The Tribeca Film Festival opened yesterday in New York and will run through May 4th. The opening film was Baby Mama, starring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Reviews have been mixed for the film and it’s currently running slightly stale at about 56% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The closing night film is the much anticipated Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer with Emile Hirsh and Christina Ricci. To give it a look of live-action anime, Speed Racer was filmed entirely against green-screened CGI backgrounds. This film sat in development for almost 15 years and at one time had Johnny Depp attached to it.
The jurors for the 2008 World Narrative Competition are Peter Hedges, Gregory Hoblit, Callie Khouri, Oliver Platt and Christine Vachon.
The jurors for the 2008 World Documentary Competition are Jared Cohen, Whoopi Goldberg, Ross Kauffman, Padma Lakshmi and Jose Padilha.
The festival begins just a few days after Governor Patterson signed the enhanced New York tax incentive. The state now offers a 30% tax credit against qualified expenses and is now payable to the production company in one year instead of two. That’s three times as much as New York’s current tax credit and it matches the bill Connecticut passed in 2006. In the past couple of years, Connecticut was able to steal films from New York including one by Tribeca founder Robert DeNiro. New York City’s five percent remains the same, a 35% credit for films shot within the five boroughs.
