The 2023 short documentary film The Dads featured five fathers of trans children who joined Dennis Shepard – father of 1998’s infamously murdered teen Matthew Shepard – for a weekend fishing trip. In the course of the outing, the dads found common ground across racial, geographical, and generational lines in their unconditional love for their […]
In a town rife with special film events seemingly every fortnight if not more often, it wouldn’t be wrong to think of the Illuminate Film Festival as a series of gatherings where film is, in many ways, only incidental to the mission. Billing itself as the world’s leading showcase for conscious cinema, Illuminate launches its […]
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Famed Santa Barbara architect Robin Donaldson has traveled the world with the recent pair of documentary films – The House: 6 Points of Departure and This Is Not a House – that chronicle his immersive work on two important homes in the Montecito foothills; the Crawford House and Hill House. Donaldson, who studied painting and […]
A throng of actors, writers, directors, producers and other folks will stroll up to the stage to receive an Oscar on Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. A large percentage of these will almost assuredly have spoken directly to us about their films on stage just a few weeks earlier at the Arlington […]
There are few filmmakers who can claim their work has had true and tangible social impact. Without a doubt, Errol Morris is one of them. Oscar-winner Errol Morris’s newest documentary Separated – winner of The Social Justice Award sponsored by the Fund for Santa Barbara and screened at this year’s SBIFF – takes a hard […]
Maybe the best remedy for SBIFF withdrawal symptoms is to dive right back into the movies, perhaps particularly ones that are up for Academy Awards. Many of the nominated features can be seen at cinemas around town, but unless you’re an Academy member, chances are you haven’t viewed the vast majority of short films up […]
People are screaming it from cinema’s rooftops: it’s been a banner year for animation — critically and at the box-office. And this year’s Oscar nominated animated features are reaffirming that animation is more than just something to keep the kids occupied as the adults do whatever adult things adults do. It always has been. Take […]
Although there are only three days left in SBIFF 40, much remains to be seen. That includes a third screening on February 14 of The New Yorker Theater: The Talbots’ Legacy. This 26-minute short is about the movie theater founded by the couple – a theater that not only became one of the most influential […]
After briefly considering canceling the milestone 40th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival in the wake of the Los Angeles fires, SBIFF did postpone announcement of the full lineup and schedule for a few days. But the slate is now complete for the fest, which runs February 4-15, its longest iteration yet, showcasing a total […]
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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 […]
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 […]
