This Year's NY Tropfest - photo by Tropfest

It’s become a park staple by now— every Monday throughout the summer a classic movie is shown in front of Bryant Park’s iconic lawn. From Psycho to Wizard of Oz to Indiana Jones, the midtown cinematic summer series continues to provide us a big screen to see the Alfred Hitchcocks, the George Lucases, and the Humphrey Bogarts of Hollywood. And we don’t complain. I, personally, love it. I go almost every Monday.

This weekend, though, was a refreshing new taste of cinema. Instead of the classics that made what movies are today, the park teamed up with Hugh Jackman (who is as good a host as he is an actor) to deliver terse, snappy, identifiable short films to a Saturday-evening crowd.

The quirky Australian-based Tropfest, self-dubbed “the world’s largest short film festival,” had its inaugural New York edition this weekend, and served as a spot for casual and fervent moviegoers as well as the fest’s star-studded judge panel.

And as far as someone who has attended prior Tropfests before, this year’s debut was a success.

“I was planning (on coming), because I’m from Sydney,” said Nicole… from Sydney. “I had been to one in Sydney, and (in New York) there’s a lot of people… but it’s the same kind of vibe.”

“She invited me,” echoed Luke, speaking about his Australian companion. “I had no idea what it was but I came and was pleasantly surprised, I really enjoyed it.”

“Looking for the strength of the idea, rather than slickness or technical merit,” the festival prides itself in giving opportunities to aspiring and news filmmakers. It “whittles” a pool of hundreds of entries down to eight, and awards $20,000 to the film the celebrity panel —this Tropfest featured Bridemaids’s Rose Byrne, 30 Rock’s Judah Friedlander, Dark Horse’s Ted Hope, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Scott Foundas— deems best at the end of the night. According to Jackman’s preface, and the festival’s site, there are only a few restrictions regarding film production. The only rules are that films cannot exceed seven minutes and must include a TSI— the Tropfest Signature Item.

(This year’s New York TSI, fittingly, was a bagel. All films, oddly enough, had a bagel make a cameo at one point in the film (see above: quirky).)

It turns out, over 10,000 people, a packed house by Bryant Park standards, were interested enough to attend the fest and take a peak at the country’s eight best short films. It seems they weren’t disappointed.

“It was a spur of the moment thing for me, and I’m glad I came,” said Mike, who thought Elvis: The Lonely Hunter of Circle Beach should have won. “I enjoyed the films immensely, and yeah I’ll definitely be coming back for next year.

The fest’s raconteurs used their formatting freedom and time restrictions as a prompt for some interesting narration and ideas. Despite an anacoluthic Killer Bagels from Outerspace, films were hilarious (Elvis), intense (Elevator), uplifting (Emptys), and extremely clever (The Break-Up Tour).

photo by Syrenmuse

One NY Press writer is a bit confounded that The Break-Up Tour didn’t win the grand prize.

After all eight contestants were shown —and this after a segment that showed the best movies from prior Tropfests— the judging panel gave first-place prize to Emptys, which is a quick dive into the world of the country’s impecunious bottle collectors.

Tropfest will make its rounds around the globe throughout before returning to New York with 16 finalists next year, stopping in Las Vegas, Arabia, New Zealand, China, India, Paris, and it’s home, Australia. And while it continues to grow, it will also become smaller.

TropfestMicro is a new branch of the fest, and is a competition featuring super-short, 70-second films.

P.S. If you’re interested in entering next year’s New York contest, the TSI is “bridge”, with no distinction between the game, and the traffic-bearing structure.

–Nick Gallinelli

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice in the classic children’s story by Lewis Carroll. The well-known phrase became an adage for 9-year-old Jeryl Brunner when she wandered into Central Park and discovered the sculpture of Alice atop a bronze mushroom reaching for the White Rabbit’s pocketwatch.

“I remember looking at the statue and thinking of all the possibilities and all of the magic in the city,” Brunner, 46, author of My City, My New York: Famous New Yorkers Share Their Favorite Places released in October, said. A seasoned celebrity journalist, she asked over 300 famous New Yorkers to share their favorite New York fix.

I met Brunner in the garden at St. Luke in the Fields in the West Village beneath a crabapple tree. It’s a scene straight out of a Carroll fantasy.

“Can you believe you’re in Manhattan?” she said.

The quaint garden is also from the first sequence of her book, this site being actor and director John Cameron Mitchell’s favored oasis, where he rehearsed for his role in the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The gamut of New Yorkers who share their ”fixes” in the book ranges from Tina Fey to Hugh Jackman to New York Times crossword puzzle editor Will Shortz.

Growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, Brunner wanted to be an actress. She attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and majored in drama and politics.

“I really wanted to be an actress,“ Brunner said.

However, the inconsistent paychecks eventually changed her mind.

“I got scared of starving, I was scared of the struggle,” Brunner said. “I thought, well if I can’t be an actor, why not talk to other actors about their craft?”

After attending law school, which Brunner quickly found wasn’t for her, she found a job as a one of the first staff members at InStyle magazine. After a nine-year stint there, Brunner needed a change of pace.

“I hit a limit. Nine years at a magazine is measured like it’s in dog years,” Brunner laughed.

As a freelancer she wrote for publications such as O, the Oprah magazine and National Geographic Traveler. In 2002, she wrote an article for the latter about what notable New Yorkers would do if they had one hour to spend in the city, which became the seed for her book.

After a decade of tiresome rounds with publishers, Globe Pequot finally accepted her proposal. By March the following year, she had a finished manuscript, but continued to contribute celebrity quotes up until this August.

Brunner’s book captures nostalgic New York and reminds us why we continue to put up with aggravating subway delays, hour-long lines to buy groceries and outrageous rent. Her book offers readers glimpses into the places where celebrities let loose and find calm, like Saturday Night Live’s  Will Forte and Jason Sudeikis’ late-night karaoke sessions at Sing Sing and Matthew Broderick’s favorite bike route up the Hudson River pathway.

When I ask Brunner about her own New York fix, she said she’s on the same page as Broderick. Twice a week, if her busy schedules permits, she takes bike rides along the Hudson River to Fort Tyron, bringing along a basket of health food purchased from Fairway market.

“It feels like Oz up there—it’s so pristine and special.” Brunner said.

Photo: Jeryl Brunner in St. Luke in the Fields. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Australia

adventure were a way of life,” displaying his essential lack of seriousness. Who else could mix a cattle-drive Western with a love story, aborigine mysticism with racial exploitation and World War II with a musical tribute to The Wizard of Oz?

Kidman’s most vulnerable screen moment has her sing “Over the Rainbow” to the half-caste boy narrator Nullah (Brandon Walters). If this genre smashup isn’t bad enough, the extravagant CGI effects (glowing fish, thunderous cattle, gorgeous horses and vast landscapes) makes every sequence ridiculously fabulous.

Ten minutes into Luhrmann’s hot mess, I realized: OMG! He has a style—overblown, parodistic, preposterous, sentimental, absurd. But not camp. Luhrmann lacks the intelligence to poke fun at his own sentimentality; he expects audiences to confuse his clichés with old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking—only his “craft” lacks spatial logic and credible drama. Despite pandering to politically correct racial awareness (yet keeping the aborigines on the periphery while the glamorous white lovers have all the fun), Australia doesn’t match Gone With the Wind as a romantic national epic; it’s a pinhead’s epic.
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Australia
Directed by Baz Luhrmann, Running Time: 155 min.
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