This weekend, TCFF founder and president Michael Moore made some big announcements about this year's festival. The first is the tickets on sale date: Tickets for the Friends of the Festival will go on sale Monday, July 14 at noon by phone, online and at the festival box office (located in the Art Center at 300 E. Front St. in Radio Centre in downtown Traverse City). Tickets to the public go on sale at noon on Saturday, July 19 just at the box office, and then online and by phone starting at 6 p.m. Tickets for all regular screenings are $9, and the opening and closing night films are $25. Opening and closing night party tickets are $50. The full lineup of films will be announced later this week.

Dennos Musuem, home of Milliken Auditorium

When looking at the lineup this week, you'll notice a new venue has been added to our roster for '08. In addition to the State Theatre, City Opera House, Old Town Playhouse, Lars Hockstad Auditorium and Open Space park, we are pleased to announce we'll be adding Milliken Auditorium, which is part of the Dennos Museum on the Northwestern Michigan College campus, as our sixth screening venue this year. BATA is generously partnering with TCFF again this year to provide continuous free transportation between the six venues during the festival.

Speaking of venues - one of the highlights of the festival for many moviegoers are the free films that play at dusk in the Open Space each night. These films often attract 5,000-7,000 attendees, and are all rated PG-13 or under to allow families to attend together. This year, we have another great group of Open Space films lined up:

Tuesday 7/29: "Ghostbusters"
Wednesday 7/30: "The Best of the Looney Tunes Cartoons"
Thursday 7/31: "Singin' in the Rain"
Friday 8/1: "Back to the Future"
Saturday 8/2: "A League of Their Own"

As a bonus for moviegoers, Open Space films will be preceded each night by free concerts in the park by some of northern Michigan's top entertainers. The full concert lineup will be announced in the coming weeks, but we highly suggest coming down early, bringing a blanket and picnic dinner, and enjoying a beautiful sunset concert by the bay before the free nightly movie begins.

A few of this year's Open Space films were specially chosen to coincide with some of the guest filmmakers we'll have attending the festival with us. "A League of Their Own" plays the same night Madonna will be appearing at the festival to introduce her powerful documentary, "I Am Because We Are." "Singin' in the Rain," meanwhile, is part of our 2008 tribute to celebrated director Stanley Donen, age 84, who will be attending the festival to introduce his films and participate in one of the festival panels. Donen directed some of the greatest hits of Hollywood's Golden Age, including "Funny Face," "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "Charade," "On the Town" and "The Little Prince." We are honored to have him with us this year, and to have the opportunity to show his classic films on the big screen once again.

Another guest we're excited to have with us is legendary media personality Phil Donahue, who will be presenting his first feature documentary film, "Body of War," which he co-helmed with Ellen Spiro. "Body of War" tells the story of 25-year-old Tomas Young, an American soldier who was paralyzed by a bullet to his spine after serving less than a week in Iraq. The film features two new songs, "No More" and "Long Nights," by Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder. In November 2007, "Body of War" was named one of the fifteen documentaries in consideration for an Oscar nomination from the Academy, and it's certain to be one of the most buzzed-about films at this year's festival.

Phil Donahue

That's it in the way of announcements for now, but stay tuned - more news is coming this week about this year's festival, including in-depth coverage of the full slate of films and guests scheduled for 2008.