Cuban dissident Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet is a 2007 Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, a Nobel Prize nominee and former Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience who was recently released from jail after spending over eight years in the gulags of
Monday, November 22, marked the birth date of the great Hoagland Howard “Hoagy” Carmichael, 1899 – 1981. Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Hoagy wrote, or co-wrote, among many other tunes, “Georgia on My Mind,” “(Up a) Lazy River,” “Skylark,” the perennial
“We will obtain the liberty of the Cuban people.” — Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet Filmmaker Jordan Allott’s documentary, “Oscar’s Cuba” paints a compelling portrait of Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, whom Armando Valladares, former Reagan administration Ambassador to the United
[youtube XDPFQhaTufQ nolink] On the morning of Febrary 13th, 2010, the most profligate President in the recent history of the Republic attacked the last decade as being “a decade of profligacy.” In fact, the current POTUS’ two budgets were by
[youtube FsDr7PYoV6o nolink] People have been saying to me for months, “Joe, where’s Tío Chano?” Referring, of course, to my Uncle Luciano. Well, the short answer is, I didn’t know. For as long as I have known Tío Chano, that
Last Friday I got back from a hike and saw that my Uncle Luciano (we’ve always called him “Tío Chano”) had taken the car. He left me a note saying that he was going to go see “an Army movie.”
Poor Tío Chano. He claims that he hates going to the movies, but he won’t stop going to them. My father recalls that the last time Tío Chano liked a movie without reservation was “Patton” in 1970. [youtube p-knCsDugrI nolink]
My Uncle Luciano (we call him Tío Chano) has been living with us for several months now and I’ve been worried about him. He spends all his time holed up in his room obsessing about politics and the state of
For some strange reason, the image of Gary Cooper on that famous Solidarity poster popped into my head today. So I Googled it and was surprised to see that today is in fact the twentieth anniversary of the elections, and
I ask you, folks, wouldn’t this make a great movie: Late 1950s, Toledo, Ohio, USA. The Hero, rugged, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, is a searcher, misunderstood by family and friends. He is a freewheeling, Kerouacian type who in his twenties never kept
Unfortunately, when people recall Charles Hardin Holley, aka Buddy Holly, many think first of the plane crash in which he, the Big Bopper, and Richie Valens died, fifty years ago today. That’s a shame because Buddy’s music was about life,
“How I would like to rise to power just to unmask cowards and lackeys of every sort and squash their snouts in their own filth.” Che Guevara, Bolivia, September 8, 1967. “No rapport had been established with the locals…” Anderson,
It would take sixteen hours to even begin to inventory the problems of Steven Soderbergh’s “Che,” a bad movie about a bad guy, the Argentine Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The “Roadshow Edition” that I endured at the Nuart Theatre in Los