“I was promised a comfy chair, and they definitely delivered,” joked actress Meg Ryan, taking a seat alongside interviewer Paulino Duran, on Thursday, March 31, the second day of the Sonoma International Film Festival. The tribute to Ryan followed a screening of “Ithaca,” her directorial debut, adapted from William Saroyan’s novel “The Human Comedy.” Over…

“This is all pretty wonderful! Just super! We’ve had some bumps along the way, here and there, but this film festival is always the event of the year!” So exclaimed Sonoma’s Jerry Seltzer early Wednesday evening, as he stood with friends just outside the sprawling Back Lot Tent during the well-attended kick-off reception of the…

“Joe, nobody knows anything,” observed actress Meg Ryan, as she teetered at the edge of a fiery abyss in the misunderstood fantasy film “Joe Versus the Volcano,” in which she played the soul-sick Patricia Graynamore opposite Tom Hanks’ “Brain Cloud” afflicted Joe Banks. In one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, she said, “Nobody knows…

“Larger, better, even more fun.” Asked to describe the 19th annual Sonoma International Film Festival in a few words, this is how festival director Kevin McNeely defines the latest iteration of the event that has been bringing star-power and tourist-dollars to Sonoma every spring for nearly two decades. This year, from March 30 to April…

“Unidentified Flying Objects are the biggest, most important topic on the planet Earth,” declares Jim Ledwith, Sonoma-based “UFOlogist” and curator-founder of the annual UFO Symposium. A popular film-and-conversation event, the Symposium will celebrate its sixth anniversary on April 1 and 2 as part of the upcoming Sonoma International Film Festival, running March 30 to April…

“I get close to a hundred ‘screeners’ every year, and I religiously go through them all, watching every single film,” says Bill Jasper of Sonoma. As a retired CEO of Dolby Laboratories, Jasper has been an active voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1999. This year’s ceremony – which…

Phil Straub is not a flashy guy. He’s quiet, which is why he’s good with horses. In director Tom Donahue’s powerful documentary ‘Thank You For Your Service,’ Straub is one of several U.S. veterans who appear to discuss the experience of being a warrior returning from war. For Straub, one of the ways he’s found to heal…

“When I first decided to invest in making the movie,” says Gary Nelson, of the feature film “First Girl I Loved,” “my wife said, ‘Gary, you know what investing in films is like. You might as well take that money and put it on a street corner for someone to stumble over, somebody who’ll end…

“Oh my God! Look! It’s Han Solo. Frozen in carbonite!” I think it was 20 years ago. Maybe more. I honestly can’t remember the exact year, but the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium at the Marin Civic Center was hosting a massive exhibition of props, models, sketches, costumes and scenery pieces from the archives of Lucasfilm and…