Tribeca Film Festival 2008: Introduction
Another year, another 20+ movies at the Tribeca Film Festival. The Festival has actually improved a lot of things between last year and this year. Ticket prices are down, which is excellent, since they were aiming at elitist New York Film Festival prices last year. Buying tickets was again a nightmare. As per usual, I showed up early to stand in-line at the box office on the first day of sales. Box office opened at 11am. I arrived at 7:50 or so and was second in line. Anyone arriving after 9am was pretty much shit out of luck. They were going to wait longer than I waited and by the time they got in, people on the Internet would have had hours to buy up all the tickets. Word of advice, if you’re going to buy tickets at the box office, get your ass out of bed.
It is odd that the festival has almost entirely moved to the East Village and Flatiron. Every movie I am going to this year is either in the East Village Loews, in the Village East theater on 2nd Ave. or in the Flatiron Loews. For a festival whose genesis was in bringing life back to Tribeca after 9/11, it is very odd that they have now almost entirely abandoned it. There is no longer a reason to visit a Tribeca bar (Brandy Library, mmmmm) before a midnight screening or get lunch somewhere downtown. Maybe Tribeca has recovered enough? The name is fast becoming an anomaly, which is sad.