My personal favorite among the seven Virtuosos celebrated last night at the Santa Barbara Film Festival was and is Obvious Child‘s Jenny Slate, whom I finally spoke to last December after waiting too many months to see her film. In a group discussion at the end of the show, moderator Dave Karger asked for some favorite psycho/bastard performances, and Slate had the coolest reply when she singled out Ruth Gordon‘s performance as a nosy, maternal-minded Satanist in Rosemary’s Baby.

Besides Slate the Virtuosos were Selma‘s David Oyelowo (witty, verbose, insightful), Gone Girl‘s Rosamund Pike (aloof), Fury‘s Logan Lerman (modest, self-effacing), Get On Up‘s Chadwick Boseman (engaging, quite funny, fast on his feet), Boyhood‘s Ellar Coltrane (low-key) and Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons, who committed the evening’s only fashion faux-pas by wearing light blue dress socks with a dark suit.