IF YOU LOOK HARD ENOUGH, you can find tasty strawberries in the wintertime, and Halloween candy for sale in the summer, and great, award-lofty cinematic fare outside of the traditional film festival/awards ceremony season. That season wraps on Oscar night, and begins around September, give or take, which leaves this remaining question on the table: Where do you find dynamic, story-driven, character-rich films outside of that realm? The easy and true answer is down at your local theater, for the pipeline of quality movies never gets too stopped-up, regardless of what the calendar says. But finding oodles of quality movies, and loads of fine films, all in one pretty spot, is a bit more chancy around the warmer months. That said, one event consistently delivers around the close of April each year, and has since the close of the last century. It's the...
2017 NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL, and it returns from April 20 through 27 with some 350 films and an expected attendance of "50,000 film fans." "Go Deeper" is the tantalizing sub-header for the 2017 fest, a party that includes works like "Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton," the opening night feature, "Cook Up a Storm," the Chinese Spotlight film, "A Day for Mad Mary," the Irish Spotlight film, an Action Sports series, an Environmental Film series, a Family Film series, Music Videos, and so very many shorts (if shorts are your film festival jam, and we'll just assume that they're everybody's jam). Tickets, the full line-up, and the many doings during this week-long celebration of the silver screen and its plentiful heart-embiggening pleasures? The info on "Orange County's largest entertainment event" can be found starting here.
