Four months ago, before he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz was hanging out in my hotel room in Key West. There were a number of us there — younger, aspiring writers, lounging on the teal sofa-bed and leaning against the Formica bar, listening to Díaz tell the story about a reading with V.S. Naipaul in Australia. (“Yo, that cat hates black people,” Díaz said of the former Nobel Prize winner, who had refused to read directly after Díaz and a Russian writer, and would only come on stage after the audience had left and tickets were collected a second time.)

Downtown Champaign, with its two movie theatres and its many bars, restaurants and cafés seems to be a perfect locale for small film festivals: movie buffs can watch a film and then talk about it over espresso at Café Aroma or chocolate martinis at Kofusion or burgers at the Esquire.

Ebertfest may be the best example of how well suited downtown Champaign is to the small festival. Each year at the end of April, the area from Westside Park to the train tracks is filled with film industry types, movie fans and Roger Ebert groupies (they’re the wildest bunch), wandering about, wearing oversized laminated passes and talking about whether the film they’ve just watched is justifiably “overlooked.”

Yet if Ebertfest is a small festival (which surely it is compared to Cannes, Sundance or even Chicago), the upcoming Latin American Film Festival, celebrating its second year, might best be described as a micro-festival. There are only five films total, showing twice an evening (three on Saturday) from April 4–10.

For many of us Americans, Africa exists as only a giant multi-colored mass on our world maps. The worst thing about our ignorance of Africa is that people don’t seem too uncomfortable with it — or with our general lack of knowledge about global geography and cultures. In a now-famous video clip, American Idol contestant Kelli Pickler asks (on the TV game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?”) if Europe is a country or not, which she trumps by expressing shock at the fact that there exists a place called Hungary; at least the audience laughs. But I wonder if the audience would have laughed at her if she’d never heard of Burkina Faso or Mali or Togo?

Snow, freezing rain, mud, soggy boots, bitter temperatures and gray skies: Welcome to winter in Champaign–Urbana.

It’s true that this year we’ve enjoyed some uncharacteristic meteorological reprieves. (And with the mercury expected to hit the mid-40s on Christmas day, we probably have a few more in store.) But when the wind chill sweeps off the prairie at 15 degrees it’s officially time to consider protective measures. Short of hibernating, lying on the couch under a blanket with a large stack of DVDs is your best bet. If you have some good entertainment options (and a lackey to bring you your flicks), you may not have to leave the house until spring.

Read on for some DVD winter winners, guaranteed to keep your mind away from the ice age brewing outside your windows.

For my money, Boardman’s Art Theatre is the best place in Central Illinois to see a movie. They’re not corporate; they’re down the street from a half dozen great bars; they still have some of those pre-cup-holder seats; they serve coffee and gourmet chocolate and only slightly stale popcorn. If Boardman’s decided it would dedicate the remainder of its days to showing Pauly Shore films, I’d probably still go. That said, Boardman’s isn’t always on point with their selection of films or their timing (I remember going to Chicago to see Almodóvar’s Volver because Boardman’s wasn’t going to show it for a month after its American release.) Fortunately, Boardman’s has managed to secure a timely release of the Coen brothers’ new and possibly best film to date, No Country for Old Men.