As always, Sacramento steps up to the plate with holiday events of all sorts. At Sacramento365.com, we see a lot of events come through the site every day. Though there are myriad options in our Holiday Event section, we've narrowed down the list to 10 to get help you pick your Christmas Eve & Christmas Day festivities. Christmas Eve Events: Sure, the night before Christmas should be spent snuggled in bed waiting for Santa Claus, but why not get out and about during the day. Here are some options to keep you entertained around town: 1. Free Admission at Fairytale Town & Sacramento Zoo: FTT 10am-2pm; Zoo 10am-1:30pm Treat the kiddies to a day out while both Fairytale Town & the Sacramento

For those whose Christmas season isn't complete without watching Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed stroll through Bedford Falls warbling "Buffalo Gals," Sacramento's Crest Theatre is bringing director-screenwriter Frank Capra's 1946 Liberty Films classic, "It's a Wonderful Life," back to the big screen for nine holiday screenings Dec. 22-24. It's just one of three yuletide-themed events scheduled for the 975-seat art deco movie palace during the week leading up to Christmas. Also on tap: the G-rated "Santa's Cool Holiday Film Festival" (Dec. 17 and 18), a syndicated package of "Greetings from the Theater Management" trailers, vintage TV segments, cartoons and the so-bad-it's-good 1964 theatri

Adam Carolla’s wheels aren’t spinning. In fact, his engine has literally stalled. “I’m down in the garage trying to get a Lamborghini 400GT to start. And I narrowed it down to the fuel pump or the fuses right before I came up here to call you,” the comedian, podcast host and amateur mechanic says in an exclusive phone interview with The Sacramento Press. He’ll perform his stand-up routine at The Crest Theatre on Friday. In some ways, Carolla’s career has switched to high gear. A decade ago, he co-hosted goofy fare like “The Man Show” with Jimmy Kimmel and “Loveline” with Dr. Drew. Now he’s taken more creative control on projects like Fox Sports’ “The Car Show” and his own wildly popular

Here are some of the many music events happening in the Sacramento area this week. For more detailed information on these events and many more go to www.eMusiConnect.com. Sacramento Area Concerts & Music Events Running through January 2012: Bingo The Winning Musical at Cosmopolitan Cabaret at 10th & K street in Sacramento. Show at 7:30 PM.. Tickets are $32.00 - $48.00. Friday, November 11th: Hot 8 Brass Band at Mondavi Center, UC Davis. Concert ay 8PM. Tickets are $37.00. Sunday, November 13th: BB King at Sacramento Community Center Theatre. Concert at 8PM. Tickets are $39.00 - $99.00. Sunday, November 13th: Peter Noone at Thunder Valley Casino. Concert at 8PM. Tickets are $20.00

This past weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the Sacramento International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (SIGLFF) at the Crest Theatre. The festival ran selected film series each evening from Thursday to Saturday. Founder Alan Cole started the project in 1992 as a student-run film festival that received support from Sacramento State University, Gay and Lesbian Alliance students with grant funding from Associated Students Inc. , which is a official governing body which operates the sponsorship of programs and services to CSUS students. A bevy of sponsors and volunteers support the board of directors, programming and gala committees to prepare and organize the annual festival that takes p

If you're like a lot of people, Halloween is your favorite holiday, and what better way to get your Halloween week off to a rousing start than to see one of the goriest movies about Zombies ever made.  Lucio Fulci's 1979 classic, "Zombie," is making its way to the big screen at The Crest Theatre for two screenings, Friday and Saturday, 21 - 22 October at Midnight. When a young women travels to a remote tropical island in search of her missing father, all hell breaks loose when she and her companions find that a strange epidemic is causing the dead to walk…with an insatiable hunger for human flesh! This Undead classic features some of the most shocking scenes in horror cinema…don’t miss it

The Sacramento International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival kicked off Thursday evening, celebrating its 20th anniversary of great indie LGBT films and their filmmakers at the Crest Theatre. The festival is a non-profit organization, dedicated to showing independent LGBT films in [in or from?] Northern California. The festival continues through Saturday, with each evening concentrating on different subjects. Thursday evening focuses on male relationships, Friday on female relationships, and Saturday showcases a series of short films. Each year brings opportunities to show more films, give more money to nonprofit LGBT organizations and provide grants to filmmakers. Each evening, films begin

Here are some of the many music events happening in the Sacramento area this week. For more detailed information on these events and many more go to www.eMusiConnect.com. Sacramento Area Concerts & Music Events Friday, October 7th: Cake at UC Davis Pavilion 8PM (Online Tickets Sold-Out) Friday, October 7th: 10 Years - Redlight Kine - End of Days at Ace of Spades. Show at 7PM. Tickets are $18.95 Saturday, October 8th: KAI KLN at Harlows. Show at 9PM. Tickets are $20. Saturday, October 8th: Sick Puppies - First Class Citizen - ALLINADAY at Ace of Spades. Show at 7PM. Tickets are $23.95 Monday, October 10th: Panic at The Disco at Ace of Spades. Show at 7PM. Tickets are $29.95 Tuesday,

In taking the time over this past weekend to remember the victims of 9/11 on the ten-year anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks, there had to have been several twinges of “I can’t believe it’s really been ten years.” Here’s another (less depressing) one from the “I can’t believe” files: Pearl Jam has been a band for 20 years. Feel old yet? 20 years. How many parents yelling “turn that (insert expletive) down” at their kids in 1991 while they were playing “Even Flow” ever thought that would happen? To them, that song that probably sounds like it’s trying to eat itself. Has it really been that long since we first watched the gut-wrenching music video for “Jeremy,” mouth agape? B

The Crest Theatre’s Screen 3 is where a large crowd viewed 12 three-minute films for the first ‘Open Reel’ competition. The evening began with a few words from Mike Azevedo, gallery manager at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento, and a reminder that all films would be shown Saturday and Sunday at 1020 16th St. as part of the annual Capitol Artists’ Studio Tour. The screening began with two one-minute films by Adam Bearson that featured Lisa Fernald Barker and Shirley Hazlett in their studios. Bearson captured the essence of the artists, focusing on their tools and works, allowing the film to say as much as the subjects. Barker spoke mainly of one painting, while Hazlett spoke of

Short film lovers will have the opportunity to view about a dozen three-minute pieces at the Crest Theatre on Thursday. The shorts are from “Open Reel,” a film competition held by the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento, as part of the center’s sixth annual Capitol Artists’ Studio Tour. The event starts at 8 p.m. and is free. One film at Thursday night’s screening will receive an award for best use of color as determined by judges Jenny Stark and Ed Ortiz. Stark is an associate professor of communication studies and film at Sac State, and Ortiz is a Sacramento Bee music critic, playwright and Sac State screenwriting instructor. A second award will be presented for the audience favori

The Saturday lineup at the 12th annual Sacramento Film & Music Festival includes 28 films spread over 14 hours of programming, the Sacramento Bee Fashion Challenge results, and a live performance by alumni-musician Stephan Nance.  The films include a full length musical about a reluctant monster, 16 films from some of the best student filmmakers in the world, and several short films from Sacramento-based filmmakers.  And at 7pm, the Festival hosts "Hollywood to Dollywood" and filmmakers Gary and Larry Lane.  This is the fourth festival of 21 who currently have scheduled screenings of this highly sought after independent documentary and the brothers are in town for approximately 12 hours be

The third night of the 12 annual Sacramento Film & Music Festival brings a solid lineup of three narrative feature films to the Crest historic main screen.  The first of these, "Face to Face," is an Australian drama that can only be seen at film festivals and which isn't even scheduled to open theatrically in Australia until next month.  "Face to Face" is reminiscent of the classic film "12 Angry Men," with the action moved from a jury room to a mediation session.  Ten people and a mediator meet to discuss an employment dispute, but it soon becomes apparent that there is far more at stake and more shared history than one young man's rash actions.  The screenplay was adapted from a stage p

Just a week ago, the Sacramento Press reported on a local documentary about youth homelessness and on Thursday, "Beautiful Youth" screened for a packed house as part of the Sacramento Film & Music Festival SummerFEST.  The Festival contacted the filmmakers as a result of that article and, given only a week of lead time, the size of the audience was both noteworthy and a testament to the interest in the topic.  The film itself has a running time of 47 minutes and was followed by a Q&A session with filmmakers Jennifer Lystrup and Mackenzie Long which lasted equally long.  Even more remarkable, almost the entire audience stayed throughout the post-screening discussion and asked questions of b

The 12th annual Sacramento Film and Music Festival opens its SummerFEST program tonight by honoring another long time Festival director.  This year's Film Arts Service Award will be presented to Cecile Mouette Downs, director of the Sacramento French Film Festival.  Cecille has worked previously for the Film Department of the French Embassy in New York City, and as a Press Officer for the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel in Paris. She has a master’s degree in history, is a regular contributor to “France Today” magazine, and was the 2010 recipient of the Arts Executive of the Year Award from the Sacramento Arts & Business Council. This is the fifth Film Arts Service Award to be presented

The Sacramento Film & Music Festival will be hosting the premiere of Jennifer Lystrup’s film “Beautiful Youth,” a documentary that highlights the issue of youth homelessness in Sacramento, to the public. The documentary sheds light on 10 homeless youths and tells their stories in their own voices. The 47-minute film will be shown at the Crest Theatre at 6 p.m. on Thursday. “I’m so happy to even have this opportunity,” Lystrup said, “It’d be really nice if people from the local city government show up because this is an issue that needs to be addressed.” In a previous Sacramento Press article on the documentary, Lystrup said she had hoped to get a public screening for the film in the f

Programming a film festival is an odd and varied process. Some events go out and pro-actively seek the best films that they can find, in an extensive search process – and we see this approach in such local great events as the Sacramento Jewish, French, Japanese, and Gay and Lesbian Film Fests. Other events are submission-based: A call for films is distributed, and filmmakers from a given area submit their works in the hopes of making it to the top of the pile. This latter approach, perhaps best exemplified on a grand scale by the Sundance Film Festival, is also used (on a more modest level) by the Sacramento Film & Music Festival and that given area is the entire world. This year, films

With the summer slowly winding down, midnight movies at the Crest Theatre are coming to a close, too. The zookeepers at the Trash Film Orgy film festival still have two Saturday night events before the end of this summer’s 11th festival season. “Werewolves on Wheels,” probably the only biker-werewolf film ever made, will see its midnight screening this Saturday. The film can best be described as the love child between “Easy Rider” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” with some early reality film thrown in for good measure. It stars “Bud” Anderson and Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire. If bikers who become blood-thirsty werewolves isn’t your bag, how about wrestling? Especially the luchadors in “Santo

The scruffy guy onstage at the Crest Theatre Friday evening was bantering with the piano technician. He looked like he might have wandered in off the downtown streets looking for a spare-change handout. In worn jeans and work shirt, ball cap pulled down over an unruly fringe of dark hair, George Winston spoke with The Sacramento Press before his ”Summer Show.” Grammy-winner Winston is known for his low-key approach to concerts. Before the photo shoot, he changed into his performance clothing: blue jeans, a sage green long-sleeved cotton shirt and gray wool socks, no shoes. He removed his cap and joked about not having gotten a haircut for the gig, sporting what he called his “Manson look

Here are some of the many music events happening in the Sacramento area this week. For more detailed information on these events and many more go to www.eMusiConnect.com. Sacramento Area Concerts & Music Events Defending The Caveman at Cosmopolitan Cabaret on 1000 K Street in Sacramento. Continues WED-SUN. Show times are at 8PM or 7:30PM with some 2PM matinees. Tickets are $33.00 - $48.00. Through Sunday, July 24th: Music Circus presents Oliver! at Wells Fargo Pavilion on 1419 H Street Sacramento. Shows at various times. Tickets are $30.00 - $59.00. Beginning Tuesday, July 26th - Sunday, July 31st: Anything Goes Through Sunday, July 31st: CA State Fair Concert Series at Cal Expo. Info