The Hollywood movie musical was just a few years ago an endangered species. But now, thanks more to Baz Luhrmann’s exemplary Moulin Rouge! than to the over-hyped Chicago of a few years back, the movie musical is a genre on the rise.
High on its own sense of stealth and self-importance, the birth-of-the-CIA film The Good Shepherd is not a good movie. There are, however, many good things about it, including Matt Damon’s remarkable acting work-or, more to the point, his non-acting work.
READ ‘EM AND WEEP: With so many famous people dying in recent weeks, it’s easy to see how Dustin Donica got lost in the shuffle. In the past 10 days alone, we’ve said goodbye to James-Mr. “Please, Please, Please”-Brown, former president (and the world’s most dangerous golfer) Gerald Ford, and Iraqi dictator and mass-murderer Saddam Hussein.
The California Supreme Court will hear two legally separate but thematically related cases involving two veteran prosecutors from the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s office. In each instance, a lower court has ruled in favor of the criminal defendants who are demanding that the deputy district attorneys assigned to their cases be disqualified because the attorneys have used the defendants’ stories in works of popular fiction.
The fine print of a proposal designed to make it faster, easier, and cheaper for most Santa Barbara property owners to obtain the permits needed to install a home solar power system has come under attack from solar industry advocates. These opponents see the proposal as a Trojan horse that would undermine broader efforts-publicly embraced by City Hall-to encourage solar energy.
On the final day of 2006-and a matter of hours after Saddam Hussein was executed-the official death toll of U.S. servicemembers serving in Iraq reached 3,000 with the passing of Dustin Donica. The death of the 22-year-old Texas-born infantryman capped off the bloodiest month of fighting in the past year.
Awonderful friend of mine named Sarah recently celebrated her birthday, attaining the ripe old age of 35. Her devoted husband, Joe, organized an eclectic group of friends to help her over the hump. At around 10 p.m., Sarah’s birthday party departed the restaurant where we were eating and began its joyful migration to the Wildcat Lounge for its apogee.
Three Santa Maria men failed to break into two different marijuana dispensaries in Santa Barbara early on Tuesday morning.
In this, the height of the Hollow Day season, The Independent offers its annual January celebration of S.B.’s surfing culture. Read on for an interview with Shaun Tomson, a first-hand tale of riding waves in Fiji, and an update on the remaining limited-edition Yater Spoon, the surfboard seen in the film Apocalypse Now.
Replica of Apocalypse Now’s Surfboard Hits eBay
Surfing and Lifeguarding in Fiji
Aone-of-a-kind surfboard from Santa Barbara’s own master shaper Reynolds “Renny” Yater hits eBay’s auction block this month, with all proceeds feeding a wilderness retreat program that helps war veterans battle posttraumatic stress disorder. The sleek, nine-foot-long pintail-an exact replica of the Yater Spoon from the Charlie’s Point surf scene in 1979’s Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now-is the last of a limited run of 90 such remakes built and sold by Yater since early last year.
