A Coventry Carol: 'Nightowls of Coventry' captures a bygone era

By Charles Cassady Jr.
Cleveland Free Times

...Nightowls of Coventry, opening this week at the Cedar Lee. Shot here in its entirety (on Super 16mm and not cut-rate digital video) for under $500,000 raised through private investors and grants, it's Cleveland Heights filmmaker Laura Paglin's comic-tragic homage to the Coventry Road community in the early 1970s, when the hippies were on their way out and the yuppies on their way in...

Hometown work gets a run after a marathon struggle

By Julie E. Washington
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Writer-director Laura Paglin has found that getting her locally produced film "Nightowls of Coventry" shot was half the battle.

The war's not over until you get the film into theaters...

The NightOwls of Coventry swoops into town

By Michael Gallucci
Scene

Laura Paglin conceived of The Nightowls of Coventry (which opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theatre) in the late '80s, when its 1973 setting wasn't so distant. "When I first moved here, I picked an apartment at random in Coventry," says the director, who's originally from Portland, Oregon. "I started talking to people who were part of the counterculture scene in the '70s. They were very relaxed, but also very cynical..."

COMPOSER WAS WORLD-CLASS TALENT AND HUMAN BEING

By Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic

To musicians, Dennis Eberhard was Cleveland’s composer laureate. To Russian concertgoers, he was an extraordinary artist whose music communicated profound compassion.

To his younger brother, Bruce, he was a hero who faced physical disability and financial hardship with tremendous courage. To kids in the Collinwood neighborhood where he grew up, he was “Sticks,” a little guy with a big smile who walked with crutches...

Out of the Shadows

Film shines light on journey of disabled Cleveland composer

By Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic

Two tragedies inspired Cleveland composer Dennis Eberhard while he was writing the piano concerto he would call "Shadow of the Swan." One was the deaths of Russian sailors in the submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in 2000; the other was the 1986 disaster of the space shuttle Challenger, its white smoke famously and horrifically evoking the image of an enormous swan...

BORN OF TRAGEDY, A CONCERTO HONORS RUSSIAN SAILORS

By Donald Rosenberg
Plain Dealer Music Critic

The sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in August 2000 jolted Cleveland composer Dennis Eberhard. Already at work on a piano concerto for Russian-born Cleveland pianist Halida Dinova, he decided to pay tribute to the deceased sailors in an expansive work eventually titled "Shadow of the Swan"...

CINEBLOG 2004 Review: 'The NightOwls of Coventry'

By W. Fred Crow
Cineblog

'NightOwls' is a storied treat. Take a cutting-corners cafe owner who underpays his staff, short changes his customers, and hides from bills and food inspectors. Then throw in a crotchety group of older men who sit in that cafe every night, each wanting to focus the conversation on their own thoughts...

Hippies, Hells Angels, the Holocaust, Oh My!

By Alison Williams
CINEQUEST Circle & Print

Locked away for hours in a concrete cell, miserable from the repetitive nature of bars, clefs and staffs, led Laura Paglin to break out and escape for a relaxing pastrami on rye and a hot cup of joe. The year was 1985...

Review: 'The NightOwls of Coventry'

By Richard von Busack
Metro (Silicon Valley's Weekly Newspaper)

American Splendor's Harvey Pekar gives the endorsement to this film about his old neighborhood in Cleveland Heights. Laura C. Paglin's well-acted, small-time comedy concerns the denizens of Marv's, a roachy all-night deli/cafe...

'Coventry' Crew Left for Showing

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sometimes, success hurts. Tickets for tonight's Cleveland International Film Festival premiere of "Nightowls of Coventry" were in such demand that the movie's writer-director Laura Paglin had to scramble to get standby tickets for herself, her cast and crew...