Honey and True Grit
‘The Rivals of Amziah King,’ a genre- and gravity-defying film, takes on the “Bee Arts,” with thriller touches, feel-good vibes, and rootsy fine music.
Author: Josef Woodard
Tales of Betty and other Folk Lore, Outta Cuyama
Folk band Cuyama Mama & the Hot Flashes plays SOhO in the wake of releasing an impressive debut “concept” album, ‘Betty Arlene’.
Zooming In on Arid Wonders
Paulette Donnellon’s exhibition “The Untamed Desert,” at Solvang’s California Nature Art Museum, celebrates the wonders and animal inhabitants of the Anzo-Borrego Desert.
Artistic Tides of Possibility
Veteran landscape/seascape painter Nicole Strasburg stretches her conceptual frame with her latest Sullivan Goss exhibition.
One Wonder Hit
Rick Springfield, still spry and kicking at 76, fired up the Chumash Casino crowd, closing with the elephant mega-earworm in the room, “Jessie’s Girl”
Spring Gone Wild, Minimalist Rebirth
Samuel Adams’s captivating “almost” Piano Concerto “No Such Spring” commands a bright spotlight at Music Academy Orchestra concert.
ON the Beat | Viva la MAW and Mariachi
A perennial, and peripheral, highlight of Fiesta is the Mariachi Festival, at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday; Music Academy of the West, winding down, hits the town.
Viva la Gardener, On the Officialdom Tip
Spencer the Gardener kicks out the pre-Fiesta jams at M. Special, in its annual “official unofficial kickoff” show.
Love During Wartimes, Inside and Outside
‘A Sad and Beautiful World’, Lebanon’s bid for last year’s International Feature Oscar, poetically juggles themes of love, family, childhood dreaming, and a turbulent social landscape.
Review | Sex for Art’s Sake
UCSB alum Gregg Araki’s latest film, ‘I Want Your Sex’, is a dizzy satirical mix of excesses in sex, contemporary art and power plays.
