Artsweek

Kickstarter Helps the Starving Artist Creatively Succeed

One could argue that artistic integrity no longer exists once you sell out. Those who agree could say mainstream is the antithesis to true art and creative expression. However, the opposition could ar...
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Santa Barbara International Film Festival Puts the Spotlight Back on Exceptional Short Films

Short films have been marginalized for many years, considered easy to make and ‘‘primitive.’’ However, short films were the start of cinema and were respected during the early 20th century whe...
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Groupwork: A Living Breathing Monster

Many people compare visiting a museum to visiting a church. A place that houses art becomes sacred somehow. It becomes a destination for people to observe carefully constructed historical and personal...
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Artsweek Wants You … to Watch Foreign Films

When people think about foreign films, there seems to be a lot of derision towards them: “I don’t like subtitles,” “Dubbing sounds weird,” “Only pretentious hipsters would watch them,” e...
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UCSB’s Palladino Premieres Film at SBIFF

Each winter, downtown’s historic movie theaters play host to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. This year, SBIFF’s highlighted themes include Cinesonic (films about iconic musicians), ...
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Take a Course in Laughology

Stand-up comedy is not easy. It’s one of those art forms which seems readily accessible to anyone not already embedded in that world. “I can just go up on stage and say stuff? What’s so hard abo...
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Kum-Kum Bhavnani’s Nothing Like Water

          ‘Nothing Like Chocolate’ Teaser from Kum-Kum Bhavnani on Vimeo.
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Young Virtuosos: Joy Kills Sorrow Plays Lobero

Last Saturday night, two phenomenal bands graced the Lobero Theatre’s stage as part of Lobero’s current “Sings Like Hell” series. Austin-based folk-rock band Wheeler Brothers opened for the up...
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UCSB Poets Gather for First Annual A.S. Slam

Overtime football playoffs be damned; there is poetry going on. On Sunday, approximately 150 people gathered in the Hub at UCSB for Associated Students Program Board’s first poetry slam showcase. Th...
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Word Farm Returns to SB

Last weekend, the UCSB Film and Media Studies Department held its annual weekend-long screenwriting workshop: Word Farm. Each winter, professional writers in the film and television industries travel ...
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Say Hello to Sundance 2012

This week I was privileged to attend the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah — but what made this such a privilege? Well, film festivals are perhaps the most important tools of the independent...
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A&L, National Theatre Live are ‘Collaborators’

On what may have been the coldest Tuesday night yet of this winter season (quite atypical for Santa Barbara at a crisp 44 degrees), UCSB Arts and Lectures held National Theatre Live’s rebroadcast pe...
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Raised by Pop-Culture: Why Remakes are Good

I don’t understand why everyone has such a hard-off for remakes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard: “Hollywood is running out of ideas,” “Why can’t Hollywood be original anymore...
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Me, My Mom and ‘Mission Impossible 4’

What better time to hit the theaters than winter? With a lot of cheer and a lot of free time, these cold months are the ideal period to spend time with old friends and/or family by sitting down and wa...
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Searching for Character in Abrams’ ‘Alcatraz’

On Monday, Fox aired its mid-series premiere of the J.J. Abrams-produced television series, “Alcatraz.” The show is the latest Abrams creation that attempts to balance the genres of character-driv...
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