Tribeca 2011: Elton John sings the audience its song
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Film festival openings have a tendency toward the grand spectacle, a tendency that Tribeca took seriously as it kicked off its 10th edition Wednesday night outdoors in lower Manhattan.
The Bangles (?) came out and performed ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ with a choir of schoolchildren (??), Cameron Crowe premiered his Elton John documentary ‘The Union’ and John gave a concert at a site overlooking the Hudson River, adjacent to where the World Trade Center once stood.
‘The Union’ marks Crowe’s first film in six years, but the director, off shooting ‘We Bought a Zoo’ and a Pearl Jam documentary, wasn’t there. The film is an artistic-collaboration study along the lines of Michael Jackson’s ‘This Is It,’ examining John’s creation of a record with Leon Russell, the hirsute keyboard legend who’s had more than his share of hard times.
But it was John’s piano-playing that got the crowd going, particularly an elaborate, high-register riff at the end of ‘Rocket Man.’ John tossed out the obligatory this-is-my-favorite-place-to-play as he also told the audience he was a ‘frozen lollipop’ on the April evening. He closed the set of about half a dozen tracks with ‘Your Song.’
Tribeca, which has a particular focus on music this year, has historically gone with a novel group of opening-night events, from a screening of ‘United 93’ with relatives of the crash’s victims to Woody Allen’s ‘Whatever Works’ to a set of environmental shorts.
The Crowe/John double bill stood out as one of the few big-ticket screenings at this year’s installment. For the first time in recent memory, Tribeca isn’t showing a ‘Shrek,’ ‘Mission: Impossible’ or other big Hollywood movie in a feature that had become a fixture, if an uneasy one, at the festival over the past few years.
About 90 features will screen at the festival over the next 11 days, including the Julia Roberts-produced coming-of-age dramedy ‘Jesus Henry Christ,’ the Keira Knightley-Sam Worthington romantic drama ‘Last Night’ and Alex Gibney’s sports-goat documentary ‘Catching Hell.’
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Music is theme of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival
-- Steven Zeitchik in New York
