The Santa Barbara International Film Festival always rounds up a good number of Oscar nominees, but this year’s version, the festival’s 25th, may have a particularly healthy crop. Two dozen nominees, with 30 nominations between them, have either already shown up or will participating in the 10-day festival, which began last Thursday and runs through February 10.
So far, the festival has feted Best Actress nominees Sandra Bullock and Carey Mulligan; weathered scheduling snafus caused by California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger; unveiled the little-seen animated Irish film “The Secret of Kells,” a surprise nominee for Best Animated Feature; celebrated the career of James Cameron; and then crowned Cameron’s Best Picture and Best Director competitor Kathryn Bigelow “king and queen of the world” while she was sitting next to Cameron (below).
Although the festival began last Thursday with a screening of “Flying Lessons,” its first Oscar-related event came the next night, when Bullock was presented with the American Riviera Award. The ceremony was by all accounts a complete love-fest, enlivened by Bullock’s engaging, down-to-earth manner and refusal to take herself or her career too seriously.
“I’d be surprised if any Oscar voters in the room (there are apparently many) who came into the evening on the fence about Bullock’s awards-worthiness weren’t won over by her charm and humility, as well as by Whitaker’s high praise,” wrote Scott Feinberg of And the Winner Is …
(According to festival director Roger Durling, about 200 AMPAS members live in Santa Barbara. No word on how many of them attended.)
Saturday night’s presentation of the Modern Master award to James Cameron was reportedly a looser, messier affair, in which presenter Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 10-minute appearance threw things into disarray. Cameron apparently thought he was getting his award at the beginning of the evening because of the governor’s tight schedule, so when he was introduced to start the presentation he immediately began his acceptance speech. Moderator Leonard Maltin eventually corralled Cameron to do the Q&A – which then had to be halted in the middle when Schwarzenegger did show up to give out the award.
Sunday night’s Virtuoso Awards, meanwhile, paid tribute to three actors who missed out on Oscar nominations, and one who didn’t. Emily Blunt (“The Young Victoria”), Saoirse Ronan (“The Lovely Bones”) and Michael Stuhlbarg (“A Serious Man”) were what we assume were near-misses; Carey Mulligan (“An Education”) was the nominee.
(“Precious” star Gabourey Sidibe also received the Virtuoso Award, but due to scheduling conflicts hers will be presented later in the week at a different ceremony.)
The four actors all rhapsodized about their jobs, and passed along the best pieces of acting advice they’d ever been given. For Blunt, it was Alan Arkin’s comment, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be real.” For Mulligan (right, with Ronan), it was director Joe Wright’s reminder to her when she shot her first scene in her first movie, “Pride and Prejudice”: “You don’t need to do much, but you do need to do something with your face.”
