City Island Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The eighth edition of the Tribeca Film Festival drew to a close very late Sunday night after a full day of screenings. The slimmed-down fest was evidently somewhat easier for the press and public to navigate, and the good films still bobbed to the surface on their own merits.

Awards. The competition categories were decided upon by all-star juries, but the paying customers got their say as well. Raymond De Felitta's comedy City Island won the Audience Award, edging out Marshall Curry's doc Racing Dreams and Ron Carlson's historical epic Mascots vs. Midgets. (Just kidding on that last description, of course; see "Our Coverage" below.) Racing Dreams previously won the jury award for Best Documentary Feature. The top 10 audience favorites are listed at the fest site.

Deals. Magnolia Pictures picked up Conor McPherson's drama The Eclipse over the weekend. We'll have a separate story on this distribution deal.

Our Coverage. Erik Davis said that Stay Cool "leaps into your lap with its perky, original concept, but then slowly but surely fails to deliver ... well, pretty much everything." Eric D. Snider advises that Ti West's The House of the Devil "prefers slow-building tension over frequent bloodletting and mayhem," but when it does deliver on its promises, "Holy crap." (?!) Another title that seemingly sells itself, Midgets vs. Mascots turns out to be "an occasionally very funny but often very sloppy mockumentary that is far too eager to show us how taboo it is," according to The Snide.

You can review, bookmark, recommend, link to, chew over, and comment upon all of our coverage right here.

Twitter Talk. Just one concluding thought: "Tribeca winds down as the dividers at the AMC slowly get put away. The rain is God shedding a tear."

One week into the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) and the screenings keep humming along. It's probably a softer buzz than previous years; some attendees have even dared to take a night or two off to care for other, personal matters (like sleep) -- something you'd never hear about at Sundance, Cannes, or Toronto. Perhaps that's a consequence of the festival being held in such a costly city: very expensive for out-of-towners to cover, and locals can't get away from their personal lives the same as when they're traveling.

Scene. Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience premiered on Tuesday evening (the post-screening party featured chocolate-covered bacon), and tonight Soderbergh and star Sasha Grey shared a panel to discuss the film. Eric Bana made an appearance in support of Love the Beast, a documentary he directed about his favorite car, and Zachary Quinto chatted with him at a party in the East Village. Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker walked the red carpet for Joshua Goldin's Wonderful World, in which Broderick stars. Racing Dreams, currently leading the Audience Awards voting, is apparently not a Go-Kart movie, as we have previously described it. Sorry!

Our Coverage. Eric D. Snider reviewed Raymond De Felitta's City Island ("a merry comedy about one of those quarrelsome Italian-American families where everybody fights a lot but ultimately loves one another") and Conor McPherson's The Eclipse ("an unusual mixture of somber character drama and supernatural horror"). Erik Davis took a critical look at Which Way Home ("a riveting documentary that taps into the same concept and themes of Sin Nombre, except it's all real and it's all heartbreaking to watch") and gave us a glimpse of the TFF flasher and other "bumps." Check out all of our coverage right here.

Just off the Bronx, in Long Island Sound, is a spit of land called City Island. It's an obscure place, even to New Yorkers, which probably explains how it retains the look of a quaint New England fishing village despite being part of the biggest city in America.

The movie called City Island is set there, though it could have been called anything and set anywhere. Written and directed by Raymond De Felitta, it's a merry comedy about one of those quarrelsome Italian-American families where everybody fights a lot but ultimately loves one another. In real life, I find relationships with loud, argumentative people exhausting. In the movies, though, they can be a lot of fun to watch.

There are four people in the Rizzo family, each with a handful of secrets ranging from deep and dark to shallow and merely opaque. The patriarch, Vince (Andy Garcia), is a prison guard who's been taking acting classes in the hopes of becoming a movie star; he keeps it hidden from his wife, Joyce (Julianna Margulies), because he assumes she'd think it was a waste of time. Their teenage son, Vinnie (Ezra Miller), is developing a fetish for morbidly obese women, including the one across the street. His older sister, Vivian (Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Andy Garcia's real daughter), supposedly away at college, is working part-time as a stripper. Everyone is a smoker, and everyone hides it from everyone else. Vince will be poking his head through the upstairs bathroom's skylight to catch a few puffs while his son is 30 feet away doing the same thing on the balcony, each out of the other's view.

That was fast! The ink is barely dry on yesterday's post and the Tribeca Film Festival has already announced the rest of their feature film lineup for this year's edition, which runs from April 22-May 3. A few quick picks:

Blank City. Celine Danhier's doc examines "the DIY independent film movement that emerged in tandem with punk rock in late '70s downtown New York." Living in Los Angeles at the time, I got to see only a few of those films, just enough to get me really interested, so this could be educational and enlightening for modern indie film lovers.

Serious Moonlight. Cheating in the countryside -- and it's a comedy! Cheryl Hines directs from a script by the late Adrienne Shelly, with Meg Ryan, Timothy Hutton, and Kristen Bell. That's a lot of talent in a small package.

Tell Tale. The director of L.I.E. and Twelve and Holding makes a psychological thriller inspired by Edgar Allan Poe? I'm there! Josh Lucas (meh) but acting aces Lena Headey and Brian Cox provide support.

Other promising titles, and why: Don McKay (black comedy, Thomas Haden Church, Elisabeth Shue, Melissa Leo); City Island (dysfunctional family comedy, Andy Garcia, Alan Arkin); and Love the Beast (doc, cars, Eric Bana's directorial debut).

Tribeca will also be showcasing NYC premieres of films like blaxpoitation flick Black Dynamite, Academy Award winner Departures, and Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience, as well as midnight thrills with Ti West's The House of the Devil and Newsmakers, a Russian remake of Johnny To's Hong Kong police drama Breaking News.

Cinematical will be on the ground to bring you complete coverage of the festival. After the jump: the official announcement. Dig in!

The whole idea of secret children who come out of the woodwork is challenging as it is. Should the secret be revealed, or should it stay hidden? How do you make up for lost years? How do you integrate them into the family? Now, imagine that you're part of the law, and you find out that your secret kid is in jail. That's the basic idea behind a new indie comedy called City Island, and The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Julianna Margulies, Emily Mortimer, and Alan Arkin have joined the cast.

Andy Garcia had previously signed on to play Vince Rizzo, "a Bronx prison official who realizes that an inmate (Steven Strait) is his secret love child. His efforts to become his guardian lead to comic complications." Marguiles is taking on the role of Garcia's wife, and it seems that the man is also looking to become an actor because Arkin will play a teacher in the acting class, and Mortimer will be a fellow student he becomes friends with. Garcia's real-life daughter Dominik Garcia-Lorido will play his daughter, and Ezra Miller has also nabbed an undisclosed part.

I really don't know how all of this acting works into prison officials and long-lost bad boy sons, but we should see soon enough. The film went into production this week in the Bronx.