7 blog posts in 7 days

We're back! I know it has been awhile and hopefully we've been missed. We are challenging ourselves to write 7 blog posts in 7 days. In order to start us off on the right foot, the curator has once again usurped the blog. Since it is President's Day tomorrow and Jigar has the day off hopefully he can author at least a few of these posts. We certainly have enough to write about. But first and foremost while things are still fresh in my mind (trust me they don't stay that way for very long these days), I wanted to share how we spent our last week. We left all our babies (human, canine, aquatic and small business venture) for a trip out west to the warm sun and the 25th Annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Known for its celebrity tributes, sbiff is considered a prelude to the Oscars, but we surprisingly didn't run into anybody very exciting. I guess we could have waited in line to see Julianne Moore walk the red carpet, but honestly we were really more excited about having some good sushi (well actually just me, Jigar thinks it's gross). We did enjoy some great films and some not so great ones. It was nice to see 14 films all with my husband - it was like date night three times a day.

For consistency purposes, I will use the same evaluation criteria as I did with the toronto fest. It seemed to work well last time:

Longest time spent in line: 20 minutes...so totally different than toronto. one of the best aspects of the festival.

Buckets of popcorn consumed: 1 large popcorn and we were very excited to see that the venue also uses our same eco-friendly popcorn bags.

Coolest Q&A: with Neil Finn formerly of Crowded House and SplitEnz. He was screening the documentary The Sun Came Out about making the album 7 Worlds Collide. Jigar was in heaven watching behind the scenes footage of Wilco and Radiohead band members. If you like either of these bands you should definitely pick up the album on iTunes, proceeds go to the Oxfam International charity.

Biggest Surprise Hit: Exam, by British director Stuart Hazeldine. It had a unique premise, a great young cast and it left me guessing until the very end...eight talented candidates have reached the final stage of selection to join the ranks of a mysterious and powerful corporation. Entering a windowless room, where an armed guard keeps watch, they are given 80 minutes to answer one simple question. Check out the trailer: With any luck it will find a distributor. Also, just found out that this won The Panavision Spirit Award of Independent Cinema, given to a unique independent feature that has been made outside mainstream Hollywood.

Celebrity Sightings: Jay Thomas of Murphy Brown fame...here is a photo to help you refresh your memory...yep that's it...we missed Colin Firth by a day...

Best photo op: The only three photos we took the entire trip were of Jigar and a pigeon in the background (I was trying to make it look like the pigeon was on his shoulder). I will refrain from posting since I am really not a great photographer.

New favorite song: Nothing to do with sbiff or any film seen there...but have to say it is Tik Tok by Ke$ha. oooooouuuwoahawoahwoah

Number of visits to Starbucks for coffee: 6 to 8....it was right across the street. But we did also find two great local coffee houses that we highly recommend if you are ever in the SB area. The French Press and Our Daily Bread (thanks to cousin Emmy for the recs).

Number of visits to Starbucks for free wifi: zero...it was only free IF you have an account with AT&T...boo

World Premieres: at least a handful of the films were world premieres. Most of these were from other countries and subtitled. We saw films from Iran, Bulgaria, China, Chile, Australia, Germany, Austria, Great Britain and Canada. We saw a total of 3 American films.

Films that I hope to bring to a/perture: It will definitely be more difficult to get a lot of the films to a/perture. But if the planets aligned and we thought there was an audience I would definitely consider Exam, Bran Nue Dae, and The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner.

Films that I will never in a million years bring to a/perture: I actually can't say anything bad about any of the films. Even if some may have been hard to get through Jigar and I stayed until the credits for each and every film (okay, I may have taken a quick power nap or two, but it was dark and nobody could tell).

Films with the most buzz that I wish I could have seen: Reverse and The Secret of Kells

If you would like to learn more about any of the films I've mentioned above check out the official sbiff website

One down six to go....