Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala

Last night I attended the 20th Annual Awards Gala for the Palm Springs International Film Festival. The black tie event was held at the Convention Center in beautiful downtown Palm Springs. Thousands of fans and celebrity-watchers lined the streets early for a glimpse of their favorite stars. When I arrived, there were stretch limousines lined up approaching the red carpet, dropping off celebrities non-stop. The press was in full force, hundreds of international photographers, TV networks, Entertainment Tonight, and newspaper reporters all packed along the red carpet entrance. As I walked in I saw Ron Howard giving an interview, Dakota Fanning signing autographs, Tom Bosley posing for photos, along with Kathy Bates, Mira Sorvino, Suzanne Somers and Mary Hart just to name a few. It was a night of celebrities galore. I took most of the photos here, although I borrowed a few of the red carpet from the Desert Sun. Enjoy!
The Red Carpet!

above: the Red Carpet entrance, where celebrities were ushered into the building.

above: Mary Hart, host of the evening's events

above: Mira Sorvino poses on the red carpet

above: Dakota Fanning who was so sweet and gracious to fans.

above: Leonardo Di Caprio looking dapper.

above: Leonardo DiCaprio really looks great up close too.

above: Kathy Bates says hi
The Awards Gala

Once inside, there was a cocktail hour to allow all the guests to arrive and be seated. The Pat Rizzo orchestra entertained the audience with terrific jazz and swing standards.

above: the dinner tables were festive and set with salads ready to go. Beautiful centerpieces of red roses adorned the tables.

above: Dessert was a delicious "chocolate bombe" cake. Yum!
The Award Ceremony

above: Amy Adams accepts the Spotlight Award

above: Anne Hathaway with the Desert Palm Achievement Award for Acting

above: Clint Eastwood accepting the Career Achievement Award

above: Ben Stiller was a presenter who introduced Dustin Hoffman.

above: Dustin Hoffman with the Chairman's Award

above: Dakota Fanning accepts the Rising Star Award

above: Donald Sutherland

above: Frank Langella

above: Freida Pinto accepts the Breakthrough Performance Award for "Slumdog Millionaire"

above: James Cromwell

above: Josh Brolin

above: Leonardo DiCaprio accepts the Ensemble Performance Award on behalf of the cast of Revolutionary Road, who were also present on stage.

above: Sean Penn accepts the Desert Palm Achievement Award for "Milk"

above: Ron Howard accepts the Director's Lifetime Achievement Award

The Glamorous VIP After Party!

Following the Awards Gala, I attended the exclusive VIP After Party, held at the Parker Palm Springs hotel and resort. The after party had a restricted guest list, most of the celebrities attended and chatted with the guests. The dance floor area had "Pop Art" images of the celebrity award recipients.

above: the curtain into the VIP area within the After Party. Leo DiCaprio's Pop Art image hangs at the entrance.

above: a Pop Art image of Dustin Hoffman

above: Leo Di Caprio and Amy Adams Pop Art outside the VIP seating area.

above: Anne Hathaway Pop Art above the dance floor.

above: here I am posing with a bejewelled guest with a fan that read "No Paparazzi", which illuminated when a flash went off. Great way to dissuade photos, huh?

The Palm Springs Savant Celebrity Friend Photos

above: With Freida Pinto

above: with the lovely and talented Anne Hathaway

above: Pals Ben Stiller and Josh Brolin

above: James Cromwell is so much taller than me. We had a nice chat.

above: With Suzanne Somers-she's practically my neighbor, and really, really sweet. We discussed her new book "Breakthrough".

Well that's all for today-hope you enjoyed my coverage of the Palm Springs Film Festival Awards Gala. I'll cover a few of the films later this week. Thanks for stopping by today!
-Rick Rockhill

Gearing Up For The Palm Springs International Film Festival

Once again, Palm Springs in buzzing with last minute preparations for the 20th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival which begins this week. This year's film festival is slated to screen 210 films from the US and 72 other countries. An impressive 77 films are premier screenings, (14 world premiers, 48 U.S. and 16 North American). Our festival also boasts a significant number of films nominated for Oscars In fact, The Desert Sun newspaper lists that we are screening 50 of the 67 films submitted for Best Foreign Language Film Academy Awards. if you live nearby, I highly recommend checking out as many of the films as you can. The best way to enjoy the film festival is to purchase a pass. Click here to find out more. If you live out of town, there are plenty of good hotel deals to be found here in Palm Springs.


The Palm Springs International Film Fest kicks off Tuesday night, January 6th with the annual black tie star-studded Awards Gala, featuring Clint Eastwood, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Ron Howard, Dakota Fanning, Amy Adams, Anne Hathaway and Dustin Hoffman. Our festival also attracts a number of other high profile celebrities who either live in Palm Springs or visit to attend the Awards Gala. I've blogged about the film fest for several years; regular readers may recall these photos from last year's event, when I met teen heart throbs Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens, among a several of other interesting celebrities.

above: with Zac Effron and Vanessa Hudgens

above: Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet and Brad Pitt all made a splash at the Palm Springs Film Festival in prior years. Stay tuned this week, I'll be covering more of this year's film festival. Thanks for stopping by today!
-Rick Rockhill

Sunday Art Review: Dolly Art!

Initially I had a more serious art feature planned for the first Sunday Art Review post of 2009. Then I decided that we need to lighten things up a bit and have some fun. A bit of Dolly Parton usually brings a smile to my face, which was the inspiration for this week's Sunday Art Review: Dolly Art! Whether you like her music or not, Dolly Parton has a colorful personality and larger-than-life persona (among other things). From the very beginning she established a unique look that she has leveraged to the hilt. When speaking of her looks, she has said: "You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap", a nod to the over-the-top image she carefully crafted over the years. Other than photos and album covers, there isn't a lot of "Dolly Art" floating around the web, but I did manage to dig up these fun images. I led off with the Dolly Pop Art (above). Here are a few other interesting pieces:

above: Would you believe, this is made of seeds and corn husks?

above: a caricature by artist Don Pinsent.

above: I call this Yellow Dolly

above: This is an image of Dolly painted on the nose of the 134th Air Fueling Wing of the Air National Guard

above: an interesting image by Angel Rodriguez Lopez

I found these "fast facts about Dolly Parton on the cbs news website:

* Dolly Rebecca Parton was born in 1946, the fourth of 12 children, in a cabin with no electricity or indoor plumbing, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in east Tennessee.
* She has sold more than 100 million records.
* She has two theme parks (Dollywood and Dollywood's Splash Country), her own recording company, and a chain of "Dixie Stampede" dinner theaters.
* She was the first of her family to graduate from high school.
* Parton has written about 3,000 songs; she says she has been writing songs since she was 7 years old.
* She has appeared in movies including "Nine to Five," "Steel Magnolias", "Rhinestone", 'Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and "Straight Talk"
* She has been married for nearly 40 years to Carl Dean, a construction worker.

I hope you enjoyed today's Sunday Art Review. It may not be a great deal of "serious" art, but it sure is fun. And besides, I'm not a professional art critic anyway.

-Rick Rockhill

The Saturday Seven: Vexations About Facebook

As if I don't spend enough time with my laptop fiddling with Blogger. I recently joined Facebook and Twitter just because "everyone's doing it". Being over 21, I don't completely understand it yet, but I'm starting to catch on. A year or two ago I joined MySpace and since I'm over 14 I definitely never got it. Facebook seems to be fairly user-friendly and doesn't take long to learn the basics. That being said, there are some things that I still mystify me and other things that drive me crazy. This was the inspiration for another scintillating edition of the Saturday Seven: Vexations About Facebook. It is a fascinating bit of programming, because it uses algorithms to link up people or find friends. Your interests, hobbies, where you went to school, work, etc all give Facebook clues about who you are. It can be a really fun site to use. What some people fail to remember is that nearly everything you type or upload is visible to everyone, or at least your friends and network, depending on how you set it up. I've seen people have "private" online conversations with someone else not realizing that their entire network of friends was reading along about "how that Suzie So and So is a conniving beyotch". Oh my. So take note, you have to select the "wall to wall" option for those truly private conversations. Anyway, onto my Saturday Seven: Vexations About Facebook:
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#1 Content is Written in Stone: There are lots of things that once added cannot be edited, only deleted. For example: any comments you make, any status updates, comments on walls, or comments about someone else's photos.
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#2 Friend Finder: Facebook looks at your mutual friends and suggests all sorts of people you know, or should know. 90% of the time I have no idea who those people are.
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#3 Status Updates: The never-ending flow of updates about people. Foolish things people post like- "I've just started the laundry" suddenly becomes news. It's like a news network for non-news. Sometimes the updates get overwhelming...being constantly inundated all kinds of junk. Fortunately there is a feature to "see less about so and so" which will reduce the amount of junk mail that appears on my wall.
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#4 Sponsor Ads: These annoy me and are NEVER related. I use their feedback box on the ads and use the drop down option "I find it offensive" in the hopes they will someday think I am a prude and give up.
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#5 Social Applications & Groups: I'm constantly blocking all kinds of applications that are meaningless to me. I don't have time to comb my hair, let alone spend hours online chatting about Shaun Cassidy's haircut in the 70's
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#6 Virtual Gifts & Applications like that: I never accept them, I don't understand them and I'm bored by them. "So and so passed you a drink" or "So and So is giving you flowers". What's the point? (I sound cranky here).
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#7 Photo Limitations: For some reason Facebook has a hard limit of sixty photos per gallery. If you have vacation photos to upload that becomes a problem. I have trouble uploading more than 10 at once. So it is time-consuming. I prefer flickr, snapfish or one of the other online photo share sites.
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Well that's my list. What about you? What do you think about Facebook? Any other things annoy you that you'd like to share? Go ahead, leave a comment, this is the first Saturday Seven of 2009 so splurge!

Easy Stuffed Peppers

One moment I'm sipping champage with mega celebrities, and the next I'm being Chef Gordon Ramsey in the kitchen. You just never know what you'll find on this ridiculous blog of mine. One of the things I enjoy about taking a few vacation days off from work is having the time to cook, particularly things that take more time and planning. For example, I had a craving for stuffed peppers. There are lots and lots of ways to make them, depending on your preferences and cooking style. I usually make them without breadcrumbs, and often vary the recipe based on what is in the house at the moment. For this batch, I used ground beef, although I prefer lean ground turkey. I thought I'd show you how easy it is to make stuffed peppers, although this is not intended to be an exact recipe, just follow the photos and humor me.

Step one- thoroughly wash the bell peppers, and slice off the top, carve out any seeds.

Step Two: I sliced up some locally grown medjool dates, and also some mushrooms, set aside

Step Three: saute ground beef with sliced onions, olive oil and fresh minced garlic. I added some fresh spinach once the beef was cooked, just to add some vitamins and color. Mix in the mushrooms, dates and season to your preference. I added some sea salt, thyme, sage, and some steak sauce.

Step Four: Add two eggs, and mix thoroughly. The eggs serve as a binding agent to make the mixture stick together. I added some cheese and let it melt in the cooked mixture.

Step Five: stuff the peppers with the cooked mixture, top with some cheese. be sure to add some water to the pan before covering with foil. Then bake at 375 for 30-40 minutes. My secret is to add some vermouth or sherry to the water in the pan while it bakes.

Step Six: for the last 10 minutes, remove the foil to allow the tops to brown nicely. Mmmm they sure make a delicious meal, don't they? So easy, a monkey could make them!

-Rick Rockhill

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, and welcome 2009! New Year's Eve turned out to be quite exciting. The night started out at home with some close friends, relaxing over conversation to catch up on the goings-on of life in Palm Springs. We had dinner reservations at my favorite restaurant, Melvyn's (the same place we went for Christmas dinner). It was very busy with a well heeled crowd. Gentlemen were generally in suits or tuxedos; most ladies wore fancy dresses, gowns with sequins or feathers, and were dripping in diamonds and pearls. The entire ceiling was covered with balloons throughout the dining room and lounge which provided a festive atmosphere throughout. After our sumptuous dinner, we hit the lounge to enjoy the live music and a good round of people watching too. Of course I managed to stop for a New Years Eve photo with my usual martini. Next, we went to the home of a MAJOR singer celebrity who invited us to their home here in Palm Springs. I cannot reveal whose home it was, and I did not take any photos (although it killed me not to do so). I want to be invited back, so I shall respect this person's confidentiality. Suffice to say, it was a major thrill to be in his home. The house is perched way up high on the side of the mountain, with a spectacular view of the desert floor. I chatted with this super famous person for quite awhile and really enjoyed the conversation. While at the party, another famous celebrity showed up, a well-known actress who I've always admired. She looked great and was there with her husband. (Sorry to be so clandestine with the details). Anyway it was a fun evening and a memorable way to ring in the new year.

above: photos from Melvyn's restaurant, with all the fun balloons covering the ceilings. It was a great night out!
New Year's Day Video
I've prepared a New Year's Day video for you with my web cam, I hope you have time to check it out, either from YouTube or the Blogger video further below.

Happy New Year to you.

-Rick Rockhill