I cannot credit film critic Roger Ebert, who died just a couple of weeks ago after a lengthy battle with cancer, with instilling in me a lifelong love of movies. I was already in love with movies before I saw Gene Siskel and Ebert’s show “Sneak Previews” in the late 1970s. Growing up in Sparta, I had seen movies in the old Sparta Theater and at Twin Oaks Drive-In. I went every chance I got, loving how the movies transported me from my small town and tightly circumscribed life into places and times and adventures I could have never dreamed of otherwise.

Catapulting classic cars and blowing up helicopters just isn’t enough for Lance Holland.

“You’ve never had fun until you’ve wrecked a freight train,” he chuckled.

Students in Haywood Community College’s Film and Video Production Technology Program just finished an original film written by one of its students.