Tribeca Aftermath: Notes From the Wreckage

You don't even want to see my office after Hurricane Tribeca, which is teeming with Red Cross volunteers, shellshocked interns and at least one critic soon to be MedEvaced somewhere quiet and tree-shrouded. But amid the smoldering rubble of press releases and free popcorn, a few odds and ends have emerged from the pile to bear mention the morning after:

--Naturally (or perhaps unnaturally, if my stinging eyes are any indication), The Reeler dominated this year's Tribeca coverage. That said, you have to give a hand to S. James Snyder, the NY Sun/Downtown Express regular who launched his own overview a full 12 days before us and went on to write at least a half-dozen features about things worth seeing and doing around the festival. Are they a little soft-focused? Perhaps: Today's Sun recap visits the man on the street and depicts a community I didn't quite see in my own time downtown (a handful of filmmakers polled suggested "that in only six years the festival has steadily climbed the list of the world's most important places for up-and-comers to screen work in competition"? That's not what I heard), but you can't dispute the guy got out and about for the last two weeks. Which is more than you can say for any of the city's other dailies.

--Brilliantly, Ain't It Cool News threw a bone at Tribeca with cave-painted reviews of The Air I Breathe, Nobel Son and Suburban Girl, the latter of which is dismissed as "something that the gals should see by themselves and leave the guys to see stuff blowing up elsewhere in the multiplex." Thanks for coming, gang.

--Over at Slant, Jason Clark went against New York's critical grain and actually gave the fest some props: "This year," he writes, "sprawling its tentacles out to practically the entire Manhattan island, the films on the whole were actually pretty worth it, netting a possibly even better hit-to-miss ratio than the tonier New York Film Festival in the fall." And you know what? Judging by The Reeler's Screening Room reviews, he's right.

Posted at May 7, 2007 1:24 PM