The website for the Tribeca Film Festival has finally put up video from the Q&A session that followed its closing-night presentation of The King of Comedy, but, alas, it's just an excerpt. I was hoping that the discussion — which included the film's director Martin Scorsese and its stars, Robert De Niro, venerable comedian and filmmaker Jerry Lewis and (briefly, via pre-taped video) Sandra Bernhard — would run in its entirety, because, even after 30 years, the creative tensions that contributed to the film's greatness were still evident. more »
"I met you once for a handshake and I was terrified," Darren Aronofsky told Clint Eastwood during their Tribeca Talks Directors Series discussion on Saturday. "I’m still a little terrified." more »
Unless you count the viral video cat named Lil Bub, the winners of the Tribeca Film Festival's annual awards ceremony are not a glitzy lot, despite the event's reputation as a celebrity-studded affair. more »
Clark Gregg has gone from babysitting the Avengers to child actors. Gregg, aka S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson, took a break from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to write, direct and star in his second feature Trust Me , in which he plays another kind of highly specialized agent — the Hollywood kind, for kids. more »
The studios want him, but, these, days Zac Efron only has eyes for indie film. After making a splash at the New York Film Festival with The Paperboy last fall, Efron is back in the Big Apple, at the Tribeca Film Festival, with At Any Price. What's the deal? more »
"I've been acting since I was 13 years old, so I love playing around with different genres of movies...It keeps my profession fresh for me," Ethan Hawke told me on the red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival.
more »
In helmer Steph Green’s debut feature, Run and Jump, a family must adjust to life with father — specifically, a father who has suffered brain damage from a stroke, and who returns home with a camera-toting medical researcher in tow. The wife of the stroke victim — an extraordinarily vibrant, red-haired mother of two and a warm, coaxing hostess to the uptight researcher — helps the household accommodate the strangers in its midst. Skirting traumatic turmoil, Run discovers reserves of strength and joie de vivre that could prove irresistible to European and American auds. more »
A longstanding gig will keep Sandra Bernhard from attending the Tribeca Film Festival's closing-night screening of The King of Comedy on April 27, but it's not like she needs her memory jogged. The comedienne recalls that making Martin Scorsese's prescient and oh-so-dark 1982 comedy about a deluded stand-up comic (Robert De Niro) who kidnaps his favorite talk-show host (Jerry Lewis), was a "coming-of-age experience that left me a changed person." more »
One of the more intriguing science-fiction films screening at the Tribeca Film Festival is The Machine. Directed by Caradog James, whose last film was the 2006 racism dramedy Little White Lies, The Machine is ostensibly about a scientist obsessed with building a cybernetic super soldier. That's a familiar storyline, but based on the clues found in the synopsis and a batch of production stills that have been released, film looks like it may have as much to do with gender politics as it does with super soldiers. more »
This Wednesday kicks off the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, and I got the chance to sit down with festival co-founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal to talk shop. Now while all film festivals have plenty of business going on behind the scenes, Tribeca puts it front and center with events like its Future of Film LIVE talks which focus on film distribution. According to Rosenthal, the festival is geared to reflect the hot topics of conversation in the film industry today: "We have to look at how the business is changing and how you create is different because of technology...so it's that merging together of that dialogue."
more »
Also in Tuesday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, a new actor joins the next Hunger Games. A surreal comedy by electronic musician Quentin Dupieux is headed to screens. Reese Witherspoon boards a new romantic comedy. And a man is arrested in Ohio for bringing in weapons into a screening of TDKR.
more »
Also in Thursday afternoon's round-up of news briefs, Strand Releasing and Cinema Guild pick up films for U.S. release. Ashely Judd and Robert Forster take on roles in an upcoming action-thriller and Universal sets a release for The Man with the Iron Fists.
more »
Up in Canada, documentary festival Hot Docs gave out its prizes over the weekend, while Stateside, the Tribeca Film Festival unveiled plans for a new event in Italy. Madonna remembers Beasties' Adam Yauch and Morgan Spurlock launches a new production company. Check out more in Monday's Biz Break.
more »
Kim Nguyen's War Witch cast a spell at the Tribeca Film Festival Thursday evening, winning the event's $25K Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature, while Una Noche's Lucy Mulloy won $50K and the fest's Best New Narrative Director prize as well as other nods at a ceremony in Lower Manhattan. Also taking home prizes at the ceremony were The World Before Her by Canadian Nisha Pahuja, which took Best Documentary Feature while Dutch director Jeroen van Velzen's won Best New Documentary Director for Wavumba.
more »
Just when you think you might have had enough of James Franco, along comes Francophrenia to either whet your appetite for more of the actor-director's avant-garde pursuits — or officially turn you off to them forever.
more »
