The following was written by Ebertfest correspondent Andy Herren.

I am now home from John Turturro’s brilliant film Romance & Cigarettes.  The ambiance today was much different that during The Cell last night, as the old people were out again in full force.  I excitedly waited in my seat while Chaz Ebert and Richard Corliss from TIME Magazine introduced the film.  Chaz then exclaimed, “I’m off to see my man!” and exited the theater, bringing this year’s bittersweet Ebertfest to a close.
The film was great.  Funny, moving, and catchy, with actress Aida Turturro and choreographer Tricia Brouk answering questions immediately following the screening.  The mood throughout the day was all about family, both with the film’s narrative structure, and the way that Ms. Turturro spoke of her cousin, director John Turturro, and the way that the film is loosely based on his life.
Plus, I got to talk to Aida Turturro about one of my favorite guilty pleasure films:  Deep Blue Sea.  When I asked her if she was bummed that her character was blown up and not eaten by sharks in Deep Blue Sea, she responded, “Haha!  I was in Mexico, drinking and laying on the beach…I didn’t give a shit!”  It was at this moment that I fell in love with Aida Turturro.  

The following was written by Ebertfest correspondent Andy Herren.
Whimsical.  No other word could better describe both actress Christine Lahti and her role as Aunt Sylvie in Bill Forsyth’s bizarre, yet compelling and sweet 1987 film, Housekeeping. 
I entered the Virginia Theatre around 6:50, figuring that I would have plenty of time to grab a seat, even save a few for friends, before Housekeeping’s 7:30 start time.  Sadly, I underestimated the promptness of the Ebertfest crowd, also known as old people.  As I walked in, much to my chagrin, I found every single seat in the center section to be occupied except one, which I quickly snatched up.  And this was after I had already been yelled at for trying to sit in the V.I.P. section. 
I knew nothing about this film going into the screening, and after Chaz Ebert’s delightful introduction, I was plunged into Bill Forsyth’s unique artistic vision only to come out feeling elated that I took the ride.  The film tells the story of two sisters whose mother commits suicide, and they end up living with their eccentric Aunt Sylvie.  One of the sisters hates Aunt Sylvie and finds her eccentric lifestyle abhorrent, yet the other sister finds Sylvie’s quirky, eccentric personality compelling.  The film is ultimately about the inner child of these three women, with Sylvie never wanting to let hers go and the two girls tragically losing theirs at an early age. 
Forsyth presents the audience with a demanding film that never compromises its artistic vision.  Some characters receive no closure and their flaws are not corrected, yet this makes the movie great because it reflects how life is never perfect.
Actress Christine Lahti and director Bill Forsyth joined film critic Michael Phillips onstage after the screening, and Lahti is just as wonderful off-screen as she was in the film.  The two had not been in touch for twenty years, so that made the reunion all the more endearing.  Lahti exclaimed how excited she was that Diane Keaton passed on the role of Sylvie when she exclaimed that Housekeeping was “the best script that had ever, ever been sent to me.  I just sucked up to him [Forsyth] to land the role.”
When asked about the film’s initial, unsuccessful release by Columbia Pictures, Forsyth commented, “I don’t think it was released.  It escaped for a bit.” He furthered by explaining that the studio official at Columbia backing Houskeeping was fired while the film was in production, and his replacement cared nothing for the film, putting it on the backburner in favor of new, high-end concepts. 
When asked about the proudest moment of her career, Lahti closed the discussion by stating, “I might be most proud of this movie.  I really am.  I just love it so much.”  The passion of both Lahti and Forsyth was through the roof, and the magic of the film seemed to linger throughout the audience as the theater emptied.
After all was said and done I thought once again of my elderly friends all around me.  I got to thinking, and came up with a question for Ms. Lahti.  “What can be done to bring out more young people to Ebertfest?” I asked her.  “Well,” she said in semi-serious, semi-joking tone, “just get Miley Cyrus to come.”  While she was partially kidding, the truth in her statement sent shivers down my spine.  More college students should be attending the festival, and if it takes Miley Cyrus to bring in the numbers, then I am officially transferring.
I also stayed for the screening of Tarsem Singh’s beautiful, chilling The Cell, and this restored my faith in U of I students a bit.  The audience was about half elderly, half college age, and I can’t really even put into the words the joy that shot through my body while watching six elderly people vacate the theater as Vince Vaughn was getting disemboweled.

The following was written by Ebertfest correspondent Colleen Loggins.

When I signed up to report on the movie “Underworld” for this year’s Ebertfest, I thought, sweet I love vampire movies and I like Kate Beckinsale. This should be fun! But that Roger Ebert is a tricky little fellow.
“Underworld” is actually a film from 1927 about American gangsters. A silent film. When I finally figured that out, I was a little nervous to watch it. I was also a little concerned that the special guests were merely members of an orchestra.
Oh how wrong I was to be concerned. While it was definitely a new experience to actually sit through an entire silent film, the Alloy Orchestra made it an enjoyable one. The three man orchestra used a variety of different instruments to create a musical score that made dialog unnecessary. Right away, the orchestra made me jump out of my seat when they created a loud explosion noise set to the scene of a bank heist. They were also able to capture the mood of the film which they later admitted was tricky because the film is not really a “shoot ‘em up” gangster movie, and is more of a psychological drama.
I was also surprised at the depth of the film and the fact that it was a psychological drama. I thought it would be hard to convey complex emotions without words and that there would be over-the-top acting, but the subtleties were impressive.
After the first explosion, I forgot that the orchestra was even there because they scored the film so well, and I got caught up in watching what was happening on screen.
It was also fun to take in the atmosphere at the gorgeous Virginia Theatre. There were so many people there, which was surprising to me at first (again, silent film), and all of the people seemed to be huge movie buffs who knew what were seemingly random facts about movies I had never even heard of before. It was very interesting to hear what some of them had to say, and if you have never been to Ebertfest before, you really should give it a try. It might even make you have a whole new appreciation for a genre you would have never watched before the festival.

The following was written by Ebertfest correspondent Tim Peters.

“Presently the discourse fell upon ‘feuds,’ for in no part of the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer between warring families, than in this particular region.”

-Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
As he rode down the Mississippi, Mark Twain came across a man who told him of a feud between the Darnells and the Watsons. They forgot why the families started fighting – “Some says it was about a horse or a cow” – but whenever they met, they would shoot to kill. The Darnells lost, the last three heirs to the family picked off in a steamboat holdup.

This kind of chivalric senselessness, this proud, unending violence, is something I expect of a family feud. Something like the Montagues and the Capulets – so much unreasonable group hatred that it sprouts tangles of fate and tragedy. Of course, there are lighter variations – like Gogol’s The Squabble between Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich or the Simpsons against the Flanders, in which insults (“goose”) or contests (miniature golf) replace bloodshed.

Shotgun Stories – the opening Friday film of Ebertfest – wanted to tell of a serious and tragic southern feud, but more often felt like the anecdote Twain heard, making you cringe, shake your head, and forget about it. Director Jeff Nichols set the feud in Arkansas, near his hometown of Little Rock. He said in an introduction that, “It was real important for the film to show this place and these people as I saw it growing up.”

Nichols’ plot grows from the standard soil of independent films: the broken family. Three brothers – Boy, Kid, and Son – learn of their father’s death. He was an alcoholic and left them with a brutal mother, who actually seems quite congenial in her few scenes. Daddy started a new family, quit the drink, and found Jesus. The boys crash the funeral, starting a feud with their half-brothers.

Nichols tries to be laconic in dialogue – his characters speaking in terse monosyllables – and in photography – his camera gazes at the cotton fields and the silos, at Main Street and at the trailer park. Much of it evokes the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men.

However, it was a languorous beginning to a day of four films, evidenced by the man to my left who dozed off, and the one to my right who was checking his PDA. To tell a slow, measured story – as Nichols seemed to want – gives us time to look at the characters, to sense them as real people. This is a problem, though, when the characters either seem improbable or, worse, predictable, such as the brother who looks as out-of-shape as comedian Artie Lang, yet is a basketball coach, or the college student half-brother who, when he can’t fix a tractor, is told he isn’t taught anything at “that school”.

In his discussion after the film, Nichols stressed how he wanted to portray a place and people he knew. He also – inadvertently – revealed why this movie, despite it’s attempt at authenticity, felt hackneyed and forced. He said that, while he knew the town, the plot was foreign: “My family loves me, there the ones that helped me make this movie.”

Nichols may know the vernacular of the south, but it won’t help him write the words of murder and abandonment and revenge. After the film, the audience applauded warmly and the interviewers gave praise. My main thought while watching was: when are they going to get the shotguns?