HAVE A CIGAR: Congress To Lift Cuban Travel Ban

LOS ANGELES TIMES: A bipartisan group of senators predicted Tuesday that Congress was ready to pass legislation to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba. Removing the travel ban would produce a burst of tourism, create thousands of jobs and generate as much as $1.6 billion in business a year, an independent research group said. A Senate news conference Tuesday and one in the House set for Thursday reflect new attempts to lift the travel ban, a key part of the U.S. trade embargo imposed after Fidel Castro took power in Havana in 1959. The broader trade embargo would remain […]

CINEPHILE: Let Us Now Praise Cormac McCarthy

BY EGINA MANACHOVA This week Cinephile pays homage to a living literary legend and the film adaptations his work have inspired. The mighty Cormac McCarthy is an eminent author and playwright in the Southern Gothic and Western tradition who is often compared to William Faulkner — which is a little like being compared to Picasso if you’re a painter or Mozart if you’re a composer. In short, McCarthy is an American master. While much of his work deals with the ethical development — or the lack thereof — between life and death, physical landscape plays as much of a role […]