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.
Tagged as:
#afterdark10,
genre,
horror,
scifi
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.
Tagged as:
#fantasia2010,
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Montréal,
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Dead Snow (Død Snø) (Director: Tommy Wirkola): With a great tagline (“Ein! Zwei! DIE!”) and a winning concept (Nazi zombies!!), Dead Snow should have been a lot of fun. I’d missed it when it screened recently at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and so was happy to catch up with it on DVD. The setup is pure cheesy horror cliché: a group of six medical students head up to the mountains for a weekend of drinking, skiiing, and maybe a little romance. But what they soon find out is that the site of their little weekend getaway was once a notorious Nazi outpost during the days of Germany’s occupation of Norway. The exposition is helpfully provided by a creepy old man who happens to drop by to ask for coffee. He tells them that many people were tortured and killed until the villagers rose up to drive the Nazis into the mountains, where they froze to death. He also tells them the Nazis had been hoarding gold toward the end of the war, and that it’s never been found.
His function in the story over, he leaves and is soon dispatched in his tent by an unknown assailant. Our rowdy group of friends soon discovers a chest in their cabin full of, you guessed it, Nazi gold. Meanwhile, the one guy who knows the area takes off on his snowmobile to find his girlfriend, who had been skiiing over the mountains to join them but who hasn’t yet turned up. He soon comes upon the old man dead in his tent and begins to get a bad feeling. Back at the cabin, one of the girls hasn’t returned from the outhouse, and before you know it, the cabin is under siege by undead German soldiers.
At this point, the film has been predictable but fun. Our first sight of the zombies in Nazi uniforms is interesting, but the film itself quickly degenerates into repetitive scenes of running away or hacking at the zombies with whatever implements are available. Our snowmobiling friend is forever catching air on his machine, even when being chased by the undead, and the repetition turns what could have been a unique take on the zombie film into a bore. The characters are almost interchangeable in their blandness and by the end, I wasn’t really keeping track of who’d been killed.
Although this could have been a bit more fun with a crowd, I’m sure it wouldn’t have made it a better film.
Official site of the film
(5/10)
Tagged as:
horror,
nazis,
norway,
zombies
Wow. When the Toronto After Dark Film Festival decided to move from October to August, I never realized how quickly it would come up again. But even though I’ve been spending most of my time thinking about TIFF lately, I’m still planning to see a bunch of great genre cinema over the next week. Here’s my tentative schedule:
All screenings are at the Bloor Cinema (Bathurst subway stop) and individual tickets are usually $10 in advance, $12 at the door. It’s good to see that all the festival VIP passes sold out again this year, so the Bloor should be rocking at every screening with some of the most enthusiastic audiences at any fest I’ve attended.
Tagged as:
#afterdark09,
blaxploitation,
horror,
scifi
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!
Tagged as:
#fantasia2009,
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Montréal,
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