International Selections

ART FORCES AND CULT FILMS: Director of Westmont College’s Reynolds Gallery Judy Larson will give a free lecture this evening, Thursday, April 16, on the evolution of museums in the 21st century, art as a unifying interdisciplinary force, and the opening of Westmont’s new Adams Center for the Visual Arts. The talk begins at 5:30 p.m. at the University Club (1332 Santa Barbara St.). Call 565-6889 or visit westmont.edu for details.

The name Michael Deeley may not ring a bell, but surely the names The Wicker Man, Blade Runner, and The Man Who Fell to Earth do. Producer and founding member of the British Screen Advisory Council, Deeley has been linked in some way or another to all of these iconic films. He’ll be in town to sign copies of his memoir, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies, this afternoon, Thursday, April 16, at 4 p.m. at Barnes & Noble (829 State St.). Call 962-8509 for details.

CLOSE TO HOME, FAR FROM HOME: We Are Rich, regional author Dori Carter‘s latest comic novel, sees publication on Tuesday, April 21. This story of the transformation of idyllic California hamlet Rancho Esperanza spans six decades and as many economic strata, building a social satire of modern hillside wealth and how it got that way. Visit randomhouse.com for details.

This month, Santa Barbara sees a visit not just from the Dalai Lama but also from Gyalo Thondup, His Holiness’s older brother. Thondup and Dr. Tashi Rabten, president of the International Tibetan Medical Association, will appear at the opening reception of Tibet: Magic and Mystery, an exhibition of Tibetan photography new and old at the Bronfman Family Jewish Center (524 Chapala St.). The reception takes place on Wednesday, April 22, at 5 p.m. Call 957-1115 or visit jewishsantabarbara.org for details.

POLITICS AND THE BRAIN: UCSB Arts & Lectures brings a number of impressively high-profile speakers to town during the next few weeks, including The Honourable Louise Arbour and Oliver Sacks. Recent United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and former Canadian Supreme Court justice Arbour visits UCSB’s Campbell Hall on Sunday, April 26, at 3 p.m. Her free lecture takes on critical topics of our time: peace, justice, and politics on the international scene. Famed neurologist Sacks stops by Campbell Hall on Wednesday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m. Sacks gained a reputation as one of neurology’s foremost public intellectuals by writing about his patients, whose unusual conditions shed light on the complexity of the human brain by illustrating what happens when it doesn’t work quite as intended. Call 893-3535 or visit www.artsandlectures.ucsb.edu for details.

PAINTING AND GAMING: On Wednesday, April 22, at 7:30 p.m., the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center presents This Is Your Brain. This Is Your Brain on Video Games, a presentation by Rene Weber of UCSB’s Department of Communication. Weber will discuss the results of experimental brain imaging studies during her lecture, which takes place in the multipurpose room of UCSB’s Student Resource Center. The IHC also brings Serge Guilbaut, professor of art history at the University of British Columbia and author of How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, to campus on Wednesday, April 29, at 4 p.m. He’ll discuss World War II-era French painter and sculptor Jean Fautrier‘s abstract and figurative plaster-and-pigment works in a lecture titled Fautrier and the Color of Horror in room 1241 of the Arts Building. Call 893-3907 or visit www.ihc.ucsb.edu to learn more.

MAKE LIKE ERASMUS: The Santa Barbara Central Library’s (40 E. Anapamu St.) blowout book sale, going on now through Sunday, April 19, will no doubt interest regular readers of this column, whose enthusiasm for the written word surely matches that for the spoken. The sale will price a large inventory of paperbacks, hard covers, DVDs, and VHS tapes to move fast. Call 564-5611 or visit sbplibrary.org for details.