SANTA BARBARA, Calif. | The 34th annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) ended over a week ago but organizers of this fete of movies, celebrities and all things cinema have already announced the 2020 iteration will be bumped up a bit next year to Jan. 15-25, which may put it in direct competition with other festivals like Sundance. No matter, as the 2019 version closed out with awards galore and more amazing works

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., “I think there’s only one way, forward, for women, and we are 51 percent of the world, so 51 percent of women should do movies,” Austrian director Eva Spreitzhofer (“What Have We Done to Deserve This” a.k.a. “Wo mit haben wir das verdient?”) said at a red carpet event at the last Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) (a still from the film is this article's featured image). With #MeToo and #TimesUp

(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) Santa Barbara, often referred to as the “American Riviera,” is hosting its 34th film festival this week, replete with the typical red-carpet events and world premieres of films from around the globe. Yes, Melissa McCarthy, Spike Lee, Claire Foy and other high-wattage stars have been seen here this week, but in addition to appearances by those A-listers, numerous filmmakers and stars on the rise have also been

Smithsonian Channel will air the documentary “Laws of the Lizard” [...]

Roger Ailes died in May 2017, but his legacy lives on in Fox News, the cable network bankrolled by Rupert Murdoch that many have accused of being little more than a mouthpiece for conservative agitprop and an apologist for President Trump. Whether or not Fox News was “responsible” for Donald Trump is a peripheral concern of the new documentary “Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes,” opening nationwide this week. 

There was a time, before social media and cell phones, when a scandal took hours or even days to break publicly, and when a politician’s fortunes were perhaps not decided within seconds of being captured in a compromising photograph. That was the case in 1987, when Gary Hart, a rising Democratic star, seemed all but poised to sail easily to his party’s nomination to face Ronald Reagan’s Republican successor

It is a fact, sadly, that addiction will touch almost everyone’s lives, even the most accomplished among us. This is what happened to Nic Sheff, a top-of-his-class teen who started experimenting with pot before moving into harder drugs, gradually spiraling into a harrowing cycle of highs, lows, homelessness, sobriety and relapse. His father, Rolling Stone writer David Sheff, could only watch helplessly as Nic’s roller-coaster ride became worse