Zoe Kazan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In a ceremony held last night, the Tribeca Film Festival announced this year's winners of its competition categories. The top prizes went to Iranian drama About Elly for Best Narrative Feature and audience fave Racing Dreams for Best Documentary Feature.

About Elly, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, revolves around a group of "old college pals" who reunite for a weekend by the sea, a friendly outing that turns serious when one of the women disappears. The jury (Bradley Cooper, Richard Fischoff, Todd Haynes, Meg Ryan, and Uma Thurman) called the Iranian movie "a seamless piece of ensemble filmmaking." Racing Dreams, directed by Marshall Curry, follows three go-kart racers, ranging in age from 11 to 13, who are competing for a national champiomship that's considered "a huge stepping stone to auto racing's big show-NASCAR." The jury (Liz Garbus, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Whoopi Goldberg, Morgan Spurlock, and Brian Williams) declared it to be "a completely compelling, entertaining film of incredible quality."

For his Norwegian comedy North, director Rune Denstad Langlo was recognized as Best New Narrative Filmmaker, while Ciarán Hinds (The Eclipse) and Zoe Kazan (The Exploding Girl) were honored as Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively. In the documentary arena, Ian Olds won the award as Best New Documentary Filmmaker for Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi, which tells the story of an Afghan "fixer" (defined as "someone hired by foreign journalists to facilitate the gathering of news stories") and the "dangerous and unseen world of wartime news gathering." The recently-acquired Defamation received a Special Jury Mention.

The complete list of award winners is available at the official site. The festival continues through May 3. Check out all of our coverage right here.

When Demetri Martin joined the cast of Taking Woodstock, it was set to begin production in late August. In a nice change of pace, the movie is still on schedule, and will begin shooting at the end of the month, SAG strike be damned. But that isn't the only reason to anticipate Ang Lee's project. Variety reports the ensemble cast has been set, and it's insanely good. Get ready for a film that includes the likes of Emile Hirsch, Imelda Staunton, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Eugene Levy, Paul Dano, Zoe Kazan, Dan Fogler, Mamie Gummer, Henry Goodman, and Jonathan Groff.

Martin stars in the memoir adaptation as Elliot Tiber, a closeted gay man and aspiring interior designer who gives up his Big Apple dreams to run the family business in a Catskills motel. In 1969, he offered the hotel as home base for Woodstock organizers while his neighbor Max Yasgur (Levy) offered his farm. Staunton and Goodman play Tiber's parents, Groff will be festival organizer Michael Lang, Hirsch will play a Vietnam vet just back on American soil, Schreiber is in talks to play a transvestite named Vilma, Morgan will be a closeted married man having an affair with Tiber, Dano and Kazan play a hippy couple going to the concert, Fogler will be the head of a local theater troupe, and Gummer will take on the role of Lang's assistant.

I have a feeling this will be so very, very good.

Why does it all feel like the same thing?

Lots going on in Batman land today; apparently the first six minutes of The Dark Knight were screened last night, with an introduction by director Christopher Nolan, in front of roughly 100 New Yorkers. UGO has a recap of the footage, which will screen before IMAX screenings of I Am Legend later this month. Here's the non-spoiler-ish description: "These six minutes introduce Heath Ledger's interpretation of The Joker to the world and Nolan's intention was for this introduction to stand alone as a "short film." Easily the best short film I've seen since Hardware Wars." They go on to say: "If you would rather not know, know that it is badass. Forget Nicholson, "The Laughing Fish," Caesar Romero, Mark Hamil and The Killing Joke. Heath Ledger's Joker is THE definitive Joker." Wow, ballsy statement -- let's hope they're right. Check out the full rundown, chock-full of spoilers, over here.

AICN is running an interesting rumor this morning. If true, this could potentially destroy what the DC folks are doing and place Marvel front and center. According to one of their tipsters, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk films are connected in such a way that they're each shooting a scene together. Here's what the tipster had to say: "The trouble is, I can't tell if its an Iron Man scene with the Hulk in it or a Hulk scene with IRON MAN in it, more interestingly, it's possible that the SAME SCENE or some variation of it might be in BOTH movies lending to the comic book / single universe, many heroes idea seen in the past - uber cool." We already know Samuel L. Jackson will have a cameo as Nick Fury in Iron Man; could they also be connecting Iron Man to The Incredible Hulk too? If so, I really dig what Marvel is doing -- however, unlike DC, they have that luxury because they're debuting the solo films before the potential Avengers movie. Perhaps DC can learn a thing or two ...

And speaking of DC and their mish-moshed Justice League film, Moviehole is reporting that actress Zoe Kazan has been cast in the role of Iris Allen (aka better half to The Flash). They claim to have spoken to Kazan, who confirmed the news, but wouldn't go into further detail. Chalk up another actor/actress that has supposedly been cast in a movie that refuses to announce its cast officially. Seriously, what is up with that?