The Cleveland International Film Festival is back, and so, happily, am I. Last year’s festival—the 36th and another record-breaking year—welcomed its one-millionth attendee. Other records broken: 85,018 seats filled, marking a 9% increase over the previous year; the largest day … [Read more...] about Two Weeks to Go
The Year of the Anna Kareninas
On the last day of 2012, I finished reading Anna Karenina, which some say is Tolstoy’s greatest work. Hmmm, maybe . . . It was a terrifically good read! The inspiration for reading the novel was the newest and most audacious movie adaptation of the book. Watching the … [Read more...] about The Year of the Anna Kareninas
CIFF: MY Final Four
While the rest of the country was watching the Final Four of basketball, I watched my Final Four of the festival. Three years in prison changed a lot of things. Enrique comes home to find that his wife of 17 years is pregnant with another man’s child and his teenage … [Read more...] about CIFF: MY Final Four
CIFF: Winding Down
What do three grown children do with Dad after his wife of 40 years dies? The kids in “Living Afterwards” want to close the small family hotel their parents had run for so many years and install their father in an apartment. Then a young and very pregnant woman arrives asking for … [Read more...] about CIFF: Winding Down
CIFF: Pelotero to Cape Spin
For young boys in the Dominican Republic, baseball may be their only chance to raise their family and themselves out of poverty. There are lots of reasons to dislike Major League Baseball, and chief among them, for me at least, is the way in which the organization and its agents … [Read more...] about CIFF: Pelotero to Cape Spin
