11:45 a.m.: After being absent from the organ yesterday, Warren York is back and all is right again. As I look around and hear the organ’s jaunty tune, I feel a little bittersweet. It’s the last day of Ebertfest and I am extremely cagey from sitting in a movie theater for five days straight, yet this festival is a pinnacle of my year and I always hate to see it end. Warren plays “I’ll Be Seeing You” and I feel a little mushy inside.

11:00 a.m.: Chaz Ebert wastes no time in introducing the director for the first film of the day, the much-anticipated guest, Ang Lee. Mr. Lee is greeted by a chorus of U of I boys who sing the school song in his honor. “I am proud to be a Fighting Illini,” says the award-winning director of such films as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain.

8:00 a.m.: I arrive at the Illini Union, searching in vain for the Pine Lounge that will hold the panel for “Today’s Writer/Director — It’s Not Just Business, It’s Personal.” It’s serendipitous I get there an hour ahead of time; after I locate the locked-up room and acquire a chai from the Courtyard Café, I run into Joey Pantoliano. Long story short, he ends up buying me a yogurt and we discuss his organization, “No Kidding, Me Too,” and the dour state of indie film distribution over breakfast. He promises to introduce me to Eclipse Award-winning former Sports Illustrated writer William Nack, whom I’ve come to the panel to see. Joey treats me like an old friend and fulfills his promise. I am indebted to him forever.

12:15 p.m.: The doors open even later than yesterday’s seven minute delay. It seems the Powers That Be are weaning us on a shorter diet of festival fun by adding heat to the decathlon. I am parked on a residential street on the opposite side of West Side Park to escape the voracious appetites of the new parking meter rates. Seventy-five cents my ass. There should be special festival parking slips for patrons, because paying $4.50 for six hours for parking in Champaign is a crime. Some of these people I know have gotten here earlier than 10 a.m. to wait in the Fest Pass line just to get in, and the first film doesn’t start until 1 p.m.

5:45 p.m.: I arrive and the line is wrapped around the historic Virginia Theatre down to the light pole at the end of the block. The lawn chairs, laptops and headphones have been broken out by the diehards sitting in the Virginia’s motherly shade. Each one of these people is sporting their festival pass, hanging from a lanyard like a gold medal. Technically, all these people need to do to get a seat is walk in a few minutes before showtime, because the Fest Pass guarantees you a seat to each showing. But oh, no, these people have been waiting in line for at least 45 minutes already, just to be able to grab the best seat once the doors open and the 10th annual Ebertfest kicks off. As this blog will detail, the experience of Ebertfest is a little bit of an endurance test, in some respects, a decathlon.

It’s the return of the world’s best buttered popcorn! That’s right — grab your car keys, it’s drive-in season once again in Gibson City, and that means the scent of summer is on the wind. About a forty minute drive away from Champaign and well worth the trip, the Harvest Moon is a twin drive-in movie theater on the outskirts of Gibson City on Route 47 South. In a time when over 80 percent of the nation’s movie-going public have only faceless multiplexes to house their films, the drive-in is not only a dwindling rarity in America, but a necessary novelty. Those who have never experienced a drive-in movie are cheating themselves from a wealth of memories.

According to Dwight from TV’s The Office, rules are what separate humans from animals. In 1925, a new book of rules was enforced upon professional football, and the sport was changed forever. The gridiron was tamed, groomed, and all the fun was lost in the complicated intricacies of right and wrong. Leatherheads, George Clooney’s new film about the sport’s wakeup to the cold bath of regimentation, proves that rules are for idiots like Dwight.

I’m going to be honest. Going in to see this film, I was blissfully unaware of what the title Stop-Loss meant. I thought perhaps it was a strangely-worded political statement on the filmmaker’s position on the Iraq war. “Stop the loss” of our soldiers. “Stop the loss” of life. Looking back on it, the title can take on that connotation if you take away its proper definition. The term “stop-loss” is actually a military term that means a soldier has been called back into active duty after he or she has been scheduled to end their term in the service. This issue is the basis of the film, directed by Kimberly Peirce, and brings the injustice of this policy to light. It's enough to make the film worthwhile and it may just also serve as an anti-recruiting measure for our army.

The execution of a vision is the thing that breaks or makes a film. The more vast and imaginative the vision, the harder it is to see realized. But in the case of director Todd Haynes’s latest film, I’m Not There, a courageous vision was well worth the effort thanks to an amazing cast, a well-plotted set of vignettes, and a figure worthy of such an ambitious picture.

What exactly is the aim of U2 3D? It’s not the best concert film the band has made, and it isn’t a showcase of their best show on the Vertigo tour. Instead, it is a visual marvel that distracts from the music with undulating, tactile effects that will probably influence a new generation. It is also a film for those of us who don’t know the band very well, for those who don’t know what they are missing.