The Discovery, Narrative and Documentary competition lineups for the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival have been announced, and as indieWIRE reports, it’s going to be a much smaller festival this year. This would seem like good news: last year, Tribeca was streamlined down to 100-something features, and as I noted in my festival recap, the quality of the programming hardly suffered. Here are some of the films that, on first scan of the lineup, I’m excited to see:

• About Elly — This Iranian drama won the Silver Bear at last month’s Berlinale, and amongst its more controversial competition, Elly was a critical favorite. Likening it to an Iranian L’Avventura, Kevin Lee noted at The Auteurs Notebook that “the film suggests a post-Kiarostami Iranian cinema capable of achieving much within a mainstream idiom.”
• The Exploding Girl — Another Berlin premiere, this narrative directed by Bradley Rust Gray (husband of Treeless Mountain creator So Yong Kim) stars Zoe Kazan as a “Cherubic college student” whose “relationship with her boyfriend slowly disintegrates via cell phone.”
• Outrage — the latest doc from Oscar nominee Kirby Dick is said to offer “a searing indictment of the hypocrisy of closeted politicians who actively campaign against the LGBT community they covertly belong to.”
• Con Artist — I’d ordinarily be wary of anything described as a “punk-fueled docu-comedy,” but Tribeca has an excellent track record when it comes to art docs, so I’ll give this nonfiction portrait of Mark Kostabi a shot.
• Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench — I’ve heard a few good words on the street about Damien Chazelle’s debut feature, described as a “black-and-white, verite-style relationship drama with all that jazzy romance of an old-Hollywood musical.”
• P-Star Rising – Director Gabriel Noble spent four years following hip hop producer/ex-con Jesse Diaz and his young daughter Priscilla, an aspiring rapper who also goes by the name P-Star.

For those who’ve been holding their hot and bothered breath, awaiting a response to the controversy surrounding my taboo-breaking afternoon tryst referenced by Steven Boone in his last column, come swing by Beyond The Green Door. For those ready to move on, please read on…

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again loud and proud: Eddie Izzard is my heroine! I get all happy-go-lucky girly inside just thinking about him. And not only because I spent a good hour and a half doubled over in a folding chair gasping for air like an oxygen-tank-deprived emphysema patient when I saw the John Cleese anointed “lost Python” at a small west side venue years ago, but because of who Izzard is offstage as well: an unashamed cross-dresser with fabulous taste in makeup and heels.

I’ll admit I thought “sellout” when he started doing the gender conforming thing, publicly appearing in pants and facial hair, taking on the role of grifter/father Doug Rich on The Riches, but then I read a glorious NY Times interview he gave to Caryn James and two mind-blowing quotes chastened me.

He doesn’t always mention being a transvestite in his shows, he said. But he did in the two I saw, and it worked as a disarming strategy: acknowledge it for fans who are wondering what happened, then move on. “I am a transvestite; I’m just off-duty at the moment,” he told the audience, and immediately went on, “I never was a transvestite; it was a tax thing.”

As he explained later: “Some people would heckle me and say ‘Where’s the dress?’ and I’d say ‘Don’t oppress me, you Nazi’ — tends to shut them up. Because I have fought for the right to be able to wear a dress, not that I have to wear a dress. I didn’t jump out of a not-wearing-dress box into a have-to-wear-dress box.”

Yes, this is why I look up to Eddie Izzard even as I’m doubled over staring at the floor: his ability to break a taboo and then break away. In fact, Izzard is growing up, not selling out, just going through what every one of us whose gender and/or sexuality don’t match society’s “norm” eventually face. How do you come out without having that part of yourself define you completely? It’s really no different from what any minority throughout history has had to deal with. How does Spike Lee go from being a “black filmmaker” to being just a filmmaker who happens to be black? In the same way Izzard is attempting to become a comic and actor who “happens to be” a transvestite. You begin by acknowledging the thing that defines you – and then move past it, others’ reactions be damned. It’s the only way for one to grow both as an artist and as a human being. She’s Gotta Have It Spike Lee is no less black for having directed the conventional crime thriller Inside Man. Likewise, Eddie Izzard will always be a cross-dresser whether he’s wearing sequins or suits (or both). In fact, heterosexual Izzard in pants is more a true transvestite than gay Divine ever was –– he only did drag onstage as part of his shtick, and indeed was gearing up to play a male role on Married With Children when he died. “Lost Python,” dramatic actor and trailblazing pioneer. That’s Eddie Izzard defined.

So in honor of my leading lady I present a Golden Stiletto to three films that acknowledge, demystify then ultimately transcend taboo.
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The Motion Picture Association of America (AKA the MPAA, AKA the mysterious cabal that sits somewhere on the crux of government, religion and commerce, whose primary function is to devise movie ratings) has been paying an inordinate amount of attention to Captivity, a low-budget torture flick that opens this Friday. In March, the MPAA threatened to withhold rating the film unless the studio releasing it, Lionsgate, removed a series of billboards that were drawing complaints. Lionsgate complied, but still allowed Captivity producer Courtney Solomon to mouth off to the New York Times about how the premiere party for the film would feature cage fighting, torture rooms, and Suicide Girls as on-the-clock “dates” for select fans.

That party happened last night, and according to FishbowlLA, the MPAA threatened to pull Captivity’s R-rating after learning that Solomon and his party planners had actually used the discarded billboards to wrap the outside of the Sunset Strip club where the party was to take place. After receiving a call from the MPAA’s Marilyn Gordon a few hours before show time, Solomon says he had the billboards moved inside the event venue, but is nonetheless “expecting a call” from the ratings board this morning to learn his punishment.

If the MPAA were to remove Captivity’s rating, the teen-targeted pic wouldn’t be able to screen in most multiplexes when it opens on Friday. So obviously this is a big deal for Solomon and Lionsgate–but do the MPAA really have the jurisdiction to pull ratings based on the marketing materials used at a private event? Where’s Kirby Dick when we really need him–and would he even care about a breach of ethics involving torture porn?