With the close of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival comes the announcement of the winners. Let's see which movies brought home a prize!
The Founder's Award for Best Narrative Feature: Let the Right One In The story of a 12-year-old's first romance with the girl next door, who happens to be a vampire.
Best New Narrative Filmmaker: My Marlon and Brando A Turk and a Kurd living in Iraq fall in love in this based on a truw story romance in which the lovers play themselves.
Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film: Thomas Turgoose and Piotr Jagiello in Somers Town Story of an unlikely friendship between a 16-year-old boy who fled to London to escape his difficult life in the Midlands and a Polish immigrant who lives with his dad.
Best Actress in Narrative Feature Film: Eileen Walsh in Eden Takes a look at the disintegration of a marriage during the week before the couple's ten year anniversary.
Best Documentary Feature: Pray the Devil Back to Hell The story of a group of women who tried to bring peace to their destroyed country, Liberia, and were able to bring about the first female head of state on the African continent.
Best New Documentary Filmmaker: Old Man Bebo The story of the nearly 90-year-old Bebo Valdes, one of the greatest living Cuban musicians.
I've noticed that this year there are a large amount of Tribeca films that are starring big name actors. Take a look below and see which big stars are part of small independent pictures.
Ball Don't Lie starring: Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Nick Cannon, Rosanna Arquette, Emilie de Ravin
Finding Amanda starring: Matthew Broderick, Brittany Snow
As part of my exclusive behind the scenes of the Tribeca Film Festival, I spoke with Andrea Tuccillo, a film critic and staff writer from TheCinemaSource.com. Andrea gave me the story of what it's like to cover Tribeca from the journalist's point of view.
She said that her editor made most of the decisions as to what movies and premieres the site would be covering. He chose mostly movies that had well-known actors in them because he felt like those would be the movies that TheCinemaSource.com reader would want to know more about. The editor then assigned Andrea a group of premieres that he wanted her to cover.
Andrea's job was to work the red carpet at the premieres. She had to stand amongst all of the other journalists and wait for the actors and filmmakers to come down the line and, hopefully, to stop and talk with her for a few minutes. This wasn't always easy; in some instances the celebrities were rushed into the theater before they reached her.
Another bump in the road was at the Tribeca All Access Awards, where there were some minor celebrities walking the red carpet; however, Andrea was unsure who many of them were. In this case, Andrea picked a few people whose names sounded a little familiar, like Joy Bryant, and improvised some questions. With one actor she even discovered that he was joining the cast of one of her favorite TV shows! Andrea preferred to think on her feet and to make up her questions on the spot, instead of having a list prepared. She was forced to ask general questions, since she was only covering the red carpet and not staying for the actual screening of the movie. One example of Andrea's interviewing strategy can be seen in her red carpet interview of Tom Kalin, the director of Savage Grace, a drama about the downward spiral of a '60s socialite. She asks Kalin how he got involved in the film and how he felt premiering it at the Tribeca Film Festival.
"Working the red carpet at a film premiere can be a little daunting at first, but I can already see that with a few more under my belt, they will become old hat. I've learned that in order to succeed on the carpet, you need to be confident and assertive. You have to be able to come up with intelligent questions, even if you do so on the spot!" Andrea told me.
Click here to see a video of Andrea at the Savage Grace premiere.
Here's my own video interview with Andrea Tuccillo of TheCinemaSource.com.
As an intern at 42West, a PR firm that's representing several Tribeca movies, I was able to speak with and to observe people as they prepared for Tribeca.
Everyone I spoke to told me that media outreach is definitely one of the most important parts of promoting the films. It is crucial for the publicists to see which media outlets and which journalists are going to be covering the festival so they can see who they can reach out to with information about one of their movies.
Everyone in the office had to work on an extremely long media list that had the names of all of the journalists who would be covering Tribeca and their news organizations, everything from national newspapers to college papers to personal blogs. The task that came with this media list was to obtain all of these journalists' contact information, either an email address or a phone number, so that they could be sent information on certain films.
Once the media list was compiled, the publicists started sending out press notes and screeners to the journalists. "By sending out press notes and screeners, we are trying to get the journalists interested in covering our movies. Then, if they do decide to cover the movies, they will have enough information to write a complete story about them," said Tim Brunner, who worked on sending out this information.
The publicists continued their contact with the journalists in the days leading up to the movies' premieres. This way they knew how many people and which major news organizations were covering the films.
On the premiere days, the publicists arrived to the theater early to make sure everything was running smoothly. I got to go with some publicists to the premiere of Bart Got a Room and I witnessed how they got in touch with all of the actors and filmmakers who were attending and kept them up to date with everything that was going on. They also explained to me the importance of organization and of having a set game plan, down to knowing the amount of reserved seats that needed to be set aside. The publicists knew beforehand which major news organizations were going to be covering the event. They handed out press notes to the journalists and took note of which journalists attended.
In the days following the premieres, the publicists looked for any press that the movies had received. All of everyone's hard work paid off!
Here's a look at some of the most buzzworthy films to be shown at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival:
Baby Mama When a successful but single businesswoman discovers that she's infertile, she hires an unlikely surrogate.
Baghdad High Four Iraqi classmates are given cameras to document their last year in high school.
Bart Got a Room Danny goes on a desparate search for a prom date with the help of his wcky but well-meaning parents.
Chevolution A documentary that looks at how the image of Che Guevara, a symbol of Cuba's revolution, became a famous design for clothes and accessories. Going on 13 Four young girls are documented for four years as they come of age.
Gunnin' for That #1 Spot This documentary, directed by the Beastie Boy's Adam Yauch, follows eight of the country's top 24 high school basketball players as they participate in the first "Elite 24" tournament.
Katyn This Academy Award nominated film tells the true story of the 1940 slaughter of Poland's 15,000 man officer corps.
Life in Flight Starring Patrick Wilson and Amy Smart, this film tells the story of a New York architect who begins to question his perfect life.
Man on Wire A documentary about Frenchman Philippe Petit who, on August 7, 1974, walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers without a safety net.
Mister Lonely A Michael Jackson lookalike meets a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, who invites him to her commune in Scotland, where she lives with a group of other lookalikes.
Playing for Change A documentary about two men who carried recording equipment around the world, recording a little piece of their song in each country. The result is beautiful and inspirational piece of music. Run for Your Life A documentary tribute to the late Fred Lebow, who was instrumental in the building up of the New York City marathon.
Speed Racer Follows Speed and his quest for glory in the Mach 5 car race.
Tennessee Two brothers go back to their hometown, which they left as teenagers, in order to find their estranged father.
This Is Not a Robbery A documentary about how a formerly law-abidding senior citizen became one of the country's most well-known serial bank robbers. Trucker A female truck driver has to raise her estranged 11-yer-old son after his father is hospitalized. The Wackness A teenage dope dealer makes a deal with his psychiatrist to exchange drugs for therapy.
Here's a video highlighting the movies described above:
From April 23 to May 4, the seventh annual Tribeca Film Festival took over New York City with hundreds of films and events. The Tribeca Film Festival was created by Robert DeNiro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff after 9/11 in an attempt to rejuvenate lower Manhattan culturally and economically.
The festival aims to provide a platform for filmmakers, to showcase the importance of the cinema for the international film community and for the general public, and to build New York up as a major filmmking city.
The festival, with its large variety of independent narratives, documentaries, and shorts, as well as international films, panel discussions, and family-friendly events, has certainly done its part to help New York's economy. In fact, originally founded to revitalize lower Manhattan, the festival has been enormously beneficially to all parts of New York City, perhaps because festival films are shown throughout the city and not just in Tribeca.
In just seven years, the Tribeca Film Festival has brought over two million visitors to New York from across the country and the world and has created more than $425 million in economic activity for the city.
Here's a timeline I created showing some of the most popular films that have premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival over the past seven years:
The true story of Elle France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who, in 1995 at age 43, suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body, except his left eye. Bauby then used that eye to blink out his memoir.
A young girl living in an alternate universe travels to the far North to save her best friend and other kidnapped children from a mysterious organization's horrible experiments.
27 Dresses starring: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Edward Burns, Malin Akerman
Jane, a young woman who has been a bridesmaid 27 times before, faces her toughest bridesmaid duty ever when she's asked to attend to her younger sister's wedding to the man that she is secretly in love with.
In honor of today's nasty weather, I'm posting a list inspired by my favorite rainy day activity: watching Lifetime movie marathons. Come on, you can't beat the overacting, the melodrama, the closing courtroom scenes, or the attempts by '90s TV stars to fight typecasting by playing the "bad guys." Here are some of my favorites (most of which are, of course, based on a true story): No One Would Tell starring: Fred Savage (The Wonder Years' Kevin Arnold), Candace Cameron Bure (Full House's DJ Tanner)
A shy teenager (Bure) becomes involved in, and eventually can't get out of, an abusive relationship with a popular and attractive athlete (Savage).
She Cried No starring: Candace Cameron Bure (DJ Tanner), Mark Paul-Gosselaar (Saved by the Bell's Zack Morris), Jenna von Oy (Blossom's Six LeMeure)
When a college freshman (Bure) attends a party thrown by her brother's fraternity, she is date-raped by a fraternity member (Gosselaar).
Dying to Belong starring: Hilary Swank (ever heard of her?), Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Zack Morris), and Jenna von Oy (Six LeMeure), Sarah Chalke (Scrub's Dr. Elliot Reid)
After a college freshman's friend is killed during a night of sorority hazing, she (Swank) sets out to expose the dark underside of Greek life.
Death of a Cheerleader starring: Kellie Martin, Tori Spelling (both Lifetime movie veterans)
Angela DelVecchio (Martin) wants to be popular so much that when popular cheerleader Stacey Lockwood (Spelling) rejects her friendship, she reacts by killing her.
She's Too Young starring: Alexis Dziena, Marcia Gay Harden, Megan Park, Miriam McDonald
A mother (Harden) is shocked to find out that her 14-year-old daughter (Dziena) has contracted syphilis, and even more shocked to find out that a syphilis epidemic has overtaken the high school.
Also, I found a pretty interesting database that has links to articles about the "real stories" on which these Lifetime movies have been based. Be sure to check out the stories behind Death of a Cheerleader (under A Friendship to Die For) and No One Would Tell.
I've noticed that there are several upcoming films that have been adapted from best-selling novels. Let's take a look at a few:
My Sister's Keeper Novel by: Jodi Picoult Status: Filming; 2009 release Starring: Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin, Sofia Vassilieva, Abigail Breslin
A young teen, conceived as a genetic match for her leukemia-fighting sister, sues her parents for emancipation. A bit of trivia: Real-life sisters Dakota and Elle Fanning were supposed to star in this movie together, however, rumor has it that Dakota pulled out and took Elle with her because she didn't want to shave her head for the role (Can you really blame her?). Here's a picture of Sofia Vassilieva on the set with her shaved head.
The Lovely Bones Novel by: Alice Sebold Status: Post-production, will be released on March 13, 2009 Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, Stanley Tucci, Saoirse Ronan
A young girl who was brutally raped and murdered watches her family from heaven, as her father becomes obsessed with catching her killer, her mother grows distant from the rest of the family, and her sister grows up and experiences things that she never will. After reading the novel, I'm really curious to see the film adaptation, especially since it is being directed by Peter Jackson, the man behind the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the remake of King Kong.
The Time Traveler's Wife Novel by: Audrey Niffenegger Status: Post-production, will be released on December 25, 2008 Starring: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana
A librarian with a gene that causes him to involuntarily travel through time shares a romance that endures across time with an artist whose life unfolds sequentially.
The Secret Life of Bees Novel by: Sue Monk Kidd Status: Post-production, will be released on October 17, 2008 Starring: Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Sophie Okonedo, Paul Bettany, Hilarie Burton
A 14-year-old girl in 1964 flees with her caregiver to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past in an attempt to escape from her loneliness and her abusive father.
Well, they've left White Castle, the site of their 2004 film, and now the two stoner friends are stuck trying to flee from the authorities, who suspect them of being terrorists after their attempt to sneak a bong onto their flight to Amsterdam. "Hilarity" ensues.
Deception starring: Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams
An accountant becomes the prime suspect in both a woman's disappearance and a multi-million dollar robbery after he is introduced to a mysterious sex club known as the List by his lawyer friend.
Amelia, set for release in 2009, is a biopic of Amelia Earhart, the famous American pilot who disappeared mysteriously in 1937 while flying over the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to make a flight around the world. The film will chronicle Earhart's rocky relationship with publisher - promoter George Putnam, whom she eventually married.
Hilary Swank has been cast as Amelia Earhart. JustJared.com posted the first pictures of Hilary as she arrived in Toronto last week to begin shooting. Apparently, the big uproar is that when Hilary arrived in Toronto, she did so sans eyebrows. I think she's looking quite a bit like Amelia herself.
In other casting news, Richard Gere is set to plan Putnam and Virginia Madsen has just signed on to play Dorothy Binney, Putnam's first wife. Who's excited?
After Peter Bretter is dumped by Sarah Marshall, he decides to take a Hawaiian vacation so that he can forget her. Unbeknownst to Peter, however, Sarah is traveling to the same resort with her new boyfriend.
Best New Narrative Filmmaker:
Best Actress in Narrative Feature Film:
Best New Documentary Filmmaker:
