International Feature Agency Amsterdam
SANTA BARBARA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010
“I like a town when a film festival takes over. More than any other time in your walking around life it seems like film really matters.”
- Quentin Tarantino, SBIFF 2010 -
After two festival weeks in Santa Barbara I couldn’t agree more. ‘11 Amazing Days, 10 Starry Nights’ of movies, discussion panels and good food!
DAY One & Two
The festival started out with the opening film ‘Flying Lessons’.
Maggie Grace does a better job than I expected carrying the movie but it is watching Hal Holbrook in a fine performance that made it worthwhile.
After the opener for me the festival got off to its real start the next day with watching the ‘Red Riding’ series back to back.
Three incredible movies that have already been compared to The Godfather.
If you have the chance to see these movies, do so. You will not regret it!
Listening to Sandra Bullock that same evening made the day complete. She turned out to be a very likeable personality with a lot of self-mockery!
DAY three & four
Listening to writers talk about their (Oscar nominated) projects is loads of fun as I found out on Saturdaymorning. Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker); Pete Docter (UP); Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious); Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek); Nancy Meyers (It’s Complicated); Jason Reitman (Up In The Air); Scott Neustadter (500 Days of Summer) and Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds) were discussing their different ways of working to get a project on the page.
In the afternoon, after watching The Lovely Bones, during the interview with Stanley Tucci it became clear why he is one of the few actors who can pull of such evil with such ease.
In the evening a cameo of California’s own ‘Governator’ Arnold Schwarzenegger, presenting the Modern Master Award to James Cameron, got the event of to a great start. Not much is better than hearing James Cameron talking about how and why he makes his movies the way he does. Not sure if working with him is a picknick but if you look at the results…
Sunday promised to be a great day! First another panel, the Directors Panel with Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker); James Cameron (Avatar); Lee Daniels (Precious); Pete Docter (UP); Todd Phillips (The Hangover); Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds). Great to see Bigelow and Cameron (again) at the same table discussing their movies that have not quite the same budget to make it all happen on screen. Also hearing Tarantino on his filmography is a blast and how did Pete Doctor get into the business? That man is way too nice!
As if that wasn’t enough for one day, the Sunday got even better with a screening of the movie ‘Posse’.
A movie admired by Quentin Tarantino. After the screening Tarantino interviewed the director of the movie 93 year old Kirk Douglas! That was a hilarious encounter. For one he told Tarantino that he loved Christoph Waltz’ performance in Inglourious Basterds and asked him why he didn’t offer him that part.
DAY FIVE & SIX
All day Monday was about catching up on the works of Kathryn Bigelow. Bill Paxton in ‘Near Dark’ (“Did you hear the one about Buffalo Bill?”) and a sociopathic Ron Silver in ‘Blue Steel’ paved the way for Jeremy Renner in the fantastic ‘The Hurt Locker’. After this screening, Kathryn Bigelow ended the day herself by discussing her life and movies. She’s not really a big talker it seems but what she has to say is definitely worth it. (BTW if you can find the James Cameron directed video starring Kathryn Bigelow he shot for the song ‘Reach’ of Bill Paxton’s band ‘Martini Ranch’, do not deny yourself the pleasure. Hilarious!)
Other work related activities (other than watching movies that is!) kept me out of cinema’s on Tuesday and most of Wednesday so this is a good moment to tell you that you do not need to starve in Santa Barbara if you don’t want to! Spots like ‘Arigato Sushi’ (incredible), Wine Cask (not only drinks) and ‘The Hungry Cat’ (fantastic seafood) are second to none and well worth a visit.
DAY SEVEN & EIGHT
So I almost missed the premiere of the travel documentary ‘180 South’ on wednesday evening. Julia Roberts was present but stayed on the background to leave the well deserved spotlight to her hubby Danny Moder, who shot some incredible images, and all the other people involved in making the capture of the 6 months trip to Patagonia happen. How to save nature with a surfboard, one acre at a time. Beautiful.
Julianne Moore stars with Liam Neeson and Amanda Seyfried in Atom Egoyan’s erotic thriller ‘Chloe’. Although well acted and meticulously shot this movie is really a nice exercise in movie POV. It was great to see it though to be up to date with Julianne Mooore’s work as this day would be ending with ‘an evening with Julianne Moore’ receiving the Montecito Award. From ‘Short Cuts’ to ‘Boogie Nights’, ‘The Big Lebowski’ and ‘Children of Men’ to ‘Chloe’, she talked about all of them. Not only a very beautiful, smart and loyal woman but also not afraid to make the choice for an ‘off beat’ role.
DAY NINE & TEN
Friday evening Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Stanley Tucci and Christoph Walz were receiving the Cinema Vanguard Award. As Stanley Tucci could not be there because of his obligations to direct a play in NY, his spot
was filled by Gabourey Sidibe who received her Virtuosos Award that evening. What can I say, seeing Col. Hans Landa in the flesh was yet another highlight!
The producers Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker); Lawrence Bender (Inglourious Basterds); Jon Landau (Avatar); Lori McCreary (Invictus); Ivan Reitman (Up In The Air) and Jonas Rivera (UP) talked on Saturday morning about their (mostly) long lasting cooperation with the same director and the differences between producing ‘live action’ versus ‘animation’. This gave of course an interesting look at the productions of ‘Avatar’ and ‘UP’. The ‘Movers and Shakers’ panel turned out to be one of the most interesting events of the festival for me!
In the afternoon a screening of ‘Oliver Stone’s ‘South of the Border’ in the presence of the man himself. You can agree with him or not but after the screening he took time to fervently make his point on why the way the South American leaders are trying to distance themselves from the grip of the USA, is understandable and is to be respected.
DAY ELEVEN
The last day of the festival was not only my birthday and Valentine’s Day but more importantly it was ‘Jeff Bridges’ day! Lots of Jeff Bridges movies were to be seen. I chose to see John Carpenter’s ‘Starman’ on the big screen. It was great to see this movie from 1984 again. (It made me remember seeing it the first time on a rundown VHS tape on a crappy TV after tracking it down for some time!) In the afternoon ‘Crazy Heart’ was screened. Definitely not the best movie in the world but Jeff Bridges’ performance is indeed Oscar worthy. And he finally deserves one! (“That’s, like, my opinion man”). Even more so after the special appearance after the movie of the Dude (aka Duderino, aka the Dudester) himself. The Santa Barbara local played ‘his’ crowd superbly and even received a commendation from the mayor of Santa Barbara for all that he has done for the city. Bridges showed that he and the Dude have their incredible ‘coolness’ in common.
The closing night movie ‘Middle Men’ gave me yet another chance to see one of my faves: Giovanni Ribisi. Always great to look at an actor like Ribisi when a role requires him to go overboard on drugs and stupidity! Giovanni Ribisi, Gabriel Macht, Luke Wilson, Jacinda Barret and a mean James Caan, portray the people who were involved in the birth of the internet porn business. It might not sound necessarily as good movie material but throw in the Russian mob and a family man who is brought in to solve the problems of two coke heads while trying to stay on the straight and narrow and it all becomes very interesting, not too mention funny!
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival pulled off something incredible: it has all the celebrities of a big festival and gives a great impression of what is going on leading up to the Oscars. But the Festival does all this while maintaining a local, small and friendly atmosphere in which you can see movies of many different genres and (almost all!) of exceptional quality. Rodger Durling, the executive director of the festival is largely responsible for this and he made this 25th Anniversary edition of the festival one of the best!