The insanely generous Charlie Oberndorf, having far too much academic work to do, gave us his tickets to the opening gala of Cleveland International Film Festival on Thursday night, and it was fabulous. We saw Then She Found Me , which will open in May of this year. It stars Helen Hunt (who also directed it), Matthew Broderick, Colin Firth, and Bette Midler, who was splendidly comic. It also featured several adorable children, one of whom is first seen having a major tantrum screaming "I want my mommy!" and is so cute you just want to pick her up and be her mommy.

Best of all was a very convincing performance by Salman Rushdie. I'll let you spot him when you see the film.

After the film there was a huge noisy party with a lot of pretty people who must have been actors and film critics, and wonderful food. We had a nice wine I had never heard of, called Pensacal. It made me decide I'm going to give up on those little 6-ounce screw-top bottles and just open a bottle of real wine when I want, and if it goes bad before I finish it off (we don't drink very often), well, so be it. (Googling "Pensacal 2001 Red," I discover that it is in fact a very inexpensive wine. But I don't care; it was great!)

And then, despite a predicted blizzard, poet Michele Cooper, of whom I've spoken before, and her sweetie, playwright Art Kramer, invited Geoff and me to join them to see two more features at the Film Festival today. Alas, white-out driving conditions kept Art and Michele house-bound. Not just their drive, but their whole street was blocked with snow. But Geoff is a brave soul and off we went. Our first movie of the day was Beynelmilel (also called The Internationale . This is a Turkish film which motivates me to learn more about Turkish history. The premise is that a naive band-leader hears the melody of The Internationale, and innocent of its origin or intent, plays it to welcome minions of a military dictatorship opposed to socialism. The non-idiomatic subtitles made the film harder to understand, but it was thought-provoking, and exotic costumes and actors made it memorable.

The other film we saw was Canadian and lots of fun, with plot twists galore. This was Bluff. Never a dull moment, with infidelity, lost objects, mysteries under the floor boards, and most of all bluffs, bluffs, bluffs. Sadly, I couldn't understand much of the French, which made me feel quite inadequate, or maybe just a victim of multiple European-French teachers in my past, but the subtitles were quite okay. I think the sinister art collector looked like Isaac Asimov.

Between films, Geoff helped un-stick some poor guy who hadn't a clue how to get out of a huge snowbank he'd stuck his car in, this with the help of five teens. And, when their efforts weren't quite enough, feeling very foolish, I put my shoulder to it, and, as Geoff says, every newton counts, so my little addition got the guy out.

Our drive home was adventurous, but not catastrophic, and now perhaps we'll take a trudge in the snow and discuss our movies.