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Tribeca’s Itch: Trade Roughage 04/21/08

Under discussion:
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

Under discussion:

The Forbidden Kingdom (2008)

With the Tribeca Film Festival beginning on Wednesday, Winter Miller analyises the festival’s “7 year itch” for Variety. “Logistics and that intangible thing known as the “festival experience” might well improve, but seven years after its founding as a call to bring the city together post 9/11, the fest is still seeking a clear identity,” hew writes. Perhaps the first step would be to do something about the fest’s institutional indifference to quality in its obsession with quantity, which Miller alludes to: “Unlike fests with mandates to screen what they perceive as the absolute cream of the crop, Tribeca wears its number of international and first-timer participants as a badge of honor.”
Martial arts epic Forbidden Kingdom grossed almost $21 million over the weekend, enough to take the top box office slot ahead of Forgetting Sarah Marshall; the latest widget from the Apatow factory earned a not-great, not-terrible $17 million. Also: the tactic of opening Expelled wide in rural and suburban communities paid off, as the doc made $3.1 million (and almost double per screen what Morgan Spurlock’s docu-farce Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? managed in a smaller run), in spite of almost universally negative reviews.
A former TV exec and a producer of Bend it Like Beckham have teamed up to launch Filmaka, a “a digital entertainment studio that sponsors worldwide contests for aspiring filmmakers.” According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first contest will be judged by a panel of filmmakers including Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders and Neil LaBute.