Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Starting next Tuesday (Jan. 31st) I will be traveling to the West Coast. I'll be in LA for two already super-packed days before running up to the beautiful Santa Barbara for nearly 2 weeks.

This will be my 3rd year at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. It's unique in that it's timed just in between when the Oscars are announced and when the awards ceremony happens. It's also only a couple hours outside of LA, so they are able to get most of the big Oscar contenders up to rub some elbows, grease some palms, talk at panels and accept some awards.

This year they have George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Heath Ledger, Naomi Watts and James Cameron there to accept awards. I love when they do these tributes because they spend about 2 hours running through the subject's filmography, sometimes film to film. The Peter Jackson one in 2004 was great, they disappointed me by not showing a clip from CRITTERS 3 during Leonardo DiCaprio's tribute last year... however, I love this kind of thing. Each of the above listed gets one, according to the SBFF website.

That's not to take any focus away from their films... Over the course of the fest I'll be seeing flicks like HIDDEN BLADE, THE HAMILTONS, THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, Natalie Portman flick FREE ZONE, Robert Towne film ASK THE DUST, WHO IS HARRY NILSSON (AND WHY IS EVERYBODY TALKIN' AT HIM) -with a ton of famous musicians there, by the way... including Brian Wilson, Mickey Dolenz, Randy Newman, etc-, Mike Binder's MAN ABOUT TOWN, poker documentary NO LIMIT and much more.

I have many interesting things lined up already, including a chat with one of the above listed famous people that I'm praying won't fall through, plus a ton of stuff going on in LA before I hit the fest. The LA stuff is secret for now, but you'll hear about most of it next week. Let's just say there's lots of tragedy and cheese involved.

For more information on the festival, head on over to the Santa Barbara Film Festival's Website Right Here!!!

I hope to see some of you Santa Barbara film-goers during my festing and I hope I stumble upon some great flicks while I'm there to let you folks know about. Keep a look out for the reports!

-Quint