewing and discussion of The Garden is Singing, Karen Kasaba’s 11-minute paean to Ganna Walska’s Lotusland that screened as part of the 2019 film festival. Singing does a credible job of capturing the beauty, diversity, history, and breadth of […]
Vera Cruz, the short film by UCSB professor and veteran documentarian Christopher Jenkins that follows artist-architect Jeff Shelton as he cajoles the creative community into decorating the outside of a colorful house at 521 Santa Barbara Street, gets renewed focus as this week’s entry in the film festival’s new online series of screenings and discussions […]
Despite a lack of socializing and being forced to sit on a car seat rather than a blanket or lawn chair, fans have still taken to UCSB Arts & Lectures’ 2020 free Summer Cinema series Game On! Grit, Grace & Glory, which has proven to be almost as popular as previous years held at the […]
Managing this column, I’ve been put back in contact with quite a few individuals I used to look up to back in my elementary school days. This week we’re hearing from Montecito Union alum and New York University grad, Julia Kupiec. Second grade Stella had myriad compelling reasons to hold Julia in high regard; she […]
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network, Community Environmental Council and other local environmental nonprofits come together to sponsor the local premiere of 2040, an Australian documentary directed by and starring Damon Gameau that looks at the effects of climate change over the next 20 years and what technologies that exist today can reverse the effects. Structured as […]
Grace Lee and Marjan Safinia join moderator Wendy Eley Jackson for a Zoom discussion of And She Could Be Next, their new groundbreaking two-part documentary series chronicling the defiant movement of women of color who are transforming politics from the ground up. The series follows candidates and organizers across the country, asking whether US democracy […]
It’s not nearly as well known as its far more famous cousin of SBIFF, but the Ojai Film Festival has quietly been making a name for itself over the years. And with frustrated moviegoers once again stuck at home sheltering, the OFF endeared itself with a new online film series called Festival Highlights. The streaming […]
A baseball-themed double-header screens next in the UCSB Arts & Lectures free Summer Cinema series dubbed “Game On! Grit, Grace & Glory – Movies Under the Stars in Your Cars,” on Wednesday, July 29, at the West Wind Drive-In. At 8:30 pm, you can slide on down in your car’s front seat or folding chair […]
In other SBIFF-related news, psychological thriller The Night has received a license for theatrical release in Iran, serving as a historic benchmark for the country’s filmmaking community as it is the first U.S.-produced film to receive such permission since the revolution more than 40 years ago. Why that matters in our little berg is that […]
The Riviera Theatre is once again closed due to concerns about the spread of COVID-19, and online screenings of new arts films have also come to a close, or at least hasn’t ramped up again as the new closures aren’t in effect nationwide. So turning even more local, SBIFF has segued into a new online […]
Critics have been falling all over themselves to praise Palm Springs, the new ambitious yet taut genre-scrambling sci-fi/existential/rom-com starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that made its debut on Hulu on July 10. As the film buffs have suggested, the movie that employs an infinite time loop as its central conceit is much more than […]
The Sunken Gardens at the Santa Barbara Courthouse is off limits for events as the coronavirus pandemic continues, as UCSB Arts & Lectures summer film series’ grass-fed version of beach blanket bingo would surely lead to a bounce in new cases of COVID-19. Instead, pivoting has produced a more practical solution for the free annual […]
UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center, which has been posting video recordings of discussions with directors, writers and other filmmakers that were held at the Pollock Theatre on campus following live film screenings, along with links to watch the movies available on streaming sites on your own time, is joining the ranks of organizations offering hybrid events. The […]
COVID-19 has certainly crushed a lot of dreams since forcing a shutdown back in March. But it’s also had a silver lining or two: After having closed its doors, supposedly forever, just a little more than a year ago, the Westwind Drive-In movie theater reopened a couple of weeks back, and immediately became a desired […]
Montecito actor Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, and Lea Thompson recited famous lines from the classic Back to the Future franchise in an epic Zoom reunion. Superfan Josh Gad orchestrated the reunion on the latest episode of his YouTube series, Reunited Apart, where he also brought on Montecito writer-director Robert Zemeckis, Elisabeth Shue, singer Huey […]
The theater that serves as the gem in the Carsey-Wolf Center at UCSB is currently closed due to COVID, of course, but you can still watch videos of the venue’s post-screening conversations with scholars, filmmakers and TV writer-producers from previous presentations. Each week, the Pollock highlights one of its event series, providing links to stream […]
Film is a medium that lends itself perfectly to streaming and other methods of home delivery, perhaps a perfectly-placed panacea during the pandemic, entertainment-wise at least. No one needs an introduction to Netflix, Amazon Prime and the like, but perhaps some prodding is in order to visit our local cinematic specialists. The Santa Barbara International […]
Montecito arborist Gene Tyburn is one proud dad. His documentary maker son Matt Tyrnauer‘s latest project Where’s My Roy Cohn?, the Svengali behind Joseph McCarthy and President Donald Trump, is currently airing on the Starz TV channel. Matt has made a number of notable documentaries while writing for Vanity Fair magazine, including 2009’s Valentino: The […]
Montecito art and car collector Michael Hammer‘s actor son, Armie, 33, is reprising his role in the sequel to the hit film Call Me By Your Name with Oscar nominated Timothee Chalamet, 24. Director Luca Guadagnino, 48, who helmed the original 2017 drama, says both lead actors are keen to reprise their roles in the […]
Amazing Grace, the locally-made documentary about Grace Fisher, a 17-year-old dancer, cellist, pianist, and guitarist who contracted a rare polio-like disease that left her a quadriplegic, gets an encore screening at the Marjorie Luke this weekend. Encouraged by her mentors including Justin Hurwitz (the Montecito-raised Academy Award winning composer of the La La Land soundtrack) […]
