It’s been a long 14 months since the last edition of Toronto’s best genre film festival. Toronto After Dark decided to move back to their traditional October (think Hallowe’en!) time slot after a couple of years in August. It was just too hot to wear zombie makeup in the summer, I expect.
Although the fall can be pretty crowded with film events in our city, After Dark attracts a fiercely loyal audience. Even the move to a new venue (all screenings are being held at the Toronto Underground Cinema while the storied Bloor Cinema undergoes renovations) shouldn’t hurt attendance. It also helps that Adam Lopez and his crack team of programmers have put together a very solid-looking lineup of horror, sci-fi and other genre cinema. Here are a few I’m excited about:
- Friday October 21, 7:00pm Exit Humanity — a zombie western? Why not? It seems like blending genres is the thing to do now, and this promises to be more campy fun than Cowboys & Aliens.
- Saturday October 22, 4:15pm Redline — a Japanese anime film seven years in the making, with character designs from the truly wacky Katsuhito Ishii (Funky Forest), this film promises Speed Racer thrills in its story about a high-stakes race that takes place on a distant planet.
- Sunday October 23, 4:15pm Love — a cerebral sci-fi tale about an astronaut stranded on the International Space Station after he hears that civilization on Earth has been destroyed. If this reaches the heights of Moon or Silent Running, I’ll be very pleased indeed.
- Monday October 24, 9:45pm A Lonely Place to Die — Drawing comparisons to The Descent, this film is about a group of young mountaineers climbing in the Scottish highlands who stumble across a kidnapping plot and soon find themselves on the run from a pair of professional killers when they try to save the young victim.
- Tuesday October 25, 7:00pm The Divide — Eight people survive the Apocalypse in the basement of their apartment building only to slowly turn on each other. Promises to be suitably bleak for a film about the end of the world.
- Tuesday October 25, 9:45pm Manborg — at After Dark a few years ago, I saw a short called Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Lazer Cove from director Steven Kostanski and thought it was just brilliant. Hilariously campy and yet affectionate, his work is here extended to feature length in a Robocop homage/sendup about a dead soldier brought back to life as a cyborg killing machine.
The fun starts tonight, so what are you waiting for? See you AFTER DARK!
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Celebrating 15 years of presenting Montréal audiences with some of the best genre cinema from around the world, this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival takes place from July 14-August 7.
There’s a very small possibility that I might be able to get to Montréal for a few days this year, but it might be impossible to see all the interesting films I’m seeing in the catalogue. Here are a few to check out:
- Bas-Fonds (France, Director: Isild Le Besco): French actress Isild Le Besco wrote and directed this brutal tale of three young women living together and fulfilling their basest desires until it leads to an explosion of violence. To be honest, the full description from Fantasia scares me a little.
- Clown (Klovn) (Denmark, Director: Mikkel Nørgaard): Based on a Danish television comedy series, this sounds right up my alley. Two friends go on a debauched canoe trip after one finds out his girlfriend is pregnant. Hoping this might be a bit like the Icelandic film Bjarnfreðarson (review).
- Love (USA, Director: William Eubank): Another scifi film about a solitary astronaut far from home, this sounds interesting because he finds the diary of a Civil War soldier and becomes convinced that this book has something to do with the lack of communication from Earth.
- The Whisperer in Darkness (USA, Director: Sean Branney): From the same filmmaking collective who brought you The Call of Cthulhu, perhaps the best H.P. Lovecraft film adaptation yet made. From that short, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society have learned their filmmaking chops and are back with their first feature, based on Lovecraft’s 1931 novella. The Old Ones are coming. Or maybe they’re already here!
- The Divide (Canada/Germany/USA, Director: Xavier Gens): I’m a sucker for a good post-apocalyptic thriller. Trouble is, there just aren’t that many good ones. In The Divide, eight strangers survive the end of the world in the basement of their apartment building. The Divide is described in the Fantasia catalogue as Lord of the Flies meets Threads, which raises my hopes.
There are a bunch of other great films playing, like Attack the Block, Another Earth, and Bellflower, but trust me, those will be all over the place soon. And I’m hopeful that even if I can’t get to Fantasia this year, that the good folks at Toronto After Dark will bring some of these treasures home for us to catch in October.
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It seems like I’m posting nothing but film festival announcements these days. Fantasia, Shinsedai, and now the big little genre festival that is Toronto After Dark. Now in its fifth year, this intimate 8-day festival (August 13–20), held entirely at the Bloor Cinema, is really hitting its stride. The just-announced lineup is guaranteed to have folks lining up around the block, especially with these in the mix:
- Saturday August 14, 6:00pm: Doghouse — another politically incorrect entry in the burgeoning British horror-comedy canon (Shaun of the Dead, Lesbian Vampire Killers).
- Sunday August 15, 8:45pm: HIGH School — For the horror fraidy-cats (like me!), a stoner comedy featuring Adrien Brody as a pot dealer. Well, that actually sounds pretty scary.
- Monday August 16, 6:00pm: The Last Exorcism — I’ve been curious about this Eli-Roth produced film since it was still being called Cotton. Director Daniel Stamm directed the excellent but little-seen A Necessary Death.
- Wednesday August 18, 6:00pm: Centurion — I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about this violent sword-and-sandals tale, directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent).
- Friday August 20, 6:00pm: Rubber — a philosophical take on a murderous tire? Yes, it’s French.
- Friday August 20, 8:45pm: The Human Centipede: First Sequence (Closing Gala) — this notorious film will almost certainly sell out first.
And this isn’t even half of the lineup. Films screen just once, so you’ll need to buy your tickets as soon as possible. I suggest NOW. And I’ll see you After Dark.
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Running from July 8–28, Montréal’s Fantasia International Film Festival is arguably North America’s biggest and best genre film festival. Stretching over nearly three weeks, it’s an extremely tantalizing proposition for this film lover to embark on a weekend road trip, but unfortunately, it’s rather unlikely this year. It’s become even more tempting after I received the hefty catalogue in the mail yesterday. As always, the festival has included a DVD packed with more than three hours (!!) of trailers for films screening at the festival. And yes, I’ve watched the whole thing already.
The good news is that friends from some Toronto festivals like Reel Asian and After Dark are attending, and will be scouting for gems to bring to Toronto in the next few weeks and months. If they’re reading, here are some for the wish list:
- 1 (Hungary, Director: Pater Sparrow): A sci-fi film reminiscent of the work of Jose Saramago (Blindness). A bookstore’s books suddenly all transform into a book called 1, filled with random-seeming statistics. As scientists race to decrypt the book’s meaning, the store’s employees are confined to a mental hospital. Sounds completely unique.
- Chernaya Molniya (Black Lightning) (Russia, Directors: Alexandr Voytinskiy and Dmitriy Kiselev): A superhero film about a young man with a flying car. This looks better than something like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice though I expect it will have a pretty similar plot and character arc. And the car’s a Soviet-era Volga, so that’s awesome, right?
- First Squad: The Moment of Truth (Russia/Japan, Director: Yoshiharu Ashino): Anime based on a World War II battle between the Soviet 6th Army and the German Ahnenerbe, a secret occult division of the SS. Undead soldiers on both sides fight each other to the, er, well? Some alternate history elements make this interesting, and apparently the Ahnenerbe really existed.
- Golden Slumber (Japan, Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura): From the director who brought us Fish Story (a hit at last year’s Reel Asian festival, another story of intersecting lives and actions. This time, a “chance” meeting with an old college friend leads to a man’s unwitting involvement in an act of political terrorism.
- Rubber (France, Director: Quentin Dupieux): A satirical horror film about a murderous tire. Enough said.
- Sawako Decides (Japan, Director: Yuya Ishii): A coming-of-age-in-the-countryside film that the Fantasia catalogue also describes as “a grim feelgood movie.”
- Secret Reunion (South Korea, Director: Jang Hun): A sort of espionage buddy-cop movie with Song Kang-ho (The Host, Secret Sunshine, Thirst) as an older agent trying to catch a North Korean spy. From the director of last year’s excellent Rough Cut.
- Tears for Sale (Director’s Cut) (Serbia, Director: Uroš Stojanovic): I reviewed this when it played at TIFF in 2008, but it’s never appeared on DVD, and now Fantasia is showing an extended director’s cut with 14 additional minutes of eye-popping visuals. I’d love to introduce more people to this one-of-a-kind film.
- Technotise: Edit & I (Serbia, Director: Aleksa Gajic): Cyberpunk anime from Serbia, about an indestructible young woman. Yes please!
If you do have the opportunity to be in Montréal this month, don’t miss Fantasia. Though the city is welcoming and beautiful, treasures await you in its darkened cinemas.
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Although this site generally focuses on Toronto-area film festivals and events, I can’t resist putting in a plug for Montréal’s incredible Fantasia International Film Festival. Running all the way from July 9–29 (and yes, I know the poster says the 27th, but trust me, it runs until the 29th), this year’s fest features more than 115 feature films as well as a generous selection of shorts. Fantasia’s focus is on genre cinema (horror, sci-fi, etc.) and there’s been a real explosion in both the quality of these films as well as audience interest.
Looking through their programme has me looking forward to Toronto’s own genre fest, Toronto After Dark, which is running from August 14–21 this year. Though our fest is much more modest (at least for now), I’m confident that the programmers will be bringing the very best from Fantasia to Toronto in August. And if they don’t, then I’ll just have to get myself to Montréal next summer.
P.S. Hey After Dark guys, can you get a poster as cool as this one for your fest? Thanks!
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