Table of contents

COVER
Film festival
With a vast array of documentaries, shorts, and feature films, how will you pick what to see at the 25th Virginia Film Festival? Never fear; the Hook's got tips and expert picks. Plus, Festival co-founder Patricia Kluge takes a look back at the early years when big name Hollywood stars flocked to Charlottesville and offers her unflinching opinion on where the Festival's been, where it should be going, and whether it's gotten off track.

NEWS
UVA boardie departs
He wasn't one of the best attendees, but his emails to Rector Helen Dragas provided some interesting insights into the debacle known as UVA June. Billionaire Randal Kirk (pictured right) says he's left the state, but not before handing over more than a million dollars divided between the governor who appointed him and the governor who could have reappointed him.

DISH
Stonefield's six
Plenty of attention's been paid to Trader Joe's, opening in the next couple of weeks at The Shops at Stonefield, but the discount grocery chain is far from the only food news at the new development. In fact, six new restaurants are gearing up at Stonefield. But is good news for diners bad news for the Downtown Mall and other shopping centers?

ESSAY
Poof, then pain.
In the last decade or so, we fully entered the age of the digital photo. Goodbye family albums, hello Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly.com, and Facebook. But as Janis Jaquith discovered, computers can fail you– and losing years' worth of mementos hurts. Are you backed up?

Cover (of this 64-page issue):
Past film festival participants: Charlton Heston, Roger Ebert, James Stewart, Nick Nolte, Anthony Hopkins, Ann Miller, Norman Mailer, Robert Mitchum, Sidney Poitier, Douglas Wilder, Sigourney Weaver, and Kathleen Turner.
–photos courtesy the Virginia Film Festival