Local environmental and conservation organizations are bringing the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival On Tour to Sacramento for the first time Thursday. Save Our Sandhill Cranes and the Environmental Council of Sacramento have chosen 11 films for the three-hour festival being held at the Crest Theatre — a sampling of the annual film fest held last month in Nevada City. Moviegoers will watch adventure films about a team kayaking in Papua New Guinea, Oregon tree climbers in search of the biggest Sitka spruces and surfing in Wyoming. Other films document life in the Anza Borrego desert, the rising acidity of the ocean and Kenya's environmental and social justice movement. With more

Rodolfo Huerta, lucha libre wrestler and one of Mexico's most beloved film icons, is known as El Santo, or "The Saint." What's surprising though, is that the masked wrestler-cum-actor lived up to his exalted moniker on and off the screen. El Santo "saved" the Mexican film industry as it was on its deathbed, creating films that drew patrons back to the big screens, said Fred Dobb, film curator at La Raza Galeria Posada. When El Santo died in 1984 at the age of 66, thousands watched as the famous actor/wrestler was buried in his signature silver mask. For one week, starting Monday, La Raza Galeria Posada will show an El Santo film every night. The free series is sponsored by the Consulate

As Halloween looms over us like a full moon on a blustery autumn eve, we find ourselves in the mood to curl up in front of our favorite slasher film for a healthy dose of murder and mayhem. But if you dare to leave the comforts of home and celebrate the seasonal bloodlust with likeminded souls, the Sacramento Horror Film Festival is here to provide the scares. Now in its third year, the four-day event will be sure to fill your every dark desire. “The city of Sacramento didn't have anything resembling a horror film festival," said Tim Meunier, founder and festival director. "And with my past experience I decided it was time to give the city what I felt it needed. I grew tired of going out

Babe the sheep-herding pig and his talking farm friends will revisit the big screen Saturday night at East Portal Park in East Sacramento. The '90s classic Babe is the first film to be featured at Sacramento's fifth Screen on the Green free movie series, held in different local neighborhood parks for four consecutive Saturdays in August. Founded by City Councilman Steve Cohn, Screen on the Green has grown immensely in attendance each year since it first began five years ago, said District Director Sue Brown. Although anyone is welcome to attend, the films are geared toward families. Last year's films included Charlotte's Web, Hairspray, Ratatouille and The Goonies. Screen on the Green i

Pop culture has power - enough power to affect the wine industry. In 2004, the feature film Sideways came out, and according to Sonoma filmmaker Rudolf N. McClain, merlot sales in the United States dropped. Of those well-studied in wine statistics, McClain is among them, having just completed his first documentary on merlot in 2008. The dramatic effects of Sideways boil down to one pivotal scene, he explained at the Sacramento premiere screening of Merlove Saturday night. It’s the scene where protagonist Miles Raymond, the oenologist in the film, says, “I’m not drinking any f***ing merlot.” That one statement statistically curbed the sales of merlot, and pinot sales went up by 30 perce

The race is on as local filmmakers scramble to produce a 10-minute film in less than 10 days. This year marks the sixth annual 10 x 10 filmmaker's challenge, and the theme is 'milestones and markers.' Local filmmakers, actors and film crew members form teams annually to compete in the challenge, using the year's specified theme and an assigned prop to create a 10-minute-long film in 10 days. The films will be presented in a three-hour gap during the closing weekend of the 10th Sacramento Film and Music festival at the Crest Theatre on August 1. Submissions will be judged by a jury for overall production quality. Participants showed up Thursday evening at the Crest Theatre to find out th

Paul Imagine is about as DIY as they come in Sacramento. A self-taught screenprinter and longtime rock poster artist, Imagine can often be seen at Peets Coffee on J Street sketching poster ideas, each sketch taking anywhere from three to eight hours to draw. His posters and flyers that he distributes on foot around town can take up to 16 hours for him to produce between drawing, screening and printing, and selling his work pays for little beyond what it takes to produce it. Imagine’s labor of love will gain recognition in Tuesday night's screening of American Artifact, a documentary tracing what it refers to as America's 21st century "rock poster art movement" from the '60s to the present

Despite a smaller turnout than last year, the fifth annual Japanese Movies at the Crest Film Festival had a great turnout this weekend at the two-day event. The festivities were kicked off with a showing of Love and Honor on Friday evening. The winner of three Japanese Academy Awards in 2007, the film pleased the audience with a drama about two samurais that go head-to-head. Saturday's lineup opened with a black-and-white docu-drama filmed in 1951, Go for Broke!, which stars actual Nisei (second generation Japanese-American) soldiers from World War II. At intermission, Nisei war veteran James Iso took the stage to give commentary about both the movie and his own experiences during the w

Dinosaurs Alive 3D (IMAX) Written and directed by David Clark and Bayley Silleck Sacramento Press was fortunate enough to preview Dinosaurs Alive 3D in the Esquire IMAX theater. Narrated by Michael Douglas, this movie journeys from the breathtaking Gobi Desert in Mongolia all the way to the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. Through archival footage, the film tells the history of American paleontologist Roy Chapman Andrews, an Indiana Jones-style adventurer who traveled to the Gobi Desert and discovered a large repository of dinosaur fossils. It then follows a team of modern-day paleontologists and their graduate students from the American Museum of Natural History in New York as they retrace A

  This week, the second annual Sacramento All Sketch Comedy Festival rolls, and roles, into town (see what I did there?). It’s the brainchild (or something less intellectual and less offspringy) of two of Sactown’s most creative and twisted (in a good way, none of that M. Night Shyamalan crap) minds: Sid Heberger and Keith Lowell Jensen. As well as founding the Festival, Sid and Keith are the founders of the local comedy troupe I Can’t Believe It’s Not Comedy (apparently they like to found). Sid is also the manager of the beautiful and historic (and heroic champion of K Street’s economy) Crest Theatre and Keith is a local comedian, filmmaker (Why Lie I Need a Drink), author (The Atheis

Sacramento's premier venue for film festivals did it again, as more than a thousand people showed up at The Crest Theatre to attend the two-day Jewish Film Festival. The 12th annual Spring festival held unique, humorous and powerful films from around the world that focus on the Jewish experience. This year's festival, Saturday Feb. 7 and Sunday Feb. 8, was once again run by festival cofounders Margi Park-Landau, volunteer coordinator and Sid Heberger, Crest Theater manager. The Sacramento Friends of the Jewish Film Festival, a 60-member group, supported the festival, helped to "bring things that we might not be able to have just on ticket sales alone," Heberger said. Saturday night at 7

Many people are surprised when they hear that California doesn’t have a film commission that offers incentives to film production companies to film in the state. 44 states do, as do many countries, but California, well...we have HOLLYWOOD! But film production companies are leaving the state to shoot in much lower-cost locales, many of which are cheaper because the local governments offer tax breaks and other incentives to lure production to their jurisdictions. California, argues state Assemblyman Paul Kerkorian (D - Burbank), needs to institute such incentives. The members of the Capital Film Arts Alliance agree, which is why the 750-strong Sacramento area filmmakers organization has in