So the Tribeca Film Festival has come to an exhausting end. Even though the festival annoys me (sorry Kwok), I have to admit all the films I saw were worth watching and all the parties were fun.

One party deserves to be singled out: Friday night, Showtime Independent Pictures held a soiree at famed Japanese restaurant Nobu to celebrate their four films playing at Tribeca. I've never been to Nobu before so it was especially exciting for me. I'm not a very adventurous sushi eater (raw fish texture not a big turn on for me) but good God, there was still plenty to feast on: rock shrimp, chicken skewers, kobe beef, shrimp tempura rolls, and -- surprisingly -- some of the best desserts I've had in a while. And the food just kept on coming all night -- they weren't skimping on those platters. Plus, heaps of fresh sushi was being rolled at the front of the restaurant for those so inclined. I'll save the who's who list for my buzz report in indieWIRE on Friday, but suffice to say I could have grabbed Mario van Peebles' ass on the dancefloor if I had wanted to.

One of the most entertaining portions of the evening was watching a pal of mine -- a shall-remain-anonymous indie film insider who should perhaps be referred to as "Deep Intestines" -- try to eat $1000 of free food at the party. He's been to Nobu, he knows how much this stuff normally costs, so he racked up more than a dozen plates to good sushi, plenty of those $40 a pop salmon tartare glasses, and so on...I caught up with him around an estimated tally of $900 and we decided that adding drinks from the open bar would count...so he ordered us a round of Veuve, some Patron, and as long as he sipped each glass before handing it off, we counted it. All in all, we think he topped $1000. Quite impressive, although I heard he wasn't feeling great on Saturday....

After Nobu, we downscaled considerably and went to Nancy Whiskey Tavern, a great dive bar that's included in my -- shameless plug -- book. Pretty quickly the party degenerated into pitchers of cheap beer and chicken fingers by the shuffleboard table. We had a wonderful, boozy time (as evidenced by the photos above).

On Saturday, I had to wake up early (ouch) to go to the Tribeca Family Film festival to see this Pixar short "Boundin'." It was fabulous, but I was annoyed at having to wait a half hour to see a four minute film. I skipped out on seeing "Thunderbirds" -- just wasn't in the mindset to see a family film starring Sir Ben Kingsley. But Saturday at home I did watch some Tribeca films on tape -- the doc "Paper Clips" and a French Film called "Red Lights." "Paper Clips" is a doc about a school in rural Tennessee that tries to collect 6 million paper clips in remembrance of the 6 million Jews that were killed in the Holocaust. Great topic, but I didn't really connect emotionally with the doc -- it was filmed after the students had already met their goal with the paper clips, and was a lot of talking head shots of the teachers, and overly sentimental music and so on. Miramax picked this one up for release, so you'll hear about it whether you want to or not.

"Red Lights" was much more exciting. This is a French drama/thriller by Cedric Kahn that Wellspring bought after its showing in Berlin. It's about a middle-aged husband and wife on a road trip in France one holiday weekend, going to pick up their kids at school and take them on vacation. As you may have guessed, things don't go quite as planned after the husband gets drunk, the wife takes the train, and a dangerous drifter enters the picture. Some great tense atmosphere created, fabulous performances, and some unexpected twists.

So that was it, I took Sunday off from the festival and went back to normal life.