Kin Flicks

The 20th Annual Virginia Film Festival starts Thursday with a focus on family. John Sayles, one of my favorite filmmakers, kicks things off with a screening of his new film Honeydripper. Jean and I saw him (and Maggie Renzi) at the 1989 Festival at the now-defunct University Theater in 1989 and are looking forward to seeing him again. We also plan to see Charles Burnett's My Brothers Wedding, although I hate to miss the Brent Green Animations at Gravity Lounge. John Turturro will be here with a couple of films, there are some documentaries that I'd love to see, and of course there's the Adrenaline Film Project. And The Savages, with director Tamara Jenkins, looks like a film not to be missed.

Too many movies, not enough time.

CTS

As my fellow councilor Dave Norris has previously blogged, City buses are free this month.

This is a great opportunity to give the buses a try. Charlottesville Transit Service has made a lot of improvements in the last couple of years. The buses are much more reliable (ie, on time!). Two important routes, the trolley and the 7, run on Sundays, and a new route runs to the County office building on 5th Street. Faculty, students and staff at UVa always ride free (thanks to UVa) and City residents can use their fare-free system as well. And our buses are wheel-chair accessible, and have a rack for your bike.

In the future, both CTS and UTS will will use have a GPS system that will tell riders how long until the next bus arrives. There is discussion of making the system always fare-free (but I wonder why a 75-cent fare would make a difference, but I'm told it does), and the City and County are looking at creating a Regional Transit Authority, with the goal of a significantly expanded system.

So give the bus a try this month, and let us know what you think.