Ralph Fiennes Earns Performer of the Year Award as SBIFF

Ralph Fiennes will receive the Performer of the Year Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, it has just been announced:

The 40th Santa Barbara International Film Festival will take place LIVE February 4 – February 15, 2025. Official events including screenings, filmmaker Q&As, industry panels, and celebrity tributes, will be held throughout the city, including at the historic Arlington Theatre. Passes for the 2025 Festival are on sale now at sbiff.org.

The Conclave publicity is ramping up as Oscar season begins.

Conclave has opened in theaters and is sitting with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. There is a nice display of Conclave on their homepage with clips from the film, if you haven’t yet seen it.

That looks like this:

Here are the newly released character posters:

It’s not doing badly at the box office. It has made $7 million so far. The audience is slightly behind the critics at RT:

The audience score is dipping, I think, because of the film’s ending. It’s less about the movie itself and more about the “twist.”  But I don’t want to spoil it quite yet, at least until after more people can see it. What i can say is that it won’t be a problem for Hollywood as it confirms their worldview. But for some, it won’t. Some people don’t like the ending or think it is unnecessary. I thought it was clever in that it changes the entire meaning of the film. I guess how you view that will depend on what you think about the Catholic Church in general.

Ralph Fiennes, however, gives one of his best – if not his best – performance and at the moment he is the frontrunner to finally win after a long and fruitful career.

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