The roll-out of award and movie premiere announcements for the Santa Barbara International Film Festival continued for the third week in a row, as director Roger Durling announced that 82-year-old actor Christopher Plummer will be honored with the Modern Master Award and that the opening night film would be the world’s first chance to see Lawrence Kasdan’s Darling Companion, which stars Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, and others in a story about how a lost dog brings together a group of folks in the Rocky Mountains.
Plummer’s award, which will be given out at the Arlington Theater on January 28 during the 27th incarnation of the film fest, is particularly fitting, as his most recent — and Golden Globe-nominated — role in the film Beginners was as a character based on a former director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art who came out of the closet at age 75.