We, The Jury: Edelstein Recounts Tribeca Documentary Duty for NYM Readers

Further wedging his way into my top two or three favorite film writers on the planet, David Edelstein turns in a refeshingly candid (i.e. deliciously gossipy) chronicle of his stint as a Tribeca juror to this week’s issue of New York Magazine. And while Edelstein’s experience with the festival seems to have been mostly positive (“[I]t is a festival that is genuinely festive. Does the snooty NYFF host a parade and street fair?”), the cultural rubbernecker in me cannot get enough of the critic’s more, well, personal observations.
To wit:

–I admit I hoped to hobnob with other celebrity jurors like Laurence Fishburne, Josh Lucas, Julia Stiles, Kelly Lynch, and Lou Reed. Fat chance. Celebrities have a tunnel vision for one another. Rosie greets Laurence. Moby makes a beeline for Lou (who has the teeny-weeniest shoulders). Julia, all willowy poise, enters and leaves without surveying the room. Kelly is deep in conversation with festival co-founder Robert De Niro, the world’s least approachable man. I content myself with swag. You wouldn’t believe the gift bag, which includes a video iPod. Although it’s for services rendered (jurors aren’t paid), I’m ambivalent about journalists’ accepting gifts. My head says no, no, no—but my wife says yes, yes, yes. Easy call.

–The jurors meet on May 5. In addition to Rosie and Moby, my group consists of filmmaker and former Time Out New York editor Joe Angio, Glenn Kenny of Premiere, and the winner of this category last year, Victor Buhler. Victor arrives with five criteria for judging, including political impact and “sacrifice and courage.” He is shot down, but not before the earnest Moby pipes up that social responsibility should, indeed, outweigh everything. The formidable Rosie demurs—a movie should be judged on its own terms, she insists. (Rosie becomes, predictably, the de facto foreman.)

–It’s a little disconcerting when our award is dispatched quickly and without a jury spokesman, whereas Ken Burns gasses on and on when presenting his prize. I ask jury coordinator Nancy Lefkowitz why we didn’t get to bore the audience, too, and she says, “Moby was supposed to do it, and he didn’t show.” (So much for social responsibility.) What about Rosie? “Sick.” We were out of celebs.

Cuh-lassic. Now if only we could get Wong Kar-Wai to spill the beans on Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton trysting in the jury room at Cannes, we can all die totally happy.

The Masterpiece Around the Corner: Rosefelt Revisits 'Stranger Than Paradise'

More than a couple of readers have forwarded the link to local publicist Reid Rosefelt’s splendid essay about how Jim Jarmusch and Stranger Than Paradise emerged from mid-80s NYC art-squalor to international acclaim. There is plenty of history to study here, from the saintly Paul Bartel plugging a budget hole with his wallet to Rosefelt’s initial ambivalence about Jarmusch (“He was so disgustingly cool that he made me feel ashamed of myself. I would literally cross to the other side of the street to avoid his towering coolness.”). Throw in a few cameos by Janet Pierson (née Perlberg), Adam Brooks, Jeff Lipsky and others and you have a fascinating glimpse into a seedbed of modern independent film.
And for all of you budding marketers interested in tracing the geneology of swag, consider starting here:

Early on, I took the film’s three stars, John (Lurie), Richard (Edson) and Eszter (Balint), out for lunch, to discuss the plans for the film. As I laid out buttons, t-shirts and other Lipsky-created doodads on the table, Eszter looked at me incredulously.

We were more innocent then. This was before worldwide conglomerates produced “indie” films, before product placement blanketed Sundance like snow, before anyone even knew what goodie bags were.

Eszter stared at the t-shirts and buttons in stunned disbelief.

“You’re kidding, right?”

So there you have it. Place blame or credit accordingly.
(Photo of Jim Jarmusch and Reid Rosefelt: Zoom In Online)

Flee the City: Da Vinci Code Debate Scheduled for 7 P.M.

If the blinding white heat of Da Vinci Code hype has not yet forced your eyes to roll 180 degrees in your head before cascading down your cheeks in gooey streams, you are likely one of the hardcore fans who will get a kick out of tonight’s Da Vinci Code Debate at the New York Hilton. Organizers have touted this as the global Code event to end all Code events, if only because the hotel will implode from a spectacular burst of the debaters’ deeply ingrained self-loathing.
And if I were a betting man, I would place “Chosen People Ministries” president Mitch Glaser (who has been warming up to this for a while) at the flashpoint:

Because of Dan Brown’s fictional thriller, Christian history is in the news like never before. There are people in the world angry and protesting opinions and statements raised in The Da Vinci Code and then there are people who see the book and movie as an amazing opportunity.

“There is one thing all our debate speakers agree upon,” said Mitch Glaser. “Some of the issues raised in The Da Vinci Code book and movie will allow people usually not interested in biblical issues to perhaps open a Bible to learn more.” …

Some of the big questions The Da Vinci Code Debate in New York will answer include:

* Are there hidden messages in Da Vinci’s art?
* Was Jesus a prophet, living God or the Messiah himself?
* Is The Da Vinci Code really fiction or mostly fact?
* Do the so-called secret Gnostic “gospels” help us understand Jesus?
* Did Jesus really marry Mary Magdalene and have a secret family?
* Were women stripped of their early spiritual power in the Church?
* What is the remaining relevance of The Da Vinci Code today?

In other news, evacuations in Midtown should start around noon, so try and have your work done and take all of your valuables with you upon leaving the office. I have been hoarding bottled water for a few months now, so e-mail me if you want in on the stash. The Reeler is, first and foremost, a humanitarian operation.

Smith Returns to NYC with Buzz-Packing 'Bugcrush'

The first time I spoke with Carter Smith, he was stuck in a Dallas airport terminal waiting for a connecting flight to Salt Lake City. His film Bugcrush had been selected for the Sundance Film Festival’s shorts programs, and Smith would be spending the week before the festival at the Institute’s screenwriting lab. As you might remember, he had little idea what to expect.

Mystery man Carter Smith joins Through the Ice director Jennie Livingston for a discussion following Sunday’s Sundance shorts program at BAM (Photo: STV)
One Grand Jury Prize and a Cannes Directors Fortnight berth later, the picture is a bit clearer.
“What’s so great about where I am now is that I don’t feel any pressure at all to come out of Cannes,” Smith told me late last week as he prepared for Bugcrush‘s weekend screenings at BAM. “It’s too long to be in competition, so there’s no ‘will-it-or-won’t-it-win-anything.’ It’s just purely for the international audience to see it. But I kind of feel like I’m just going to enjoy myself and have a great time at the festival and meet people. Winning a prize at Sundance is such an amazing thing that if nothing else happened with this film ever, I’d be completely satisfied. You know? It’s kind of nice to be at this place now where whatever happens, happens. If people like the film, great. I’m super-excited to get it out there and to get people seeing it.”
Getting into Cannes was a relatively straightforward matter of the festival’s programmers catching Bugcrush at Sundance and inviting Smith to join the Directors Fortnight series. Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, anchoring the Sundance Institute at BAM shorts program as it does, Bugcrush enjoys the twin distinctions of great company (Smith shared the jury prize with Adam Parrish King’s animated drama The Wraith of Cobble Hill) and haunting longevity; Smith’s quasi-courtship thriller about two high school loners in Maine sent the Brooklyn crowd home Sunday with a series of long, loud shudders. The filmmaker joined colleagues Jennie Livingston (Through the Ice), Bálint Kenyeres (Before Dawn) and Rob VanAlkamade (Preacher with an Unknown God) for a Q&A afterward, portions of which include spoilers I would be a fool to report here.
At any rate, Smith expressed his gratitiude to be back with a hometown crowd as Bugcrush enjoyed its New York premiere. “Can I just say how nice it was to have an audience that wasn’t, like, sending text messages and hundreds of people getting up and coming back?,” he said during the discussion. “It was actually really great to be with an audience that sat down and watched the films.”
Still, Smith obviously cherished the Park City experience, starting with the labs. “It was sort of like this perfect situation,” he said. “I went to the screenwriters lab first, which is like this super-supportive, warm-and-fuzzy artistic and creative environment where you’re surrounded by other filmmakers. It’s like this kind of great little family of 12 filmmakers and writers that you start out with, and a lot of them actually stayed on during the festival. So rathert than just landing and being completely lost when the festival started, I sort of had this immediate family of people who I just spent the entire week with. It was great in that sense. That was really going to be pretty overwhelming otherwise–it was overwhelming even with that, but I was really happy that I had a bunch of friends there. They were new frineds, and they were all filmmakers and they were all excited.”
Warm and fuzzy, indeed, but Bugcrush is a pleasing enough antidote if you think you are up to it. BAM’s Sundance shorts series unspools one final time Tuesday night at 9:30, and I will say it again: There is really not a stinker in the bunch. But if, for whatever lame reason, you miss it in Brooklyn, Bugcrush will be back in town June 1-11 as part of NewFest’s own gay-and-lesbian shorts programs. In the meantime, best of luck to Smith as he hits Cannes; if he keeps up this kind of work, it probably will not be the last time on the Croisette.

Screening Gotham: May 12-14, 2006

A few of this weekend’s worthwhile cinematic happenings around New York:
–Kyle Smith’s trenchant review in today’s Post notwithstanding (sample criticism: “The documentary, … which seeks to knock our former mayor off his pedestal, hits him with all the force of a wadded-up Kleenex.”), the new film Giuliani Time presents a dense, occasionally fascinating portrait of Rudy Giuliani’s rise through the federal attorney ranks to become “America’s Mayor” in the months following 9/11. While director Kevin Keating could shave at least 15 minutes from relating relative non-issues like the Giuliani family’s mob history (old news) and face time for camera gnats like Al Sharpton and Donald Trump, his painstaking exploration of education and law-enforcement issues provides a sobering counterpoint to the mainstream media’s unchecked Giuliani hagiography. The segment featuring former schools commisioner Rudy Crew is a tour de force that I can only hope finds a national audience if–or when–Giuliani decides to travel the presidential campaign trail come 2008.
–In 2006, on the centenary of his birth, the great writer Samuel Beckett is probably bigger than ever. His native Dublin has been celebrating the man and his work pretty much nonstop since New Year’s Day, and stateside, MoMA found an angle for its own little piece of the minimalist orgy: Film, which shares the distinction of being Beckett’s only foray into cinema as well as Buster Keaton’s final movie. It screens all weekend as part of a program also celebrating Beckett’s benefactor Barney Rosset, whose Grove Press also bankrolled works by Jean Genet and more recently, James Fotopoulos. The latter filmmaker’s latest work (based on a screenplay by Eugene Ionesco) will premiere tonight; a discussion featuring Rosset, Fotopoulos and critic Ed Halter follows. Seeing as admission is free, you could not really ask for a cheaper 100th birthday present to Beckett.
–The Robert Altman/Garrison Keillor collaboration A Prairie Home Companion will receive no fewer than three special New York screenings before its release June 9; the first takes place tonight at the Walter Reade Theater, where Keillor will drop in afterward to chat. Procrastinators rejoice, however: Makor has its own screening approaching May 30, and the Museum of the Moving Image is bringing Altman back out to Queens June 8.

Berlin Takes Manhattan with 'Easter Parade' Screening and Sing-Along

I would normally just plunk something online about this as it got closer, but I really think this event deserves the type of advance planning we bestow on weddings and Super Bowls: Lincoln Center just announced that it is going to screen a new print of Irving Berlin’s New York opus Easter Parade May 30. Which is awesome enough, I guess, except that a program of rarely seen animated Berlin shorts from Fleischer Studios will precede the screening. Oh, and some Berlin scholar actually plans a post-screening Q&A and sing-along.
Anyway, consider this your cue to check on your grandmother; if this news does not make her faint, it at least made her orgasm.

'Black,' 'God' Finally Lock Up Distribution

Really, considering the festival’s re-emergence in Brooklyn this weekend, Sundance news just never gets old. Take Off the Black and God Grew Tired of Us, for example, a couple of New Yorker-generated 2006 selections you read about here back last January that have just announced distribution deals.
James Ponsoldt’s Off the Black (right), featuring an unusually understated Nick Nolte as an alcoholic high-school baseball umpire, is pinned down for a November release from ThinkFilm, while God Grew Tired of Us–the Grand Jury and Audience Award-winning doc about a trio of Sudanese “lost boys” developing new lives in Syracuse and Pittsburgh–wound up under the Newmarket banner. It will also receive a fall release, according to Variety. The latter release is of particular note considering all the rights issues that so plagued the film for the last few months; indieWIRE’s Eugene Hernandez has the basic breakdown over on his blog; hopefully we can avoid any major Yari-esque indignities when Quinn and his newly official co-director Tommy Walker get their Oscar nods next winter.

They're Here: Sundance Institute Launches Week-Long BAM Residency

After a refreshing three-and-a-half month break, The Reeler returned to the Sundance beat Thursday night as the Sundance Institute at BAM series finally got underway in Brooklyn. It seems like only yesterday I was stalking a sort-of giddy Robert Redford over lunch, and now that he has returned with most of his entire Park City crew–including the Institute’s executive director Ken Brecher, Sundance festival director Geoffrey Gilmore and director of programming John Cooper–to spotlight a few members of his organization’s Class of ’06, I feel as though I am one 20-inch snow drift away from being magically lifted back to the frigid tumult of the real deal.

Little Miss Sunshine directors Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton introduce their film and its young star, Abigail Breslin, Thursday at its BAM premiere (Photos: STV)
All right, fine–I am exaggerating. But at least the faces looked like Sundance, with the aforementioned staff commingling with New York-based alums Hilary Brougher, Paul Rachman, Ryan Fleck, Anna Boden, Josh Marston, Rose Rosenblatt, Marion Lipschutz and God only knows who else. A popular Patricia Clarkson made the rounds once or twice, while directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris fielded a virtually endless receiving line after the NYC premiere of their festival darling (and $10 million Fox Searchlight dice-roll) Little Miss Sunshine.
“We’re very nervous about the New York audience taking this in,” Dayton said during his introduction, looking out on a crowd guzzling sugar-rimmed lemon drops. “But thank God you’ve all been drinking.” In the end, Sunshine drew the same steady stream of laughter it experienced during its Utah bow, and the filmmakers expressed their relief at the afterparty.
“It’s kind of like this dream scenario of these two institutions which we’ve known for years, ” Dayton told me. “And the idea that they’d come together and that our film could be part of the opening gala, is just, you know…” He shrugged. “Actually, standing here at the end of it all, I can say it was as good as we had hoped. Everything that you could have hoped might happen–a really fantastic, smart audience.”
“I was nervous because Sundance is the warmest, most receptive audience you can hope for,” Faris added. “And I was worried that this is New York, and it’s a Thursday night and people are coming form work, and you don’t know what kind of mood they’re in. And also the little bit of talk that the film sold for a lot of money at Sundance. And I don’t think that’s a great introduction to the film. So I was worried that a more cynical crowd might not respond. But again, because it’s a Sundance event–”
“At BAM,” Dayton emphasized.
“At BAM,” Faris said. “I mean, I wish we had something comparable in L.A. They draw great people with their program, and Sundance has connections with all kinds of great people here, and it’s exciting that the festival is here.”

The travel is certainly a hell of a lot easier, at least for folks like Brooklyn’s own Jennie Livingston, whose documentary Through the Ice will screen in the series’ shorts program. “BAM is a great place for these films to land,” she said, also recalling the days when trailblazing films like her own Paris is Burning epitomized Sundance as both a world-class breeding ground and market for independent cinema. “It was a much smaller festival, but of course, it was very exciting. It went from a first film–this little documentary–to something where people knew what it was. And in a sense, I became a filmmaker. And I went back to Sundance for the first time this year with this short. Now, of course, the festival is much bigger, and in a sense, it suffers from its films’ success because it’s so overwhelming and big. On the other hand, I saw the most amazing assortment of films. I mean, I felt like so many of the films I saw were in the spirit of what I imagined Sundance should be about. Films like Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, or the Al Gore film [An Inconvenient Truth]. Two opposite ends of the spectrum, but both films that when you see them, you say, ‘These should be made.’ ”
Moreover, when I look at the Sundance at BAM program, I cannot help but think that these are the films that should be screening here. As I’ve said at least a hundred times, you cannot go wrong with So Yong Kim’s In Between Days or Brougher’s Stephanie Daley, the latter of which will be the focus of a discussion between Brougher and producer Ted Hope Saturday at 3 p.m. Goran Dukic will be in town to introduce his brilliant Wristcutters: A Love Story, while Byron Hurt’s hip-hop doc Beyond Beats and Rhymes will unspool a series-high three times in addition to a special screening and discussion for area high school students. Carter Smith’s Cannes-bound Bugcrush joins the ungodly Before Dawn in the shorts program, and all of you cine-pervs can run down with your trenchcoats and hand lotion on Saturday night to check out the art-porn anthology Destricted.
Additionally, BAM is hosting work from the Institute’s other labs and programs throughout the week: Composers Raz Mesinai, Gyan Riley and Maya Beiser perform next weekend; the Sundance Theater Songbook opens up May 15; and Sunday, the festival offers a free reading of Tanya Hamilton’s screenwriters lab work-in-progress, Discovering Stringbean and Marcus. The whole series closes out May 21 with kind of a do-it-yourself screening and panel discussion, “Four Independents That Turned the Tide”; viewers are invited to screen one of four films–Polyester, Gas Food Lodging, Spanking the Monkey or The Unbelievable Truth–before sitting in on a panel discussion with the four filmmakers behind each–John Waters, Allison Anders, David O. Russell and Hal Hartley, respectively.
“Where Sundance is a captured audience, here, we really looked to make sure that every film you walked into, you had a piece of Sundance,” Cooper told The Reeler. “You felt it like it was the same kind of experience–you have a dialogue. And we did look at films that had more than one Sundance story behind it; they either went to the labs, or they’re supported through the doc fund. There are many threads that run through the program. We could have programmed it ourselves and brought it here, but we decided that this was a place to partner with because they have theater, music and film, which is what we do. It was the perfect place. It didn’t look like just the festival here–it looked like the whole institute.”
See? I told you this place looked familiar.

'Nanny Diaries' Flirts with Watchability as Johansson Snubs Harvey, Hizzoner

OK, so I ditched my parents at the Today Show studios long enough to direct you to Open All Night, where my pals Bennett and Dennis caught all the clusterfuck drama surrounding Wednesday’s NYC film commission press conference on the set of The Nanny Diaries. This event featured all of The Reeler’s favorite things–Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Weinstein, a frazzled bureaucracy and enough potential for disaster to all but assure a total system failure.
And as the OAN gang told readers yesterday, the meltdown did not take long:

After speaking, Harvey Weinstein said, “I’ll go get Scarlett,” and walked to the movie set. There was some discussion, and we heard the words “She said no” from the set; apparently Johansson had refused to come and meet the mayor. This was later corroborated by an on-set rep.

So Mayor Bloomberg walked up the street to the tent where Johansson was sequestered; a few photographers followed along, and things turned ugly. The mayor’s security detail harassed the photographers, and threatened to revoke their press credentials if they did not leave the public street. A publicist then told us that it had taken over 2,000 e-mails to make the event happen, and that Johansson stipulated that she would not be photographed with the mayor. The mayor’s muscle made sure that it did not happen.

Awesome! The guys have more pictures over at OAN, but few compare with the mental image of Mayor Bloomberg whispering, “It’s OK, Harvey, it’s OK,” before whistling between his thumb and forefinger and signaling the police detail to light the entire set on fire, just like ‘Nam. Or film commissioner Katherine Oliver calling in an IRS audit of the Weinstein Company before she even gets back to her Midtown office. Or Harvey sniffing to Scarlett, “I thought you were a team player,” before ordering her boyfriend Josh Hartnett bound in the negative his latest WeinCo dud, Lucky Number Slevin, and ceremonially drowned in the Hudson. I hope I am at least invited to that press conference.
UPDATE: The NYDN passes along the scoop that Johansson was not fleeing the on-set press conference in terror–that running off and hiding was just another symbol of her consummate professionalism:

In an e-mail to the Daily News, Johansson said her absence had nothing to do with Bloomberg’s politics.

“I am simply in New York trying to do my job – filming of The Nanny Diaries – that’s it. We were never supposed to be a part of the press conference,” she said. “Production always comes first.”

Sure, Scarlett–blame it on Harvey. You would not be the first.
(Photo: Dennis Van Tine / OAN)

The Reeler Will Return Friday

I will see you back here Friday morning with a dispatch from Sundance at BAM’s opening-night fête and another round of Screening Gotham. In the interim, I recommend following local authorities’ advice and preparing for the inevitability of both a catastrophic hurricane and a goddamned Knight Rider movie brought to you by the Weinsteins. It is no longer a matter of if, but when.


Oh, and Jeff Wells’s random pictures of shit around New York are good for at least a few minutes of puzzled diversion over at Hollywood Elsewhere. Who knew bootlegged DVD’s could be so photogenic?

The Slate Outdoors: 2006 Bryant Park Film Festival Schedule Locked

The gang behind the HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival sends word of its 2006 program, a 10-film slate that kicks off June 19 and runs through Aug. 21. It seems like a somewhat unusual lineup for a free outdoor series, with subversive fare like M*A*S*H and The Manchurian Candidate sharing the schedule with more summer-ish crowd pleasers like Rocky and A Shot in the Dark. (The program note for Hitchcock’s The Birds also features the quintessentially film-class observation, “Note the Freudian undertones as a daddy’s girl [Tippi Hedren] pursues a momma’s boy [Rod Taylor] up the California coast.”)
Not that I am complaining: At 30 years old, Rocky is the youngest film here, which means a good opportunity for folks to catch repertory stuff like Bullitt and Charade in the original 35mm format–and, of course, at no charge. The full schedule follows after the jump; start clearing your Mondays now.

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Today in Bald-Faced Hypocrisy: Page Six Calls Out Manohla Dargis

As you certainly know by now, kneejerk defenses of The New York Times are not exactly a default reaction around Reeler HQ. But considering the smug slapdown Page Six dropped this morning on my beloved Manohla Dargis–whom the Post playfully accuses of ripping off Andrea Peyser (of all people)–I thought a little context might be in order.
For example: Remember when The Reeler followed up on local movie producer Julius Nasso, who apparently lied to Daily News gossip Lloyd Grove about a beating death he witnessed during a nine-and-a-half month prison term in Elkton, Ohio? It went something like this (from The Reeler, Aug. 26, 2005):

(Nasso) wound up in a low-security prison like Elkton–where a spokesman today told The Reeler that no such death ever occurred.

“The one allegation where the inmate was kicked to death in the middle of the night?” the spokesman said. “Really, what you’re talking about there is an inmate homicide. We haven’t had any inmate homicides here at Elkton. Never, let alone the time that Nasso was here at Elkton. I can tell you that.”

And then–shock of shocks–Page Six runs this item Aug. 30:

The Daily News breathlessly reported last week that movie producer-cum-felon Julius Nasso – who helped mobsters extort actor Steven Seagal – said he watched a fellow inmate being kicked to death by gang members during Nasso’s recent stint in the Elkton, Ohio, federal prison. But Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Carla Wilson told The Post’s Dan Mangan that not only was there no homicide in that prison during Nasso’s time there but that “there’s never been any homicides at Elkton.” Look for the News to report next that Nasso has beaten breast cancer.

I figure Page Six will get around to crediting me eventually–probably around the same time Ms. Dargis handwrites a note of apology to Andrea Peyser. Until then, nobody should hold his breath–and the pot might consider shutting the fuck up about the kettle.

Shirley Temple: Cinema's Cutest Toxin Gets Recalled

Army Archerd had Shirley Temple right where he wanted her over the weekend, cornering the ageless 78-year-old child star into answering for a DVD collection that includes charm bracelets with high amounts of lead. Alas, Hollywood’s First Blogger let the mischievous moppet off the hook as she adorably pointed a finger at the studio:

Shirley told me she received word about the recall — and the reason — from Fox Entertainment’s Steve Feldstein. She commented that she has no input on the DVD packaging of her hits. “I don’t own them,” she said. “I made an arrangement with them (20th Century) years ago.”

Despite her non-ownership, Shirley assured me, “It worked out very well. Financially, I am taken care of, but I have no control of it. Everything’s O.K.” Feldstein visited her at her home in to talk about the DVDs.

Archerd writes that more than 730,000 lead-based DVDs face recall, while the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Fox last week posted an appropriately cutesy pink-and-white Web site encouraging viewers to send in the charms for a shot at a free DVD. So in a nutshell, if you or your poor kid are strutting around wearing charms you claimed from Curly Top, Heidi, Little Miss Broadway, Baby Take a Bow, Bright Eyes, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Dimples, The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel or any of the three Shirley Temple Collections containing those films, ship them back. Tackiness has never been deadlier.

Willing and Abel: Surreal Sketches From Ferrara's Late-Night Tribeca Hoedown

As desperately as I tried to drag Ma and Pa Reeler to the New York premiere of Abel Ferrara’s Mary, my vacationing parents just were not going for the midnight-in-Tribeca vibe I was selling. But that is where my readers come in–at least that is where this reader comes in, one of the few who seem to have braved the late-night allegorical waters at Tribeca’s “secret screening” as Saturday (and the festival itself) bled to death into Sunday:

Last night was nothing if not memorable. There was an appropriate mania to the whole affair, not without the frustrations of chaotic experience- but nonetheless amusing. … (T)he screening (took place) in one of the theaters to the soundtrack of an impromptu party on the other side of Tribeca Clubhouse. … How often do you get to see Abel Ferrara haphazardly lapping the room to the beat of 80s bubblegum? All this before you are unleashed to claim an intimate seat in a compromised theater, knowing that it may be your only chance to see Mary in any venue other than your living room. How many directors interrupt the introduction to their film by pacing through the unfilled seats screaming about the Catholic church’s boycott of The DaVinci Code? And when was the last time your trepidation towards a film was completely undone upon viewing it?

Despite the distractions of circumstance, I actually enjoyed the film. … I guess I’m a sucker for meta; it’s satisfying to see one filmmaker so brazenly approach another’s controversy. Also to watch “La Binoche” playing with the idea of a saintly actress or Matthew Modine channeling Ferrera (original choice Vincent Gallo would probably have been better but…). Whitaker is hammy, but in a cool kind of way, while support from French chameleon Marion Cotillard is a nice touch. And shockingly, I actually thought Heather Graham wasn’t an embarrassing addition to the ensemble. Another shock: the film’s academic inflections; Elaine Pagels delivers more exposition than any of the actors.

I don’t mean to sound reverential here–I just mean to express that the movie’s weaknesses are no match for its surprises. … The only bigger surprise than the fact that I really like Mary is that Abel Ferrara is still alive. … I found him to be cartoonish, confounding, and charming. I do not feel that the myspace secret screening, squeezed into Tribeca, was what he or the film deserved.

Seriously, I cannot imagine how even the most self-referential, poorly attended abortion of a film could sink the tragicomedy of “Abel Ferrara haphazardly lapping the room to the beat of 80s bubblegum,” but that probably just proves the limits of my imagination. That said, I think we all owe this valiant soul a round of applause for taking one for the team and for jamming a period at the end of this particular death sentence. I am now looking forward to revisiting what really matters: Old-school NYC classics like the austere critic Roger Friedman inaccurately attributing Twister to Wolfgang Petersen.
See? We are back to normal already.

'Treatment,' 'When I Came Home' Make City Proud as Tribeca Wraps Up

Well, that was fast: Tribeca ’06 handed out its hardware last night, and the festival ends today with three theaters devoting their entire days to the chosen few films. Blessed by Fire, The War Tapes and Voices of Bam claimed the top international prizes, while The Treatment (narrative), When I Came Home (doc) and Native New Yorker (short) won big among the NY, NY selections. Linda Hattendorf’s excellent The Cats of Mirikitani (right) took the Audience Award back home to Soho.
For the full list of winners and a schedule of today’s award-winner screenings, follow the jump. Meanwhile, I am playing tour guide for my entire family this week in New York, so excuse the next few days of sporadic posting. I should have a Summer Preview Review in place by Wednesday; judging from the looks of what I have read so far, you may need it.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and thanks for following Tribeca with me!

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