BYO red carpet This year, film buffs and festival enthusiasts can attend the virtual SLO International Film Festival in their own home theaters (aka living rooms) March 9 through 14, with the exception of Surf Nite on March 10 at Sunset Drive-In. Visit slofilmfest.org for more info. About a year ago, the SLO International Film Festival was forced to cancel all live events amid coronavirus worries. At the time, then Festival Director, now Artistic Director, Wendy Eidson wondered how the festival would go on in the future. But she was optimistic, noting she and the festival organizers had a whole year to watch how other film festivals proceeded through the pandemic and plan how our festival might continue safely in the unlikely event that social gatherings continued to be prohibited.
“My Salinger Year” (M) and a half
DIRECTED by Canadian Philippe Falardeau, who also co-wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Joanna Smith Rakoff, who wrote a novel about the New York book-publication community in the late 1990s.
Central character Joanna Rakoff. Executive producer’s credit to – you guessed it – Joanna Rakoff.
This is a pleasant enough coming-of-age film telling how Joanna, fresh out of university, took a job at New York literary agency Harold Ober Associates, one of whose clients was novelist JD Salinger. No prizes for guessing her name. Most of her job involved answering fan letters with a generic explanation that Salinger did not read fan mail.