Producing 101 Breakfast 9:00 a.m. Tribeca Grill

100 decisions. Successes and failures in moviemaking producing. Moderator: Peter Bart. Panelists include: Art Linson, Christine Vachon and Paula Weinstein

Shorts II 10:00 a.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Barrier Device, directed by Grace Lee, 26 min. A researcher for a female condom study loses all objectivity when she discovers that one of her subjects is dating her ex-fiance. As the questions and meetings become more intimate, each woman divulges the secrets and fears that drive her.

The Beatle Fan, directed by Peter McArdle, 24 min. A drama about Albert, a psychotic prisoner in Attica Prison, who is a fierce and devoted fan of John Lennon and the Beatles. He is goaded by the other prisoners in the cells around him into telling the story (shown in flashbacks) of what happened when he encountered Mark David Chapman, the man who killed John Lennon.

The Host, directed by Nicholas Tomnay, 26 min. John has escaped from prison in a stolen car. In a panic he cons his way into a random apartment, where Warwick accommodates him in his suave middle class fashion. Initial pleasantries are shared, yet as the night progresses neither can conceal his true nature. What was assumed is turned upside down. Yet Warwick remains the perfect host.

The Wormhole, directed by Jessica Sharzer, 19 min. Wally decides to search for a wormhole that he believes will lead him back to his kidnapped brother. Wally madly digs a hole in the backyard, and gives up in despair. His grandmother offers one last consolation: the concept of parallel universes. In another universe, he and his brother are still together -- the wormhole is his mind, his memory.

Walking With Beasts 10:00 a.m. Tribeca Film Center

No description available.

Too Pure (FC) 10:30 a.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 10:15 p.m.)

Sloan Panel: Meeting of the Minds 10:30 a.m. Embassy Suites

From the Academy award winning "A Beautiful Mind" to the Pulitzer Prize winning play "Proof," the entertainment industry’s take on the complexities of the brain. Some say, they’re now finally getting it right. Moderator: Mike Wallace. Panelists include Akiva Goldman, Oliver Sacks, Susanna Kaysen, Harold Ramis, Stewart Firestein and Jonah Nolan

Children’s Shorts I (FAM) 10:45 a.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Recommended for children ages 4 to 8.

Owl’s Castle (Fudurou No Shiro) (IFS) 11:00 a.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Owl's Castle is an ancient Japanese tale told by an ancient Japanese master. This is director Masahiro Shinoda's 34th film, a sumptuous, star-studded, big-budget motion picture that explores the Asian genre picture with great finesse. It is the 16th Century. Japan's most powerful warlord has slaughtered most of the inhabitants of Iga, a "hidden land" that is the center of the martial art practiced by the Ninja. Ten years later, one of the few survivors - a skilled Ninja named Juzo - is sent by his master to Tokyo to assassinate Shogun Hideyoshi, the new warlord. On his way, the plot twists as Juzo is seduced by a beautiful and mysterious spy, and fights off interference by a fellow Ninja who wants to steal Juzo's glory. When Juzo finally confronts the warlord in his palace, the results are surprising. Owl's Castle unfolds as a subtle satire of the genre. And as icing on the cake, Shinoda and his team have created stunning settings for the action, and a soundtrack that combines minimalist Japanese sounds with more traditional Western orchestral music. Japanese with English subtitles.

The Cloud of Unknowing (FC) 11:00 a.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 7:30 p.m.)

Panel: Going Global 11:00 a.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Western audiences are used to calling any film that isn't set in the United States "foreign," but through technology, and war, the world has become a much smaller and more intimate place. Does anything really feel "foreign" anymore? Has the role of the foreign filmmaker changed? Do they have a responsibility, self-imposed or otherwise, to help other cultures understand their own and is that responsibility any different than that of the American filmmaker? International film and its relationship to a new audience—the World. Moderator: Richard Pena. Panelists: Caroline Baron, Alfonso Cuaron, Jane Campion, Jack Shaheen and Jamsheed Akrami

Chiefs (D) 11:30 a.m. The Screening Room

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 5:00 p.m.)

Telling Nicholas (S) 11:30 a.m. Tribeca Grand

(For description see Festival Info for May 10, 2:30 p.m.)

Side Street (NY) 12:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

In Anthony Mann's rarely-seen noir, Farley Granger, paired once again with Cathy O'Donnell following the success of Nick Ray's They Live By Night, is a newlywed with a child on the way. Acting on impulse, he decides to improve their situation by absconding with cash. When remorse and fear demand that he quietly return the money he finds himself enmeshed in a blackmail scheme, a murder, and in flight from both the underworld and the law. Mann creates a visually sinister and oppressive Manhattan that becomes increasingly an exit-less trap Granger, and his pursuit culminates in a striking high-speed chase through the abandoned streets of lower Manhattan.

The Blue Planet Seas of Life 12:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

No description available.

Regeneration (NY) 12:00 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Directed by Raoul Walsh on the streets of New York's Lower East Side, Regeneration is an interesting picture that has only been rediscovered recently, but it is one of the great silent films now recognized by the National Film Registry. A tough-skinned and industrious child of the slums (Rockcliffe Fellowes) takes to the crooked path and becomes a celebrated criminal but is later reformed by Mamie Rose (Anna Q.Nilson). Walsh combines authentic realism with set pieces of spectacular disasters. Recruiting some non-professional roughnecks, low-lifes and local characters from the neighborhood to offset the performances of professional actors, it is a very strong, uncompromising movie. Regeneration, Walsh's first solo feature, practically invented the gangster film.

Nine Good Teeth (D) 12:00 p.m. The Screening Room

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 5:45 p.m.)

Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (IFS) 1:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 10:15 p.m.)

Enigma (S) 1:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Michael Apted's Enigma, based upon the international best-seller by Robert Harris, is a wartime thriller set in England's top-secret Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain gathered to crack the German code. With a screenplay by Sir Tom Stoppard, this literate film provides an unusually incisive portrait of a brilliant mathematician whose romantic emotions clash - and then ultimately combine - with his passion for code-breaking. In its historically accurate depiction of the Enigma coding machine and the extraordinary challenges to decoding it, the film also pays homage to the many unsung heroes - mathematicians, linguists, electrical engineers - whose innovations helped shorten the war, and also accelerated the development of computers.

Panel: Technically Speaking 2:00 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

The world looks different in black and white. And so do the movies. So what happens when technology changes not only how movies are made, but who is making them.? From advancements in animation to digital features, the face of the future moviemaker emerges. Moderator: Eugene Hernandez. Panelists: Gary Winick, Alexandra Pelosi, Eva Kolodner, Matt Groening, and Wim Wenders

Ash Wednesday (S) 2:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Tribeca resident Edward Burns continues to use New York City as his muse - Ash Wednesday is Burns' 5th film, which he has written, directed, starred in and produced and set in New York. Ash Wednesday is a distinct departure from Burns' previous films as writer, director, actor and producer. Tackling a period crime drama for the first time, Burns sets his film in Hell's Kitchen in 1983 entirely on one day - Ash Wednesday, the holy day in Catholicism dedicated to reflection upon penance and redemption. As Francis Sullivan (Burns) tends his West Side bar, his past life as a brutal enforcer for an Irish gang unexpectedly overtakes him as a haunting secret about his younger brother, Sean (Elijah Wood) suddenly threatens to destroy the present. Burns says, "The question I was interested in exploring was whether a man who lived a life of violence can find redemption in a world where violence seems to be the only answer." Oliver Platt, Rosario Dawson, Malachy McCourt and James Handy lead a supporting cast of wonderful actors delineating characters navigating a day on which the Church reminds us that "thou art dust and unto dust, thou shall return."

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (IFS) 2:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 7:00 p.m.)

The Last Supper (Zadnja Vecerja) (FC) 2:15 p.m. The Screening Room

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 9:30 p.m.)

Help! I’m a Fish (FAM) 2:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Recommended for children ages 5–10. Catchy Europop soundtrack and colorful animation propel this undersea adventure about three kids: Fly, his baby sister Stella, and cousin Chuck, who stumble upon the hidden cave-laboratory of professor MacKrill. The mad MacKrill has invented a potion for turning people into marine life. Stella accidentally drinks the potion, gets transformed into a starfish and thrown into the sea, and the two boys have only 48 hours to find her and give her the antidote; if they fail she will stay like that forever. But the antidote falls into the hands (or fins!) of a lowly pilot fish, Joe, who drinks it and acquires human intelligence, the power of speech, and a tyrannical desire for world control. From the Academy Award nominated director of When Life Departs. The mix of computer and cell animation includes some stunning, hand-painted undersea backgrounds. With Monty Python's Terry Jones as the bumbling Professor MacKrill and Alan Rickman (Die Hard, Prince of Thieves) as the devilishly campy villain, Joe.

Black Chicks Talking (D) 2:30 p.m. The Screening Room

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 6:30 p.m.)

That’s My Face (E Minha Cara) (IFS) 2:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

(For description see Festival Info for May 10, 1:00 p.m.)

Hey Arnold! The Movie (FAM) 3:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

World premiere of the first full-length theatrical film based on the hit Nickelodeon television series "Hey Arnold!" which focuses on a thoughtful, creative kid with a football-shaped head living in a colorful city full of subways, weird neighbors, rooftop hideaways and urban legends. In "Hey Arnold! The Movie" Arnold is up against a powerful industrialist who invades the city and buys everything in the neighborhood so he can knock it down and erect a huge "mall-plex." Can Arnold and his best friend Gerald find the document that can stop the bulldozers? A Q&A with the filmmakers will be held after the screening.

Stone Reader (D) 3:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 3:30 p.m.)

Uncle Frank (S) 3:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

"Hey Frank, are you gonna get naked or what?" Frank Pour sits on a blanket with topless women and a handful of Gen X-ers at Woodstock '99 in his hometown of Rome, New York. "I can't, I got a wife," he says. He doesn't even stop to consider the fact that he's 85 years old. Filmmaker Matthew Ginsburg followed his octogenarian great uncle Frank on a unique journey through the so-called golden years. A retired machinist, Frank turned to his love for music, teaching himself the keyboard after a plant shut down cost him his job of 34 years. After volunteering his talents at local nursing homes, Frank quickly became a local hero - a sort of rock star for the rocking chair crowd. Frank debuts a love song written for his wife Tillie at Woodstock, deals with the death of a loyal fan, and through a series of quips, candor and hard-earned commentary, reveals his own blue-collar blueprint for humanity. His lifestyle is tested when he's diagnosed with prostate cancer. As he and Tillie find a way to deal with this fear and uncertainty, another life-threatening event occurs - forcing Frank to confront his own mortality - and ultimately the question: Where do you go from here?

Stone Reader (D) 3:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 3:30 p.m.)

A Hatful of Rain 3:30 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Michael V. Gazzo's play, "A Hatful of Rain," developed at The Actors Studio, had been a substantial hit on Broadway following its opening in late 1955. Starring Ben Gazzara, Shelley Winters and Anthony Franciosa, it told the harrowing story of a lower-middle-class Korean War veteran's drug addiction and its destructive effect on his family. When filmed by Fred Zinnemann for 20th Century Fox in 1957, the lead roles were assigned to Don Murray and Eva Marie Saint, with Franciosa, who would receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination, recreating his role as the addict's brother. Coming after the Production Code-breaking The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955, this was the first time in years that drug addiction had "come home" to recognizably everyday characters for movie-goers, and at the time of its release, the film was hailed for its startlingly realistic examination of an addicts' life. Zinnemann and cameraman Joe MacDonald's Cinemascope lensing made for not only strikingly staged and intense confrontation scenes, but also effective use of New York locations.

A Song for Martin (IFS) 3:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Academy Award- and two-time Palm d'Or-winning director Bille August's "A Song for Martin" is a beautiful and heart-wrenching portrait of a woman's love for her husband in the face of a terrible and incurable disease. Viveka Seldahl gives a superb performance as Barbara Hartman, a symphony violinist who falls in love with Martin Fisher, world-renowned maestro and composer. Unhappy in a dead marriage, Barbara divorces her husband and marries Martin. Their relationship is filled with music and passion until the morning at home when Martin forgets where he is. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he quickly deteriorates, and Barbara must sacrifice everything - except her love - for Martin. Great performances (both leads won acting awards at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival) and directed by August with utter precision, A Song for Martin is a testament to the strength of compassion under difficult and trying conditions. Swedish with English subtitles.

One Man Up (L'uomo in Piu) (FC) 5:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9 2:45 p.m.)

Panel: New York, New York: A Moviemaker’s Muse 5:00 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Many of us fell in love with New York City through the movies: a magical, mythical place where anything can happen. Manhattan has given the movies it's incomparable energy, it's glamour, and it's spirit. We've decided to celebrate that spirit with a panel of people who helped make it that way, New York filmmakers.

Morlang (FC) 5:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 5:00 p.m.)

Mai’s America (D) 5:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 3:15 p.m.)

Friend (Chingu) (IFS) 6:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Based on the real life events of director/writer Kwak Kyung-taek, Friend features a unique coming-of-age / gangster noir mixture. As the all-time #1 box office smash-hit in Korea, Friend follows the lives of four inseparable pals living in the same small town. At a time when students were forced to keep their collars fastened and slacks well pressed, Dong-su (the son of an undertaker), Joon-suk (the son of a vigilant gang boss), Sang-taek (a diligent student) and Joong-ho (the one who never kept his mouth shut) were defiant: sporting loosened collars and roughed-up sleeves; cocked heads, held high and topped with tilted caps; and brazenly in stride with arched shoulders and protruding chests - they feared nothing. Beginning in the most vibrant period in modern Korean history, the film witnesses the young boys puffing cigarettes, fumbling through Playmate centerfolds and idolizing Bruce Lee, to their early manhood where Sang-taek and Joon-ho are accepted into college while Joon-suk and Dong-su take different roads in life. Later in life and leading the ranks of his father's crime ring, Joon-suk is ultimately pitted against a rival gang member -- Dong-su -- leaving all four, one-time best friends testing the limits of what friendship truly means. Director Kwak Kyung-taek is a rare director, equally at home with intimate scenes of tenderness between people and elaborately staged, wildly visceral action sequences. Korean with English subtitles

The Story of GI Joe (R) 6:30 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Born in Indiana in 1900, Ernie Pyle became well known to a large newspaper audience in his role as a roving reporter for Scripps Howard newspapers. Upon the outbreak of World War II, Pyle traveled to the front lines of the European theatre, living with the troops and filing stories that became instant classics of humanistic journalism. William Wellman's The Story of G. I. Joe (1945) follows Pyle (Burgess Meredith) as he accompanies and reports on the fortunes of the soldiers of Company C of the 18th Infantry as they battle their way from the desert of North Africa to Italy, where they join in the march towards Rome. Casting real-life GI's alongside actors (including a young Robert Mitchum in the role for which he would receive the only Oscar‚ nomination of his iconic career), Wellman created a film of enormous dignity and simplicity that -- in its very restraint and lack of sentimentality -- is all the more unforgettable in depicting the harrowing brutality of war. Before the film's release - and just weeks before the war would end - Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific.

Washington Heights (FC) 6:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 12:30 p.m.)

Afghan Alphabet (IFS) 7:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

(For description see Festival Info for May 10, 2:30 p.m.)

American Standoff (IFS) 7:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 9, 230 p.m.)

A Dog Called Pain (Un Perro Llamado Dolor) (FC) 7:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description, see Festival Info for May 9, 2:30 p.m.)

Standing in the Shadows of Motown (IFS) 7:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinema

1n 1959, Berry Gordy gathered the best musicians from Detroit's thriving jazz and blues scene to be the back-up accompaniment for songs being recorded by his new company, Motown. Over a fourteen year period, these unheralded musicians, who called themselves the Funk Brothers, would play on more number one hits than Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys combined. Based on the award-winning book of the same title by Allan "Dr. Licks" Slutsky, Paul Justman’s "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" was 14 years in the making and follows the Funk Brothers tumultuous journey over four decades of musical triumph, unparalleled success and eventual heartbreak. Finally giving public faces to truly heroic musical artists whose sounds are part of the very fabric of popular culture, "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" is a documentary that serves as both celebration and elegy for artists whose notes we all know, but whose names remain unfamiliar. The Funk Brothers are featured backing up twelve new live performances of Motown classics by such stars as Chaka Kahn, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ben Harper, and Joan Osborne.

Force of Evil (NY) 7:30 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Scorsese: I saw "Force of Evil" every night for a week when I was growing up in New York, thanks to a TV station that had a small film library and a lot of time to fill. I was overwhelmed by its writing, its directing, its use of music, and its acting. It was also the first movie that took what I saw on the street, outside my window and around my neighborhood, and filtered it through a poetic consciousness that raised real life into a social metaphor and a political parallel. I couldn't put that into words back then. All I knew was that Abraham Polonsky's film scalded my eyes and had the persistent resonance of hard truth. It made me understand right away, even when I was young, that the violence of the system, the corruption of society itself, is more powerful than the violence of the individual. It had other, more personal resonance for me, too. The irony of that guy trying to escape to freedom on the street, to get away on the street, when the street is also your prison. The terrible paradoxical dynamic of love, and loyalty, rivalry and disappointment and fury, between John Garfield and Thomas Gomez, two brothers trying to survive inside a merciless system and the moral responsibilities one has for the other. Elements of this relationship later worked their way into my film Raging Bull. The whole film is elevated by the use of the dialogue. It's unusually poetic, and its poetry creates a hyper-reality. For me the poetry culminates in the graceful and tormented presence of John Garfield, whose face, as a lawyer for the mob, is a landscape of moral conflicts. While the dialogue is poetic, what you see is a world of sleaze and greed imploding before your eyes. The system's violence becomes the issue rather than the individual violence. The social body itself is seen as sick. It is a political as well as existential vision.

Insomnia (S) 8:00 p.m. Tribeca Performing Arts Center

Insomnia is Christopher Nolan's first film since his international hit, Memento, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination with his brother, Jonathan, for Best Original Screenplay. Working this time from a script by Hillary Seitz, Nolan guides a cast led by three Oscar‚-winning stars, Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank in a hypnotic thriller set in the perpetually-daylit region of Alaska. As a veteran LAPD detective (Pacino) and his partner (Martin Donovan) investigate the brutal murder of a teenage girl, they find themselves locked in a lacerating battle-of-wits with an elusive psychopath (Williams) while simultaneously contending with the parallel investigation by a perceptive, but unproven local policewoman (Swank). When tragedy erupts, Pacino's character is thrown into a "dark-night-of-the soul" psychological state ironically mocked by the setting's daylight. Sleep-deprived and emotionally shattered, Pacino's character struggles to survive a physical and psychological journey that gravely threatens his stability. Collaborating again with Dody Dorn, his Oscar-nominated film editor on Memento, Insomnia confirms Christopher Nolan's stature as a peerless cinematic examiner of the very essences of psychology, emotion, violence, survival and redemption. Maura Tierney, Nicky Katt and Paul Dooley complete the stellar cast.

Elling (IFS) 8:30 p.m. Tribeca Grand

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 6:45 p.m.)

Rain (IFS) 9:30 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10, 2:00 p.m.)

The Hired Hand (R) 9:30 p.m. Stuyvesant High School

Peter Fonda's 1971 directorial debut, The Hired Hand, can now legitimately lay claim to being a starkly beautiful, piercingly moving Western whose increasing status as a classic has approached that accorded at least two of his father's starring films, Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident and Ford's My Darling Clementine. Vastly under-appreciated upon its release, and largely unseen since, The Hired Hand was Fonda's first project after his huge success as producer, co-writer and star of Easy Rider. Written by Alan Sharp, the film follows the psychological and emotional journey of Harry (Fonda), a drifter, who returns to his abandoned wife (Verna Bloom) after eight years, but finds himself drawn inexorably to come to the aid of his best friend (Warren Oates) when danger threatens to destroy him. Superb performances by all three stars, breathtaking cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond (making his feature debut) and a haunting pace and rhythm give The Hired Hand the remembered quality of a broken melody carried on a passing wind.

The Importance of Being Earnest (IFS) 9:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 7:30 p.m.)

La Tropical (IFS) 9:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Some call it the best dance hall in the world. But you won't find it in any entertainment guides. It's called the Salon Rosado at La Tropical, and it's in a remote barrio in Havana. Generations of working-class Cubans of color have gathered in this extraordinary club to dance all night to the rhythms of the hottest contemporary bands on the island. "La Tropical" was directed and photographed in stunning black & white video by Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Turnley. His documentary plunges us into the passionate crowd. Cuba's top performers and up-and-coming musicians invite us into their rehearsals and their homes, and we get to know some of the club's most devoted patrons. Turnley weaves these intimate stories into a tapestry of contemporary Cuban life that is rarely seen by outsiders. But the central character of this film is La Tropical itself. The club's story, told through the people who love it, parallels the story of Cuba during the last 60 years. It was created in the 1940s as a spot for blacks and mulattos who were barred from Havana's all-white establishments. Over time, La Tropical nurtured hundreds of Cuba's best musicians and dancers. Now it is one of the cores of the Cuban music scene. "La Tropical," the film, captures this spirit, and the soundtrack is filled contemporary and traditional music. Spanish with English subtitles.

I’ll Sing For You (Je Chanterai Pour Toi) (D) 9:45 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

The dusty, sun-baked landscape of Mali is restored to life through the return of emigrant native son and blues musician KarKar in this lyrical and poignant French documentary, directed by Jacques Sarasin. In the late 1950s, KarKar sang his generation to independence over Radio Mali. Nicknamed for his soccer prowess ("KarKar" means "to break") and regarded as the Malian Elvis Presley clad in jeans and a leather jacket, he introduced the Twist in Bambara, the native language. His political songs led to the belief that working to achieve freedom would bring paradise. In the early 1960s, however, KarKar gave way to the man underneath, while simultaneously disillusionment gripped the country. Misfortune plagued Boubacar Traore. He abandoned music to support his family after his father died; later his beloved wife died in childbirth. In 1989, on a friend's advice to return to music, he quit his job as a street vendor and went to Europe where an English record producer heard his songs, liked them, and sought to track him down in Mali. But everyone at home assumed he'd died until the English producer revealed that he was alive. Once again in his native land KarKar came to life over the airwaves. French and Bambara with English subtitles

Lovely and Amazing (IFS) 10:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

This insightful comedy is writer-director Nicole Holofcener's follow-up to her first feature, "Walking & Talking." Brenda Blethyn plays Jane, a self-absorbed mother of three equally neurotic girls. Michelle (Catherine Keener) is a former Homecoming Queen caught in a loveless marriage, on a downward spiral since peaking in high school. Younger sister Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer) is a beautiful actress on the verge of Hollywood success whose insecurities may ruin her. Jane herself fantasizes about the handsome doctor (Michael Nouri) who has performed her liposuction. Only the youngest sister, Annie, an adopted African-American 8-year-old, seems to stand a chance at rising above the family brew of vanity and insecurity. But Annie has developed a familiar preoccupation with her appearance, possibly a hint of what's to come. Crisply shot on 24-frame high-definition video, Holofcener's exploration of women's obsessions and insecurities, continues to reveal a writer/director possessing a finely tuned emotional radar, with a gift for bringing out the best in actors.

The Kid Stays in the Picture (IFS) 10:00 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(No description available)

Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen’s (FL) 10:00 p.m. Tribeca Film Center

With great affection, "Off The Menu: The Last Day's of Chasen's" documents the life, times and sad passing of a Hollywood institution, Chasen's restaurant. Started by vaudeville performer Dave Chasen in 1936, Chasen's quickly became the haunt of the Golden set. For 60 years the restaurant was packed with movie stars, world leaders and the famous from every walk of life. But as the era of glamour and elegance faded, and as the younger stars headed for more casual, trendier places, business slowed down, and Chasen's prepared to close its doors in March of 1995. Filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini spent the last two weeks of Chasen's life shooting at the doomed restaurant, interviewing longtime patrons and even longer-time employees. Cutting the footage together with historical montages of gala parties and celebrity reminiscences, Berman and Pulcini created a witty and irresistible tribute to an indelible part of Hollywood. Celebrities ranging from Angela Bassett to Jackie Collins to Gerald Ford and Sharon Stone rhapsodize about the place. But the true stars of this documentary are the staff at Chasen's: bartender Pepe Ruiz, inventor of the Flame of Love martini; sentimental headwaiter Tommy Gallagher; Onetta Johnson, the ladies' room attendant who inspired Donna Summer's song "She Works Hard for the Money;" and demanding banquet captain, Raymond Bilbool, who's fussy, mercurial and knows where all the skeletons are hidden. Thoroughly entertaining, "Off The Menu" gives us the up-front glamour and the behind-the-scenes reality of one of Hollywood's landmarks, and in doing so perfectly preserves a valuable piece of social history.

The Big Sky (R) 10:00 p.m. Pace Univ. Performing Arts Center

Based on the novel by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. (Shane), with a screenplay by Dudley Nichols, Howard Hawks' 1952 western, The Big Sky, tells the story of a keelboat crew in the 1830's as they journey up the wild Missouri River in an attempt to trade furs with the Blackfeet Indians. Unjustly ignored in the years since its release, The Big Sky, is quintessential Hawks in its theme of men and women (in this case, a Blackfeet princess who serves in the film as both an object of desire and as a diplomat) battling an almost oppressively grand, uncaring Nature with courageous camaraderie, raucous humor, and, ultimately, heartbreaking frontier grace. Released at 140 minutes, the film has most frequently been shown on television and at rare revival screenings with twenty to thirty minutes shorn from Hawks' original cut. Kirk Douglas and Dewey Martin make dashing, resourceful heroes, but the film is all but stolen by the performance of character actor Arthur Hunnicutt who won the only Oscar‚ nomination of his long career for his work here as Uncle Zeb. Cinematographer Russell Harlan (who shot seven films for Hawks) also received an Academy nomination.

Blind Spot (FC) 10:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

(For description see Festival Info for May 10 2:30 p.m.)

Scenes of the Crime (FC) 10:15 p.m. UA Battery Park Cinemas

Lenny (John Abrahams) is a young auto mechanic soon to be married. To earn some quick extra cash he plays chauffeur to a thug hired by crime lord Trevor to kidnap Jimmy (Jeff Bridges), a high-powered businessman who trafficks in mob contracts and other illicit activities. When things go very wrong, Lenny is forced to watch over Jimmy until he receives further orders - but it seems that the very smart hostage is pulling the strings. Based in part on a true story illuminating one young man's descent into the L.A. crime underbelly, Dominique Forma's first feature is tense, smart, unpredictable, highly entertaining, and dominated by the ever-amazing Bridges.