A Round-up of Tribeca Film Festival Links

CHAMPAIGN, ILL.—Sorry for the lack of posting in the past couple weeks or so on this blog. This time, though, I have two good excuses, I think: Tribeca Film Festival and Ebertfest!

For Tribeca, I contributed to Slant Magazine a few reviews of films playing at this year's edition of the Robert De Niro-founded festival. And when I say Slant Magazine this time around, I mean the actual Slant Magazine, not its side blog The House Next Door. So now I have reviews for that site with star ratings and everything! Despite its reputation as a wildly uneven and inconsistent festival in regards to quality of films shown, the bulk of the handful of films I saw at Tribeca this year were actually pretty good, or at least reasonably interesting. I'm happy that one of the films I reviewed, Rwandan director Kivu Ruhorahoza's uneven but intriguing Grey Matter, picked up a couple of awards at the festival, one for lead actress Shami Bizimana and another for Ruhorahoza himself.

Here is a list of all the Tribeca films I reviewed for Slant:
Black Butterflies
Cairo Exit
Grey Matter
Janie Jones
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
The Journals of Musan

And here is a link for Slant Magazine's full Tribeca Film Festival coverage.

I wasn't able to cover more of Tribeca, however...because, at about the halfway mark, I found myself here in Champaign, Ill., for the 13th year of Roger Ebert's Film Festival, or what is more commonly known as Ebertfest!

Thirteen films hand-picked by the legendary film critic himself, screened in the span of four days at the historic Virginia Theatre in this small Illinois town (his hometown, apparently), plus a couple of panels and one epic night of karaoke—all of this contributed to taking away precious time to blog about the experience. So obviously, I'll have much more to say about Ebertfest in one or two future posts (short version: it was a lot of fun, if oddly more exhausting, in less days, than South by Southwest).

Until then, though...chew on this:

Jia Zhang-ke and Zhao Tao In The House!

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—I had initially planned to finally take in Jia Zhang-ke's Platform (2000) on the big screen at the Museum of Modern Art this afternoon before heading over to an Oscar party in Park Slope tonight. But then, I took a look at the size of the bags I would have to carry all around New York before going to this party—a backpack, a bag of clothes for work tomorrow (I'm planning to sleep over my host's pad) and most likely a bag of some kind of food (it's a potluck)—and decided it'd be much easier to just go straight from New Brunswick to Park Slope. Thankfully, MoMA is showing Platform again on Saturday, so I'll plan accordingly.

The big draw for going to see it this particular afternoon would have been to see Jia in person and hear him introduce the film. I'll be missing him, alas...but no big deal, because I already saw him: on Friday night, with his leading lady Zhao Tao, introducing The World (2004)! I even took a couple of snaps with my pocket-size Canon PowerShot SD400:

 

 

Pictured in both: Jia, middle, and Zhao Tao, right, still sporting that short hairstyle from 24 City

According to Jia, he was sporting those glasses as protection for his eyes, having strained it after long hours editing. Too bad...and yet, who knew that Jia could do a mean Wong Kar-Wai impression?

 

I have more to say about The World itself, but I'll save a more detailed consideration for another post. For now, I will say that my suspicions were confirmed: I found the film considerably more engaging on a big screen than I did watching it on my 42" LCD TV at home. It still may not quite challenge Still Life (2006) as my favorite of his features (sans Xiao Wu (1997), which I haven't yet seen), but it seems a lot richer, funnier, more beautiful and more affecting than it did the first time. Here's hoping for a similar revelation with Platform Saturday!