Cinema Paradiso

"Cinema Paradiso," the sentimental Italian film that celebrates moviegoing, could become the highest-grossing foreign-language film of the past decade. A spokeswoman for Miramax Films says ''Cinema Paradiso'' has sold more than $9.5 million worth of tickets. "My Life as a Dog" (1987) grossed $8.3 million, and "Das Boot" (1982) topped $10 million.

For 39 summers, Columbia filmgoers have thronged to the Lakefront Film Festival. Its host and programmer, Tom Brzezinski, aka Mr. B, was holding summer community screenings two years before that. As he said in a series of e-mails, he wanted to give "something back to the community" after he helped open, in September, 1968, the first Howard County public school in Columbia — Bryant Woods Elementary, where he served as the first media specialist/librarian in the county school system.

This year's free Little Italy Open Air Film Festival concludes tonight in the same way it has concluded almost every year since 1999: with a screening of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso," the story of a young boy growing up in a small Italian town, where his only real friends are the man who runs the local movie theater and the films he shows. Graceful and poignant, with an understanding of both the magic of the movies and the romanticism of a childhood recalled years later, "Paradiso" is a crowd-pleaser of the first order.

If you go Little Italy Open Air Film Festival Details: Located at corner of High and Stiles streets on Friday nights. Music starts at 7 p.m.; films screen at 9 p.m. Free. littleitalymd.com. July 2: "Moonstruck" July 9: "Bread and Tulips" July 16: "Tea With Mussolini" July 23: "Big Night" July 30: "It Started in Naples" Aug. 6: "The Italian Job" Aug. 13: "My House in Umbria" Aug. 20: "When in Rome" Aug. 27: "Cinema Paradiso" Flicks From the Hill Details: Takes place at 9 p.m. Thursdays at the American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Highway.

The Little Italy Open-Air Film Festival will wrap up another stellar season on Friday with their traditional final screening, "Cinema Paradiso," Giuseppe Tornatore's 1989 film about the memories of a middle-aged man who fell in love with the movies in a small town in Italy. One of the most charming scenes in the film is when an audience gasps in wonder as a movie is projected on an outside screen; the Little Italy festival provides a magical opportunity to experience the wonder firsthand.

Giuseppe Tornatore's ''Everybody's Fine'' is an interesting excursion about a father trying to re-connect with his children. Though Tornatore, who wrote and directed the film, takes his time making his point, the film has a gripping finish. It is hard to leave the theater feeling bad about "Everybody's Fine."Tornatore is the man who gave us the Academy Award-winning ''Cinema Paradiso.'' In this, his third feature film, Marcello Mastroianni plays a 74-year-old retired Sicilian named Matteo who decides to visit his five children.

None of the sobs that shook the Charles Theatre last year during the record-breaking run of "Cinema Paradiso" were mine. I thought that tear-jerker of a movie, with its clumsily told and over-long narrative, was filled with every cliche of Italian filmmaking.I dislike Giuseppe Tornatore's "Everybody's Fine," which opens today at the Charles, even more than his "Cinema Paradiso," and this time I think I'll have some company.Matteo Scuro (the great Marcello Mastroianni in a role that makes him look absurd behind fishbowl-thick eyeglasses)

Director Giuseppe Tornatore has interrupted his translator, picking up on a seemingly minor term: "Il cinema. . . ."Not the movie business, he corrects. Movies.It is not a minor point, of course. This is, after all, the man who made "Cinema Paradiso," his semi-autobiographical movie about the love of movies, all kinds of movies. Remember little Toto growing up in postwar Sicily, who fell asleep as an altar boy at Mass but crossed himself in awe before entering the movie projection booth?"In two years, I lived everything that you can experience in making a movie," says the director, referring to "Paradiso," which was "un grandissimo flop" in Italy.

If you go Little Italy Open Air Film Festival Details: Located at corner of High and Stiles streets on Friday nights. Music starts at 7 p.m.; films screen at 9 p.m. Free. littleitalymd.com. July 2: "Moonstruck" July 9: "Bread and Tulips" July 16: "Tea With Mussolini" July 23: "Big Night" July 30: "It Started in Naples" Aug. 6: "The Italian Job" Aug. 13: "My House in Umbria" Aug. 20: "When in Rome" Aug. 27: "Cinema Paradiso" Flicks From the Hill Details: Takes place at 9 p.m. Thursdays at the American Visionary Art Museum, 800 Key Highway.

FRIDAY THE FLAMING LIPS: While you wait for "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" to hit Broadway, a live performance from Wayne Coyne - with or without his giant, crowd-pleasing hamster ball - should help pass the time quite nicely. Maybe the band will even perform one of its great covers like "Seven Nation Army" or "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia. Explosions in the Sky and Stardeath and White Dwarfs also perform. Gates open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30-$40.

This year's free Little Italy Open Air Film Festival concludes tonight in the same way it has concluded almost every year since 1999: with a screening of Giuseppe Tornatore's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso," the story of a young boy growing up in a small Italian town, where his only real friends are the man who runs the local movie theater and the films he shows. Graceful and poignant, with an understanding of both the magic of the movies and the romanticism of a childhood recalled years later, "Paradiso" is a crowd-pleaser of the first order.

FRIDAY THE FLAMING LIPS: While you wait for "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" to hit Broadway, a live performance from Wayne Coyne - with or without his giant, crowd-pleasing hamster ball - should help pass the time quite nicely. Maybe the band will even perform one of its great covers like "Seven Nation Army" or "Shine on You Crazy Diamond" at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia. Explosions in the Sky and Stardeath and White Dwarfs also perform. Gates open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30-$40.

Harford Community College will celebrate the ninth International Education Week tomorrow through Friday with activities for the college community and the public. * Tomorrow: A luncheon will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Globe Cafe in the Student Center. The Multicultural Student Association will present "This is My Story," a multimedia presentation with personal items and photographs of the students' home countries. The U.S. Postal Service will be in the Globe Cafe during lunch to process passport applications.

Cadillacs and DeSotos own the streets again. Men dress for success in tapeworm-thin ties. Suddenly, smoking is socially acceptable and transistor radios the epitome of cutting-edge technology. For a month, yesterday came back from the dead in Baltimore. The cast and crew of Boy of Pigs - an independent feature that completed filming over the weekend - re-created the recent past right down to the detail of forbidding actors to sport any hint of a sideburn. Boy of Pigs is set during the waning days of John F. Kennedy's glam presidency.

So maybe you're not sitting in plushly cushioned, air-conditioned comfort. Maybe instead you're sharing space with two dogs, a squirming infant, three loud frat boys and a swarm of mosquitos. But no matter how much you sweat, how much you swat, how many key pieces of dialogue you might miss because of a passing truck or honking horn, there's something about a movie under the stars - as more Baltimore neighborhoods are realizing. This summer, in addition to Little Italy's outdoor movies - the city's oldest and most popular - Federal Hill has started showing them, and two other neighborhoods continue to, Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. Across the country, moviegoers are flocking to alfresco films, drawn by fresh air, a chance to interact with neighbors and a price everyone can afford: Baltimore's are all free.

More than just propelling horse racing into a new spurt of popularity, Seabiscuit may trigger younger fans' fascination for the hardscrabble background of the story and the history of America's Great Depression. Earlier this year, WGBH Video released one of the most eloquent documentary treatments of that era: Riding the Rails, which whizzes by in an insight-packed 72 minutes. And it holds particular appeal to high-school viewers. Riding the Rails chronicles the teens of the '30s who rode freights to escape the hardship or the dreariness that hit their families after the economy collapsed.

More than just propelling horse racing into a new spurt of popularity, Seabiscuit may trigger younger fans' fascination for the hardscrabble background of the story and the history of America's Great Depression. Earlier this year, WGBH Video released one of the most eloquent documentary treatments of that era: Riding the Rails, which whizzes by in an insight-packed 72 minutes. And it holds particular appeal to high-school viewers. Riding the Rails chronicles the teens of the '30s who rode freights to escape the hardship or the dreariness that hit their families after the economy collapsed.

Lovers of Giuseppe Tornatore's brilliant "Cinema Paradiso" may be disappointed in his much slighter and less well-developed film "The Star Maker," which opens today at the Rotunda.Well, too bad, lovers of "Cinema Paradiso." It's not the same movie. Deal with it.The film has, nevertheless, some extraordinary pleasures, though they are far more casual and incidental than in the dramatically whole "Cinema." Like the preceding film, however, it too is built on the love of movies and the magical transformations that this most powerful, subversive and romantic of all media can make possible.

NOW OR NEVER Local singer and TV personality Carolyn Black-Sotir stars in The Sweetest Sounds, a Celebration of the Music of Richard Rodgers Sunday at 3 p.m. at Stephens Hall Theatre. The show pays tribute to Rodgers, whose music graced Broadway and the silver screen for six decades, and highlights his collaborations with Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein III and Stephen Sondheim. The theater is at 8000 York Road on the campus of Towson University. Tickets are $20-$24 and $15 for students.

One of Baltimore's most delightful summertime traditions, the annual Open Air Film Festival in Little Italy, returns for a third go-round later this month. Only this time, the festival will take place without the help of co-founder and Senator Theatre owner Tom Kiefaber. "For this year's [festival], the members of the Little Italy Restaurant Association felt that the time had arrived that they were ready to take over the reins and program, produce, and present the festival as a solo effort," Kie- faber wrote in a letter sent to those inquiring about this year's festival.