Still underappreciated after all these decades, film music remains one of those vital aspects of the medium deserving greater love. Part of the built-in problem with the discipline is the fact that good film music, by its nature, is something of a beautiful wallflower, designed to support the image and deflect excessive attention.
Although they don’t make life-or-death decisions, the jurors of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival have a serious job to perform. Selected from a pool of film-industry professionals, with resumes ranging from success to stardom, they show up beneath the radar and perform their tasks under a cloak of modest obscurity. Yet they play a vital role in the success and prestige of the festival.
When Felicity Huffman appears on the Lobero stage on Saturday for the festival’s “Conversations With” program, people will get a chance to see and hear the real-life Huffman, not the overworked, overburdened, pill-popping housewife and mother on Desperate Housewives (although she is admittedly an overburdened mother juggling two young daughters, a famous husband, and a demanding career).
First thing you should know is that Maria Bello is not a Thai boxer. “I can’t believe that story is still going around. A long time ago I was doing this TV series called Mr. & Mrs. Smith and I did some training, but the story obviously stuck.”
The cast and crew of Death and Don, one of the entries in the 2006 Film Fest’s 10-10-10 competition, had a single brandy snifter available. The competition has 10 young directors each scrambling to finish a 10-minute feature in 10 days. To UCSB senior Phillip Lindsey, the necessity of props like champagne flutes becomes entirely debatable when he’s looking at how much production he must cram in before the deadline.
It was one of last weekend’s many illuminating “only at the Film Festival” moments when Haskell Wexler screened his rough-hewn but lovable documentary Who Needs Sleep? at the Lobero Theatre.
African beats keep the pace at the 7th annual Santa Barbara African Heritage Film Series, which presents 29 different films, documentaries, and shorts, and an art exhibit, throughout the month of February. The series incorporates discussions with filmmakers, live performances, and workshops all dedicated to the celebration of African heritage.
We’ve all heard about six degrees of separation, the notion that everybody on planet Earth is a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend no more than six times removed.
Fellas, don’t be fooled this Valentine’s Day. There’s more to romance than a box of chocolates, flowers in a vase, and playing footsies under the dining room table.
By the time of his death in 1903, Dixey Wildes Thompson had become one of the best-known and most-beloved figures in Santa Barbara.
