Your job: Decide to get out of town and fast. Our job: Help you find where you're headed. This week, NBCLA's Worth the Drive takes us to...
The Palm Springs International Film Festival: Always in early January, the perfect warm-weather bookend to Sundance, that slightly colder cinematic outing which ends the month.
Dates: January 5th-18th, 2010
Opening Night: Helen Mirren was honored. Anna Kendrick received the Rising Star Award (certainly fitting). Norman Jewison and Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody were there. Quentin Tarantino and Marion Cotillard. And Mariah Carey made a few headlines.
The rest of the fest: After the stars depart -- although we hope and expect that many will stay to soak up the sun/cinema spectacular -- the movies continue to roll. And roll. And roll right through the middle of the month. The grids are up.
What the grids have to say... "The Last Station" plays at the Opening Night Gala on Thursday, January 7th. "The Lightkeepers," starring Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner, closes the festival on January 17th. And in-between: so much. We should add, and this is a quote, that the festival says they have the "largest selection of foreign language Oscar submissions in the world." Worth. The. Drive.
Dream weekend: Swimming, lunch, movie. Swimming, cocktails, star-sighting, dinner, movie. Swimming.
