Tag archives: film
Making Apes: The Artists Who Changed Film has its world premiere on Friday and Saturday at SBIFF under the Santa Barbara Features sidebar only because its director, William Conlin, lives in town. Also the film’s co-star, co-writer, and co-producer Thomas R. Burman began working on the piece while he was taking Shelly Lowenkopf’s memoir writing […]
Guest Artist is the 10th of 18 plays written by famed actor-author-director Jeff Daniels that he has premiered at his Michigan-based Purple Rose Theatre Company, but only the second to be adapted into a movie. The 2006 work has only been produced a few times elsewhere, but the play still resonates for Daniels, who looked […]
Last weekend, Santa Barbara marked the 50th anniversary of the famous oil spill that befouled local beaches and, through inspiring Earth Day and the creation the EPA, basically birthed the environmental movement. Earlier in the month, Montecito marked the one-year anniversary of the devastating debris flows that killed 23 people and caused millions in damages. […]
It was an evening of high note, not to mention many others in between, when Opera Santa Barbara pulled out all the stops to celebrate its 25th anniversary at the Lobero Theatre. The company, founded by soprano Marilyn Gilbert and the late Nathan Rundlett, presented a sold-out non-stop “hit parade” of opera favorites, conducted by […]
Last January, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival considered cancelling the city’s premiere cinematic event in the wake of the Thomas Fire and the devastating Montecito debris flows before ultimately deciding to go ahead, partly as a healing offering. This Wednesday, SBIFF 34 kicks off with a locally-produced opening night film catalyzed by another Montecito-related […]
The venerable 2,000-seat Arlington Theatre was chock a block when actress Renée Zellweger, who gave quite the performance as movie and music icon in the Judy Garland biopic Judy, sat down for an hour-long interview on stage, complete with film clips from her illustrious career, as part of the 35th Santa Barbara International Film Festival. […]
The late Santa Barbara artist and poet Margaret Singer, who died at the age of 98 last year, is the focus of a new documentary by local director and documentary maker Louise Palanker. The 20-minute short “Margaret Singer: Seeking Light” tells how the Frankfurt-born citizen fled Nazism and lost her family in the Holocaust, moving […]
Six years after its world premiere at the Lobero, the theater she designed, animal activist Gretchen Lieff‘s award-winning documentary on Santa Barbara architect Lutah Maria Riggs, had a sold-out reprise showing as gale-force winds blew. Having attended the first event – I am even mentioned in the credits – it was nice to see such […]
The film about the late Montecito actor Tab Hunter’s tumultuous relationship with Psycho star Anthony Perkins in 1950s Hollywood is nearly ready for blastoff! Allan Glaser, Tab’s companion for 35 years, who is producing the Paramount project Tab & Tony with J.J. Abrams and Zachary Quinto, tells me exclusively Brit Wash Westmoreland, 53, who directed […]
“They are excellent, they sing really well,” David Crosby tweeted last October, hours after seeing The Brother Brothers open for I’m With Her at the Lobero Theatre. The folk-rock icon surely wasn’t the only music lover who was pleasantly surprised, as the sustained applause and cheers proved that many were basically blown away by the […]
Santa Barbara photographer-videographer Isaac Hernandez, a Spanish immigrant who has lived in our Eden by the Beach for three decades, has compiled a film documentary he describes as “a love letter to the history, people, environment, and organizations” that make our tony town so special. The 53-minute project, Better Together: Through Oil, Mud and Fire […]
Noah benShea created Jacob the Baker, a simple but wise character whose plainspoken wisdom and common-sense approach to life are delivered as parables with both compassion and humor. Until recently, there were just three books in the series that have provided solace and support for millions of people (and been translated into 18 languages) dating […]
The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) became a movie house for the evening with so many theater-goers that they had to have two showings. The film was a documentary about Riven Rock and the McCormick family. The producer was Frank McGinity, who lived for 27 years in the building that housed the movie theater for […]
Turning Amélie into a stage musical might appear to be a fool’s mission, given that the indie French film was a surprising hit in 2001 largely because of the movie’s tone and the charms of its breakout star, Audrey Tautou. But Out of the Box (OOB) Theatre Company founder Samantha Eve thinks the recent translation […]
Eddie Tuduri’s life turned upside-down when the same thing happened to his body during a surfing accident off Carpinteria back in 1997. The former drummer for The Beach Boys, Rick Nelson, Engelbert Humperdinck, and many other acts broke his neck and was paralyzed. But his recovery began as soon as he was transferred to The […]
The calendar is crammed as the new arts season arrives in earnest, although the biggest place in the land is more of a warm-weather venue. That would be the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it’s actually, unironically, unlikely to rain when Alanis Morissette takes the stage on Friday, September 27, followed two days later by the […]
Get ready to sink into a lawn chair at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Gardens – UCSB Arts & Lectures’s free Summer Film Series starts up again on Friday night, July 6. If you’ve been buoyed by Bond movies, stirred by silent film classics, or moved by dancing scenes in classic movie musicals in […]
One of the things I’m glad to have learned in high school physics was the explanation of why movies “move.” The fact is that those projected pictures don’t really move at all. But, if your eye sees a number of still pictures in rapid sequence, and each one is only slightly different from the preceding […]
After 10 years as film commissioner for Santa Barbara, Geoff Alexander is moving on to pursue a career in real estate sales. He is being replaced by Ryan Grau – whose title is director of film and special events – who grew up in Ventura and moved to our Eden by the Beach in 1995. […]
Violinist Jennifer Koh has brought her three-part “Bach and Beyond” and the cutting edge “Bridge to Beethoven” recital series to Hahn Hall for several concerts with UCSB Arts & Lectures over the years. Now, the fearless fiddler is returning to town with her most ambitious endeavor to date: “Shared Madness”, a set of 30 short […]
