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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.

My, my, the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) has certainly grown up. It seems like it was born only yesterday, and already it's celebrating its eighth edition. This year's festivities got started on Wednesday evening with a "by invitation only" screening of Woody Allen's Whatever Works, the director's first NYC-based film in five years. Only a few members of the press were allowed to attend: three of the four reviews linked at Rotten Tomatoes were negative. Coincidence?

Deals. ESPN picked up TV rights to Jonathan Hock's documentary The Lost Son of Havana, according to indieWIRE, and will broadcast the film in August. The doc follows Luis Tiant, a Major League Baseball pitcher from 1964 to 1982, as he returns to his homeland of Cuba after 46 years of exile. Tiant once said: "We should never forget what has happened to the people in Cuba for forty years."

First Run Features acquired Yoav Shamir's Defamation, and plans a fall release. As reported by indieWIRE, "In the doc, Shamir embarks on a quest to answer the question 'What is anti-Semitism today?'" Ex-paratrooper Shamir previously made the excellent Checkpoint; when his latest debuted at the Berlin fest in February, Howard Feinstein in Screen International praised the director's "lighter approach," calling the film "a well-researched but unapologetically subjective essay."

Our Coverage. Public screenings began on Thursday afternoon, and our own Eric D. Snider caught The Swimsuit Issue, which is "about a group of ordinary men of varying ages and physiques who combine to create Sweden's first all-male synchronized swimming team." He observed: "Hard to believe this and Ingmar Bergman came from the same place." Eric also reviewed Fear Me Not, "a slow-burning psychological thriller" from Denmark, starring Ulrich Thomsen and Paprika Steen.

After the jump: Blog Talk (i.e., what other people are saying.)