In recent years Fantasy Football has been catching on at a fever pitch. An Internet thing, you get to pick any player from any team in any position to be on your imaginary fantasy team. On Thursday, February 4 the Santa Barbara International Film Festival hits the ground running with a line up that only seems possible in a fantasy, Internet or otherwise. Once again, Executive Director Roger Durling has accomplished the seemingly surreal in good ‘gets’ for the festival’s 25t...

No one seems better suited to transform Jhumpa Lahiri’s touching prose into film than Mira Nair. Both the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of INTERPRETER OF MALADIES and the director of SALAAM BOMBAY and MONSOON WEDDING know firsthand about the Indian-American immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, and the search for identity that informs their art. Adapted from Lahiri’s eponymous first novel, published in 2003, the deeply felt family drama doesn’t disappoint.The narrative unfolds diffe...