Like some version of the "cellular memory" mentioned in "The Eye," I kept thinking I had seen this movie before. Or one just like it, maybe with Aidan Quinn.

Turns out I was partially right.

It came out in January 1994 and was called "Blink" and starred Madeleine Stowe as Emma Brody, a 28-year-old fiddler with an Irish bar band who was blinded at age 8 when her mother purposely pushed her face into a mirror.

She undergoes double corneal transplants and, when the bandages come off, sees ghostly, wavy images that sometimes come into focus and sometimes not. Although she doesn't realize it at first, she sees a stranger who killed a neighbor. Aidan Quinn plays a cop in the movie directed by Michael Apted.

"The Eye," based on a Chinese-language movie, stars Jessica Alba as Sydney Wells, a concert violinist who was blinded at age 5 when she and her older sister were playing with firecrackers.

Like Stowe's character, she has difficulty with the emotional adjustment to sight, but hers is complicated by frightening visions and shadows which presage someone's death. Yes, she sees dead people and their terrifying escorts to the other side.

Sydney decides her corneas came with some trace of the donor's life, courtesy of something called "cellular memory." It causes transplant recipients to suddenly display characteristics of their donors.

Look it up and you'll find it's endorsed by some but met with skepticism and possible explanations (drugs, trauma, stress, sympathy, coincidence) by others. It's a notion worthy of serious exploration, although not as a hook in a remake of a horror movie that ended up playing second fiddle to Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana.

John Sayles, whose movie "Honeydripper" is playing at the Harris Theater, Downtown, will be honored during the 32nd Cleveland International Film Festival next month.

Organizers have announced Sayles will be at the festival March 7 and 8 to introduce his films, take audience questions and accept the 2008 Director's Spotlight Award. The Cleveland festival will screen "Eight Men Out," "The Secret of Roan Inish," "Brother From Another Planet," "Lianna," "Passion Fish" and "Return of the Secaucus Seven."

The event will open with "Then She Found Me," a romantic comedy based on the Elinor Lipman novel and directed by Helen Hunt. She also stars, alongside Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth.

Tickets for the opening night gala, on March 6, are $125 per person ($100 if you belong to the Cleveland Film Society). It includes the film at 7 p.m. at Tower City Cinemas and a 9 p.m. party with Lipman.

For information on the festival, March 6-16, go to www.clevelandfilm.org. Tickets go on sale to members of the film society Feb. 18 and to the general public Feb. 25.

There is no shortage of festivals closer to home.

The 15th Pittsburgh Jewish Israeli Film Festival will be March 27-April 13. Watch www.ujfpittsburgh.org for news.

And Silk Screen, the Asian American Film Festival, will be May 9-18 in Pittsburgh. Keep an eye on www.silkscreenfestival.org for that event.