Help with a custom page/template

Hello. I have written a custom theme (to match my website) for WordPress, its working fantastically. The only “problem” I am having is that I want to have one section that uses a different page template/theme.

Basically, I am wanting to have two sections to my website a “weblog” and a “news” section. I want to use WordPress for both sections, but i want them to appear separate to my visitors. I can start accomplishing this buy posting all my news under a category that i hide from the index page using the “advanced category excluder” (or something akin to that name) plug-in. Now all I want is to be able to load the category (lets call it “news”) using a link that loads in its own templated page (that way I can change the layout/css and hide the sidebar, etc.). I have searched the forums and there arent any posts that i could find that related to this, or perhaps i was searching for the wrong keywords.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.