HANNA Release: April 8, 2011 Story: Award-winning director Joe Wright creates a boldly original suspense thriller with HANNA, starring Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones, Atonement) in the title role.   Raised by her father (Eric Bana of Star Trek), an ex-CIA man, in the wilds of Finland, Hanna's upbringing and training have been one and the same, all geared to making her the perfect assassin. The turning point in her adolescence is a sharp o...

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...

 Friday, February 22--------European films and talents are poised for Oscar wins, when the golden statuettes are handed out at the Kodak Theater this coming Sunday in Los Angeles. For the past three months, there has been a lingering cloud of doubt about whether the ceremony was going to happen at all. A strike by the Writers Guild of America, that effectively shut down film and television production and forced the cancellation of the Golden Globe Awards, was only recently settled, in part beca...

SYNOPSIS:In the English summer of 1935, 13-year-old fledgling writer Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister Cecilia's (Keira Knightley) lover, Robbie (James McAvoy), a servant's son, of a crime he did not commit. The trauma follows them through World War II. Review by Andrew L. Urban:Ian McEwan's Booker-listed novel provides the kind of high value romantic drama as did The English Patient (which won the Booker). This comes...