By Michael Avila
Special to DNAinfo
TRIBECA — Tribeca Film Festival organizers have lined up a sturdy batch of movies to bring the event to a strong finish and ward off any festival fatigue that may have set in during its final days.
The highlight of Tribeca’s second and final weekend comes with Friday’s Closing Night Gala premiere of “Freakonomics” at the festival’s main theater at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Based on the best-selling book that examined how radical economic models and theories work when applied to practical situations, the documentary includes segments from six accomplished filmmakers, including “Super Size Me’s” Morgan Spurlock, “King of Kong” director Seth Gordon and Oscar-winner Alex Gibney. This marks the third Gibney film, along with “My Trip to Al-Qaeda” and “Unfinished Eliot Spitzer Project," to debut at Tribeca this year.
Movie buffs still have a chance to see some of the festival’s most notable pictures, including:
“The Trotsky,” a comedy starring Jay Baruchel (“Tropic Thunder”) about a high school outcast who thinks he’s the reincarnation of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky; “Meet Monica Velour,” a quirky movie about the unusual friendship between an aging stripper (“Sex and the City’s” Kim Cattrall) and a nerdy young fan; “Legacy,” a revenge thriller starring Idris Elba (“The Losers”); “Elvis & Madonna,” a set-in-Rio de Janeiro romantic comedy about a biker girl and a drag queen who fall in love while chasing their dreams; and “Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage,” which profiles the popular Canadian prog-rock trio from the early career highlights of 2112 to their current status as living rock legends.
There is also a special presentation Friday of “Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston" at the SVA Theater in Chelsea, on West 23rd Street. The documentary celebrates the glamorous life of America’s first superstar designer. After the screening, director Whitney Smith and “Vogue” magazine’s Andre’ Leon Talley will take part in a panel discussion.
You don’t have to step foot inside a movie theater to enjoy Saturday’s big event. The annual Family Festival, with storytelling events, live performances and other kid-friendly activities, takes place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Greenwich Street, north of Chambers Street.
Saturday’s screening schedules include several movies under the ESPN Tribeca Sports Film Festival, including “Straight Outta L.A.,” Ice Cube’s documentary on the link between gangsta rap and the move of the NFL’s Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles in the early 80s; “”Keep Surfing” gives a boards-eye view of the incredible skill on display by river surfers in Munich; and “The Two Escobars,” which examines the lives of two men who share the same name and a love of soccer, and whose lives both ended in tragedy;
The festival’s final movie premiere comes on Sunday and is ironically titled “Saturday Night.” James Franco (also in the festival as an actor in “William Vincent,” which screens one last time on Friday) directs this behind-the-scenes look at the legendary late-night series “Saturday Night Live.”
Franco, "SNL" honcho Lorne Michaels and a number of cast members will take part in a Q & A session after the screening, which is happening at the DGA Theatre on West 57th Street in Midtown.
(Check screening times for any of these films at the festival's website.)
