This Week Month In Tickets: 16 July 2012 - 12 August 2012

Been a while since I did one of these, but 21 daily posts from Fantasia count for something, no? It'll be a while before I've written up everything I saw there, but in the meantime, a quick table of contents:

16 July - 22 July
23 July - 29 July
30 July - 5 August
6 August - 12 August



There were a couple late nights at work to start the week so that everything would be in place before heading to vacation on Thursday, and then a rather ill-advised "stay up all night Wednesday getting the house in shape to be empty for a while" plan. It did get me to the bus station on time, though, which was useful, because arriving late might have been all sorts of issues. My sublet was settled much later than usual, so information on handing keys and such over wasn't quite so hashed out as you might like.

It worked out, though, and I was able to pick up my press pass, note that it did not include the Opening/Closing Night films (basically, For Love's Sake and ParaNorman), and purchase a ticket for the opener with plenty of time to spare.

Links for those who can't use the image: 19 July, 20 July, 21 July, and 22 July.



The insanely busy week, when I tell myself I'm going to make an effort to get out and see the city, especially on the weekdays when i've already seen what's playing at 1pm, but the lure of not setting an alarm and wanting to post something to justify my press pass ate mornings and afternoons but good. Plus, the schedule this year was so packed - where previous years might leave holes, it was tough finding one before the last few days.

I did manage a short day Thursday, with a French-only program at the start of the day and something I didn't think I'd mind missing at 3, so I went to Pointe-a-Calliere, the very cool archaeological museum in the Vieux-Port. Admittedly, I've seen the excavation area enough by now that I wasn't going "this is really cool" throughout, despite it being really cool, but they've now got space for two temporary exhibitions, and both the Samurai exhibit and the Etruscan one were nifty. Then, instead of doing the DJ XL5 Zappin' Party Happening, I went to Place des Arts for Just For Laughs, because how many chances does one get to see the Muppet Show live? Few, and it is cool; the performers are so good that one's brain sort of edits them out.

Around that, seven more days of Fantasia: 23 July, 24 July, 25 July, 26 July, 27 July, 28 July, and 29 July.



Here's the work week, where I would boot up my work laptop at 9am, spend four hours trying to get work done in a tricky environment and run up my cell phone bill by calling into the US, and then generally keep writing until it was time for the 3pm pictures. I tried to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Museum of Science on tuesday only to find it sold out, but did get to see the neat stuff at the Cinematheque Quebecoise on Friday.

In all, another seven days in Montreal: 30 July, 31 July, 1 August, 2 August, 3 August, 4 August, and 5 August.



And the wind-down, with a fair amount of repeats and such, allowing me to see a little more of the city. This Tuesday, I did get into the Star Wars exhibit, and, yeah, it was pretty cool and fun for the kids who got to create their own Jedi Knights as well at look at props. Wednesday was spent at Parc Drapeau, mostly in the Stewart Museum, which had a neat display of kitchen equipment over time alongside the more typical stuff. Then it was onto the late bus and home to finally see Batman, as I couldn't expect to remain unspoiled forever now that I was reading the internet as well as pushing content.

And while I'd like to do full reviews for some of these, the only one I actually went full-EFC for is Girlfriend Boyfriend, just because it's the one where the site didn't have one already, and that gets you pushed to the front of the line. The last three days I was at the festival - 6 August, 7 August, and 8 August - do as well.

Get Carter

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 August 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (Classic Tough Guys, 35mm)

It's easy to forget (or never realize, depending on one's youth), after seeing his face softened by middle age and his career shift toward mentor roles, but Michael Caine was a genuine force of nature as a younger man, and few movies illustrated and exemplified that as much as Get Carter. The great thing about Caine in this movie, though, isn't so much that he's ferocious, but that the ferocity is always lurking just underneath. We know Jack Carter is a gangster from the start, and not even necessarily one of the honorable variety, but it's nifty to see just how much Caine lets out. He and screenwriter/director Mike Hodges are deceptively precise there; Jack is cooler and funnier in some situations than one might expect, which makes his later explosions even more fierce in comparison. He's a psychopath with a noble cause, which makes for an compelling anti-hero.

The movie itself is a good time, beautifully shot grime where even the beautiful and/or supposedly-sophisticated things have a kind of crude edge to them. The story is compact but not perfect; it often seems like Jack is wandering in and out of scenes Hodges would like to shoot for pretty flimsy reasons. There's not a lot one would want to change or streamline, though, especially if it would mean less of one of Caine's best performances.

Point Blank (1967)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 10 August 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (Classic Tough Guys, 35mm)

Warner - get on putting this out on Blu-ray so that I can watch it any time I want. It's a full-stop great movie, anchored by a terrific Lee Marvin performance that (like the movie) is surprisingly emotional when you see it, even if the criminal cool and harsh, pitch-black comedy and violence are what sticks out. John Boorman makes the movie feel both garish and stripped-down, a pretty neat trick.

A friend and I like to describe a certain class of action movie as "Just Give Parker His Money" movies. They don't have to be adapted from Richard Stark's The Hunter (though many are), they just need a capable man cutting a swatch through the underworld until those stubborn people see sense. The best recent one is probably The Man From Nowhere, but Point Blank is pretty close to definitive.

I reviewed it on EFC seven years ago; my opinion hasn't changed. Give it to me in HD.

The Bourne Legacy

* ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 August 2012 in Somerville Theatre #5 (first-run, digital)

I think I started wondering how many "The Boring Legacy" jokes were going to be made online roughly a half-hour into the movie, and let's just say that it won't be doing anything to mess up the uniformity on my "B" shelf, where I'm amused by how the three previous Bourne movies (which I've got on HD-DVD) sit in the same order alphabetically and chronologically. It is a phenomenally unnecessary sequel, not just in the sense that the term is usually used, but in just how bland it seems without considering that there were three other movies that came before.

For a movie about genetically-engineered super-soldiers, there's shockingly little action, and it really completes this series' disappearance up its own behind. From Identity, it's always been about conspiracies and cover-ups, but now it's so concerned with its own continuity, code-words, and agency acronyms that the idea of what's being covered up is made uninteresting while the conspiracy itself lacks even an interesting villain.

It is kind of impressive how Stacy Keach has turned into Brian Cox as he ages, though.

The Dark Knight Rises

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 12 August 2012 in Jordan's Furniture Reading (first-run, IMAX)

There's a lot to like about The Dark Knight Rises, and I readily admit that some of what rubs me the wrong way is not necessarily flaws but a fundamental difference of opinion between me and Christopher Nolan on what is important about Batman. And, sure, he's the one getting millions of dollars to put his vision of the Caped Crusader on-screen, but I do worry that his version has been so good and successful as to choke others out.

There's a lot of good stuff in this movie; there's not a bad performance in the large cast, for instance. The scenes where Batman re-emerges from his exile are pretty terrific, and not just the big chase scene with the Batcycle; I loved Bruce's curiosity being engaged at Selina breaking into his safe not so much for the pearls but to dust for prints. Every scene with Morgan Freeman is beautiful. They took a surprising amount of material from (relatively) recent Batman comics - I'm half-certain that "John Blake" was "Tim Drake" at some point in the scripting process, "Jen" was clearly Holly Robinson, and it seems to be pretty clear now why DC has been getting "No Man's Land" (the year-long line-spanning crossover that got me reading Batcomics)back into print. Some of the action scenes are amazing.

But... You know, this script has some real problems. It depends on a lot of people being willing to die for a pretty nebulous combination of cause and leader. The Batman suit often looks like a Halloween costume, and Christian Bale's Batvoice is joined by Anne Hathaway draining every bit of inflection from her voice once she's in "Catwoman" mode. The bit with the rope is really obvious, but does it really fit in with the rest of the movie? There is also a lot of time spent on John Blake that maybe could be given to other characters. I kept waiting for someone to slap Bruce Wayne as he griped about his clean energy project potentially being weaponized to remind him that anything worth doing can be used as a weapon. There's a real streak of authoritarianism and privilege running through the entire series, this time personified by the Dent Act.

And then there's the ending.

SPOILERS!

Overlook how quickly Bruce seems to get from Kazakstan to Gotham with zero resources and a ticking clock, or how we're suddenly supposed to care about Miranda at all, let alone find her a compelling villain. Or how he sure seems to hatch that disappearing act contingency plan really quickly. I just really can't get over how the Nolans seem to miss fundamental things about Batman. He doesn't use guns. He doesn't kill. And he doesn't quit. But there are lots of guns used in the end, Batman pretty clearly kills people, and Bruce heading off into the sunset with Selina seems to contradict both their characterizations. He internalizes Gotham's well-being as his own; she gets off on adventure too much. And, let's face it, "just wanting normal lives" (if comfortable ones) stinks; who wants to watch a movie about Batman not wanting to be Batman?

!SRELIOPS

It's a good movie, and a nice capper to the series. But you know what? I'm glad Warner plans to make new Batman movies sooner than later, and while I'm not necessarily hoping they go the full Schumacher, it might be a nice change of pace to have the next one helmed by a guy who embraces the fun parts of the franchise.

Girlfriend Boyfriend (GF*BF) & how it compares to You Are the Apple of My Eye

So, if you want to see this, your window is extremely limited, as in, if you're reading this after 11am on Sunday, it's pretty much closed unless you don't work regular business hours. You're not missing a whole lot, although breaking its issues down makes it sound worse than my actual reaction at the time. It feels better than it analyzes.

In order to get something out while it's still (barely) in theaters, I'm passing on writing a full review of You Are the Apple of My Eye to go with it until it comes up at its regular spot in the Fantasia movie review queue (it's at around 18th, so... end of the month?). It's an interesting comparison, if maybe a superficial one: Both come from Taiwan, both follow a group of high school friends into college and beyond, both have framing segments set in the present day and reflect important recent events.

Apple is a better movie in almost every way, though; even though it's frothier and frequently crass. It really gets in and focuses on its main characters, through the good and bad, and how their choices affect their lives. Its jumps are smaller, for the most part, but it never loses track of who its characters are at their cores through them, whereas I'm not sure exactly what sort of person Aaron is when all is said and done in GF*BF. And it twists when it gets back around to its framing sequence, able to do so because its characters have become the best versions of themselves. Many of its characters are broad and ridiculous, but despite that, Giddens Ko never loses track of who they are like Yang Ya-che arguably does.

And funny thing, but I half think that there's possibly a better premise in the framing device than what it surrounds. It involves SPOILERS! Liam raising the twin daughters of his two best friends, despite the fact that apparently, in Taiwan, he can't legally adopt them because he's gay. Technically, he can only be their "older brother", even though Xiao Xu, the more outspoken one, flatly declares him to be their father (also cool - the twins have basically inherited the rebellious nature of all three of their parents at that age, agitating for change and democracy at their school). Does Aaron have any contact with them, or does he avoid scandal? !SRELIOPS That movie might be melodramatic, but it would have some drama.

Ah, well. GF*BF isn't a great movie, and it had the walk-outs to back that up (there were about a half-dozen of us in the theater, and there were just a couple of us left by the end). I'm going to have to ask around at Films At The Gate if walk-outs are more common in China than they are here. (BTW: Films at the Gate schedule announced! With movies featuring Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Donnie Yen, and Sammo Hung!) I do scratch my head over how this is the one that got the release in the Boston area, when Starry Starry Night is also distributed by China Lion and is Really Good, and Apple is in many ways a better version of this same story. But, as I'm occasionally reminded, foreign-film distribution is weird and random.

Girlfriend Boyfriend (GF*BF)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 August 2012 in AMC Boston Common #5 (first run, Sony digital 4K)

By odd happenstance, Girlfriend Boyfriend (GF*BF, by the title appearing on-screen) is the second Taiwanese film I've seen in as many weeks to start its characters in high school and follow them to the present, and it turns out to be an interesting example of how weightier material doesn't always make for a better movie. GF*BF is far more dramatic than the comedic You Are the Apple of My Eye, but its trio of good performances almost feel trapped by Yang Ya-che's noble intentions.

In 1985, it's easy to mistake classmates Mabel Lin (Gwei Lun-mei) and Liam Chen (Chang Hsiao-chuan) for girlfriend and boyfriend; they are inseparable and cause trouble as a team, including selling forbidden zines at the local market. It's probably also what Mabel wants, but she winds up dating their friend Aaron Yuan (Rhydian Vaughan). He's more attracted to Mabel than vice versa, but since Liam's crush is on Aaron rather than Mabel, what can you do? Five years later, Aaron and Liam are college roommates, but when the three celebrate Aaron's birthday at a protest... Well, things will be different when we check back in on them in 1997.

The movie actually starts in the present day before jumping back 27 years, and if you know anything about the movie going in (which I must confess includes that summary), the ultimate direction of the movie is fairly obvious; even going in cold, I suspect the ultimate destination is clear early. That's not necessarily crippling, but the way that the story moves toward this inevitable ending sucks a great deal of drama out of it; what goes on in 1997 feels more like setting 2012 up than following logically from previous segments. We see some turning points in the characters' lives, but not others that seem like they may be more important, while relatively unimportant characters recur and ones that seem fairly important lurk around the edges. Heck, Yang doesn't even consistently build a timeline that seems like continuous lives; while seemingly throw-away scenes of Mabel appearing to climb the ladder at work does a nice job of tying her story together, there's little such continuity for the other characters, and their unexplained new circumstances in one segment after seeming to be headed in the other direction makes the audience feel out of the loop.

Full review at EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 10 August 2012 - 16 August 2012

Back home; what do Boston theaters have for me? (And everyone else, sure.)

• Five of the six movies in the Brattle's Classic Tough Guys line up this weekend have been remade, and Warner Brothers should not even be thinking of messing with the other one. Most of these double features are cold classics with the remakes justifiably forgotten: Friday night is Get Carter (with Michael Caine) & Point Blank (with Lee Marvin); Saturday is Dirty Harry (the original) & Shaft (the Richard Roundtree original); and Sunday is The Getaway (with Steve McQueen/Ali MacGraw) & The Mechanic (with Charles Bronson/Jan-Michael Vincent). The Brattle's calling it the line-up that The Expendables would have if made in the 1970s, and that really would kick ass. All but The Getaway are in 35mm.
  
  Vertically, the Story of Film is up to episodes 11 & 12 on Monday and Tuesday, with The Exorcist as the illustrative double feature. Note that it replaces Distant Voices, Still Lives, and that Monday evening is a DocYard presentation of Dear Mandela, a documentary on Durban shanty-dwellers who fight their evictions by invoking Nelson Mandela's example. Directors Dara Kell and Christopher Nizza will be present. Wednesday features the interesting but slight Elena, while the International Asskicking on Thursday are the defining performances for two Hong Kong superstars: Jet Li in Once Upon a Time in China and Donnie Yen in Iron Monkey.



• It looks like the major studios are starting to compete with Batman a little. The big opener is The Bourne Legacy, which both messes up the Bourne films being in the same order alphabetically and chronologically and lacks Julia Stiles. It's also got Jeremy Renner as another special agent cut from the same cloth as Matt Damon's Jason Bourne (oh, yeah, he's not there either). It plays Somerville, Fresh Pond, Fenway (on the RPX screen), and Boston Common. Those theaters also pick up The Campaign, which has Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as two rival candidates for Congress, one used to running unopposed and one not used to running at all.
  
  Boston Common and Fenway both pick up Nitro Circus: The Movie in 3D; it's ninety-ish minutes of daredevils doing crazy things in 3D, although with more planning than the likes of Jackass. Boston Common and Kendall Square also pick up Killer Joe, which has Matthew McConaughey in great form as a contract killer hired by a greedy-but-dumb family who takes the daughter as a retainer when the family wants to defer payment. Great black comedy from director William Friedkin.
  
  For some reason, Wednesday openings become a thing later in the summer; Hope Springs had one last week and The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a Disney feature about a childless couple who discovers a baby who is part plant, opens on the 15th. Fenway has a special "Rifftrax" screening of Manos, The Hands of Fate on Thursday the 16th.



• In addition to Killer Joe, Kendall Square opens Searching for Sugar Man, in which two fans of obscure Detroit musician "Rodriguez", who only made one album, a commercial dud, and is rumored to have committed suicide on-stage, try to seek out this musician who had become a favorite halfway around the world. It's been getting excellent, award-shortlist-type reviews. The one-week booking is Todd Solondz's Dark Horse which features Jordan Gelber and Selma Blair as two misfits who marry in haste, and, well, you know how that goes. The folks I know who saw it at IFFBoston this year seemed to like it.



• The Coolidge more or less keeps its same line-up in both the film and digital rooms, but kicks off an August of midnight Part Twos with Gremlins 2: The New Batch on Friday and Saturday night, in which Joe Dante sets his little monsters loose in a big-city skyscraper that has everything from science labs to TV studios and movie theaters. Friday night also features the monthly screening of The Room. There's a Big Screen Classics screening of The Big Lebowski on Monday, which is always a big bowling part, but it's already sold out.



• Whoa - the Harvard Film Archive has something like a regular booking this week, with Jean Renoir's restored Grand Illusion playing all four days that the Archive is showing films - 7pm Friday, 9pm Saturday, 4:30pm Sunday, and 7pm Monday. It's the long-thought-lost story of a group of French POWs trying to escape their camp during World War I. It will also run next weekend.
  
  In between screenings of that, there are two more Paramount anniversary screenings: 1932's Island of Lost Souls plays Friday at 9:30pm, it's a pretty-good pre-code adaptation of Dr. Moreau with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi. Sunday night features Chinatown, which is Chinatown and essential. Saturday night has a "Buñuel's Mexico" entry, 1951's Susana, in which a psychopathic young woman seeks to destroy the family she crosses paths with.



• The MFA continues the UCLA Festival of Preservation, with Sleep, My Love, Wanda, a collection of WB "Vitaphone" shorts, and a package of three early films with gay & lesbian themes that are part of the Outfest Legacy Project playing at various times over the weekend and a double feature of a 1961 TV version of Waiting for Godot and Samuel Beckett's "Film", a 22-minute chase featuring an aged Buster Keaton (though his face is never shown).



• Remember that thing about Wednesday openings? The Indian screen at Fresh Pond is showing an unsubtitled Telegu film from Friday to Tuesday, but Ek Tha Tiger opens on Wednesday the 15th with Salman Khan as a secret agent investigating a professor suspected of selling secrets to Pakistan; he winds up romancing the professor's caretaker (Katrina Kaif) and chasing secrets around the world.
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• A little bit of screen-shuffling goes on, with Magic Mike moving from Somerville to the Arlington Capitol, which also picks up Farewell, My Queen from Kendall Square.

My plans? Some Tough Guys stuff, as Point Blank is a must-see whenever it comes to town and I haven't seen Get Carter, The Bourne Legacy, and one of the 11am screenings that GF*BF is hanging around for. And, oh yeah, to the furniture store for BATMAN!!!

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.21 (8 August 2012): The Woman in the Septic Tank

I didn't necessarily mean to make my last day at Fantasia a short one, movie-wise; the last couple of days just tend to be tacked on late in the process and filled with repeat showings - in fact, the schedule for those last couple of days were often filled with TBAs in previous years. Another time, things got shuffled because a guest's travel plans changed quickly just before the schedule was finalized . This year, there were actually a few movies I was interested in seeing during the last days - Inseparable, Sleep Tight, and Septic Tank, so I was glad I'd added at least one day to the schedule originally announced. Some of the other stuff playinig today is stuff I'd already seen, so it wasn't too disappointing to miss the last day.

So, what did I do instead?



I thought this might be a good time to hit the Stewart Museum, which I'd visited a few years ago and found really nifty. Luckily, I opted to do it today rather than yesterday (they're closed Monday and Tuesday) or in the last couple of years (they were closed for renovations for quite some time). A lot of work still seems to be going on; areas that were open the last time I went are locked up tight. I figured that there might be a lot of War of 1812 stuff for the 200th anniversery, considering how much they had last time I was there. Maybe they're saving it for a couple years from now, to celebrate the bicentennial of Canada's supposed victory.

(Seriously, I love comparing how the War of 1812 is taught on various sides of the border. For this New Englander, it was a second war of independence to stop the British from blocking American trade and impressing American sailors into the Royal Navy; in Canada, America was harboring British deserters, invaded their territory, but the provincial militias turned the American Army back, marched south, burned Washington, DC, and America hasn't screwed with them again.)

Anyway, I took that picture because I thought it looked like the guys who shoot a cannon off every few hours were sick of the noise coming from the "La Ronde" amusement park next door and decided to do something about it.

Anyway, after walking around Parc Drapeau for a while, I went back Concordia-way to have a burger and see my last movie of the festival, and a guy at the next table took issue to me scribbling in the notebook I carry around that is full of notes from screenings and half-finished movie reviews. He was taking issue with a lot of things, but his friend came over to ask if I was writing about him. Especially weird because it was the second time during the festival that it had happened; some girls had done the same at Smoke's Poutinerie about a week before.

Is this a thing people get nervous about? I mean, I can't remember anyone ever asking me to stop fiddling with my phone (which has a freakin' camera) or asking someone at the next table to put their iPad away, but a 4-inch-square notebook is threatening? Weird.

So, that happened, I saw my movie, spent what was left of my Canadian currency at Paris Crepes on St. Catherine (and getting some snacks for the ride home), and then got back to the apartment to pack and rush to the bus station. Fun fact: It's now a much longer run from the Berri-UQAM metro stop to the gare des autocars, with a segment where you have to go up and then down, which is awesome if you're dragging a wheeled suitcase. Made it just in time... And then the bus left 25 minutes late and got stuck in traffic. I thought I got lucky when the guy in the seat next to me got off at the Burlington, VT airport, but I got a new seatmate who really did not have the instinctive recognition that the middle armrest was where my personal space began, especially when sleeping. It was a fun ride.

Anyway, last day of Fantasia up north. My plans? Well, I got a screener for Sleep Tight, so I'm tempted to cue that up at 7:30pm in sync with the folks in Montreal, but I will probably crash/watch my first baseball in three weeks.

Ang babae sa septic tank (The Woman in the Septic Tank)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Spotlight: Filipino Film, HD)

I see what you did, Fantasia Festival programmers, scheduling a series of FIlipino films that wallow in the poverty of the slums and then finishing it with a movie that takes the piss out of the rest. Or, alternately, scheduling the parody for one of the "extra" days after the closing film when many festival-goers have returned home. Either way, it would have been even more clever if The Woman in the Septic Tank was as consistently sharp in its satire as it is in its best moments.

In a dirt-poor Manila slum, Mila prepares dinner for her seven children from one package of instant ramen, bathes the oldest, dresses her in a nice dress, and delivers her to an elderly caucasian man. That, at least, is the movie that young Filipino writer/director Rainier (Kean Cipriano) wants to make - Walang-wala ("With Nothing"). Producer Bingbong (JM de Guzman) and production assistant Jocelyn (Cai Cortez) are equally enthusiastic. It's everything that the foreign film festivals that love the likes of Brillante Mendoza go for, and they've got a meeting with one of the country's biggest stars, Eugene Domingo, for the part of Mila.

The main gag here, of course, is that the filmmakers are middle-class, running through script sequences on their iPads while driving to Starbucks in their late-model car and then complaining about the wi-fi. They've got far more in common with the foreigners who are their true target audience than with the destitute people that they would cynically offer up for their audience's pity. And it's a good gag, especially when writer Chris Martinez and and director Marlon N. Rivera are really on their game. They open the movie with narration describing whats happening on-screen with "Sequence 34", which while being how a script reads also highlights just how generic and codified this stuff has become, while the camerawork is subtly obsessive, needing to capture every repeated detail of hardship.

Full review at EFC.

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.20 (7 August 2012): The Fourth Dimension, Sunflower Hour, and Painted Skin: The Resurrection

I was going to triumphantly tweet something about having pancakes at 12:30 on a weekday because vacation, but when I got to the old port, I found that the place I was planning on visiting was shut down for some reason or another, so I went to Les Glaceurs for the cupcake/ice cream combo instead (cupcake: Choco-Orange; ice cream: vanille-framboise). Which is pretty "because vacation" itself.

While walking around, I found this plaque outside the Bank of Montreal:



Canadian history: More badass than you think. Remember that, folks: They may be friendly and polite but their leaders will kill yours with their bare hands if you stand in their way.

After that, I headed to the Science Museum for the "Star Wars: Identities" exhibit (some photos here), which was pretty nifty. Probably less actual science to it than last year's Indiana Jones-themed archaeology exhibit, but all the Star Wars props were still really cool, and they've made the exhibit less dependent on watching video on the handheld unit than the Indy one. The interactive parts, where you design a Star Wars Universe character were neat, although they created a bit of a bottleneck, so I didn't finish Whurrhurrhrwa, my Wookiee trader.

Here's hoping that it makes its way to the Boston Museum of Science, and I eagerly await next year's Radioland Murders-themed exhibit.



I killed some time in the Old Port after that, making my way across les quays to the clock tower. There's been a little work done on the area, most obviously the new "Clock Tower Beach" shown above, which is a weird thing, being completely man-made and charging admission. I'm pretty sure that the actual walkways around the tower have become more narrow as well, and not just in places where the beach needed to be accomodated.

One thing you can sort of see in that picture is that the concession stand is sort of done up to look like a cargo container, which is a recurring theme around the quays. I don't recall that quite being the case in previous years, but I like it - its practical and a nice link to the area's history which they manage to make look good.

After that, went to the "Forbidden Visions" exhibit at BBAM! Gallery that is being co-presented by Fantasia, which was nifty, and had some food at Mr. Steer's, an absolutely un-prepossessing diner on St. Catherine that makes one of the best burgers you'll ever taste. They sell raw burgers to cook on your own grill, and if I drove and didn't want to get in an argument with the TSA, some would probably come home with me. Then it was off to the festival to watch some movies.



Marc Lamothe (l), it turns out, can be as excitedly motormouthed in English as he is in French; he saw Sunflower Hour at another festival and was very enthusiastic to bring it to Fantasia. Writer/director Aaron Houston was originally supposed to come, but apparently the film is giving him a lot of new opportunities; as star Amitai Marmorstein (r) said after reading an email from Houston on his phone, the man has been pulled into meetings at every festival they've gone to.

There were only a few of us press folks there for this one, which made me kind of sad; most everyone else seemed to be across the street at ParaNorman, which looks like a lot of fun, but it's not like there won't be ample opportunities to see it in a week and a half (though Alliance seemed to put on a good show, with guys in mascot uniforms and other guests), while this might be the only chance to see Sunflower Hour in a theater.

Considering that a lot of the promo material for Painted Skin: The Resurrection had "3D" logos on it, I was kind of hoping that we might get to try out the active-shutter glasses used to show ParaNorman that way, but I'm not going to complain about a 35mm print (an increasingly scarce beast at both festivals and regular screenings), either. There was one other bit of business before the show:



Film scholar David Bordwell received this year's "Lifetime Excellence" award for his academic work, but you really didn't even need King-wei Chu's introduction to realize that he's not a dull ivory tower type; he's been sitting in the front row of screenings since arriving over the weekend, and just a few short words made it clear that he doesn't just love film, but movies. He watches and gets excited about them rather than just studying them, and I couldn't help but think back to earlier in the day, when I picked up an envelope of screeners for movies I couldn't fit into the schedule and saw a half-dozen people in the "viewing room", watching movies off computer monitors with headphones to shut everyone else out, and I couldn't help but think that that is no way to experience a film festival. EFC may not pay, but not having deadlines and assignments makes up for it somewhat.

While accepting his trophy (and is Fantasia's Cheval Noir the coolest award given by a festival or what?), Bordwell said something that amused me: "Film is a great art form. It may not seem that way, because people still like it." That kind of sums festivals like Fantasia up; they import more popular entertainments than bits of high art, but you can get a lot out of those movies.

Anyway, this is my last day in Montreal, and I'm planning on a late brunch at Cocktail Hawaii, another museum visit, maybe dinner at m:brgr, and just one film, The Woman in the Septic Tank, before catching the 11:30pm bus home (and maybe going straight from South Station to work).

The Fourth Dimension

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)

The part of this anthology that will likely get the most notice will likely be Harmony Korine's piece, which has Val Kilmer playing a particularly odd version of himself as motivational speaker, but while it's amusing, it's the other two pieces, by Silent Souls's Aleksei Fedorchenko and Polish newcomer Jan Kwiecinski, but resonate a bit more, taking simple sci-fi-ish concepts and turning them into stories which resonate suprisingly well.

It winds up being kind of a quiet anthology movie - none of its segments really blow the audience away and they don't come together as something greater - but it does all right.

Full review at EFC.

Sunflower Hour

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)

Even as mock-documentary movies go, Sunflower Hour looks kind of bare-bones, but partly by design - it's a documentary about finding a new puppeteer for a cheap-looking Vancouver kids' show, with the idea being that low stakes actually make people more passionate. Still, it's pretty good use of this - it lets filmmaker Aaron Houston do his gags with almost nothing in the way of resources.

And he's got a good bunch of gags. It's simple comedy truth that everything is funnier when done by a puppet, which makes the character of Shamus O'Reilly, whose puppet Gerry is acting out his id all the time, one of the movie's funniest. There's also a nice little thread about people learning to communicate and gaining confidence throughout the movie, and charming performances from Amitai Marmorstein and Kacy Rohl as the kids who need validation the most.

Full review at EFC.

Hua Pi 2 (Painted Skin: The Resurrection)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, 35mm)

Newcomers should not be too put-off by the fact that Painted Skin: The Resurrection has a subtitle or a roman numeral depending on whether the title is written in English or Chinese; the first text on the screen more or less reads "500 years later", so you're talking about a pretty clean start. Once you get past that, it's just a simple gothic martial-arts horror romance fantasy.

Fox demon Xiaowei (Zhou Xun) has spent the last five centuries imprisoned in ice for the crime of falling in love with a mortal, but is freed when Qeer, a curious young sparrow demon, creates a crack. The two return to the mortal world, where eating human hearts not only allows them to retain human form (as it does) but keeps the ice from swallowing Xiaowei again. The only remedy is to become human by having a heart given to Xiaowei freely. The key is Princess Jing (Zhao Wei), whose scarred face, the circumstances behind it, and their differences in caste keep her from being with her true love General Huo Xin (Chen Kun) until Xiaowei befriends her and offers her the chance to swap their skins. Meanwhile, the latest in a family of demon hunters, Pang Lang (Feng Shaofeng) has an inkling that something is up, so Qeer (Yang Mini) shows up to keep him out of the way.

Painted Skin: The Resurrection is a dark fantasy by way of the erotic thriller - few of the latter have ever taken the idea of a woman who insinuates herself with a couple so that she can work her way into their beds and rip their hearts out quite so literally! And yet, for all the moralizing that usually accompanies the genre's titilation, the set-up and relationships here are surprisingly complex. Even as Xioawei schemes, her motivation is desperation rather than the usual hatred (she actually seems to like Jing), and the lack of actual enmity makes the strange triangle all the more interesting.

Full review at EFC.

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.19 (6 August 2012): Sunny, Despite the Gods, Love Fiction, Vulgaria, Hidden in the Woods

Just one short today, and that was "Petite Mort" again in front of Vulgaria (and it's hard to think of a more suitable home for it!). Some filmmakers in attendence for horrible photography, though.



That's Despite the Gods director Penny Vozniak doing Q&A with the festival's Mitch Davis; sadly, Jennifer Lynch wasn't there for this screening, having left for home after introducing Chained on Sunday, although the Q&A from the Despite the Gods screening she did attend should be up on the festival's YouTube channel soon. Vozniak still had a number of interesting stories to tell, including how she knew from the start that she was going to want the opportunity to do more than just a standard EPK and made sure she had a chance. She also said that part of what she was hired for was babysitting Lynch's daughter Sydney, who was with her mother through the bulk of the eight-month shoot and whose presence would be a major issue between Lynch and producer Govind Menon. Which I can see in theory, but from the way the film was cut, it seems like most film sets would be cooler places for having a precocious 12-year-old hanging around.

I had to duck out of this Q&A a little early to head across the street for the next movie, so it may have gotten good afterward, once the audience had a chance to open up.



The day ended back in de Seve, this time with a Q&A for Hidden in the Woods writer/director Patricio Valladares. In some ways, the Q&A focused less on the movie itself than a couple of things surrounding it. First, there was amazement that such a brutal exploitation-style picture had been made in part with government funds; the story appears to be that Valladares submitted a more palatable proposal before actually filming this movie. I did get the impression that some of the details were being lost in translation and that the scale of both the Chilean exhibition business and the film's release was being misinterpreted. Or, at least, that everyone involved recognized the value of a good story even if the truth was a bit more prosaic.

Second, jury member Michael Biehn saw the picture and flipped for it, purchasing the remake rights with the intention of starring as the father. Which should be interesting; it's certiainly a role Biehn can play, and according to Valladares (who will also write and direct the new version in Chile), that part will be expanded. Not sure what I think about that; there's a part of me that kind of wanted less of him, and I don't know that he needs to be explained. It is kind of interesting how Biehn, who has done some very mainstream, very big-budget stuff in his career, really seems to be showing a real fondness for downright nasty grindhouse material now.

Well, that was my last really full day; I'll be spending most of today doing touristy stuff before getting back for The Fourth Dimension, Sunflower Hour, and Painted Skin: The Resurrection

Seeoni (Sunny)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

Sunny is flagrant nostalgia bait, but don't count that against it - it's genuinely funny, heartfelt nostalgia bait, and while that might seem odd to world cinema fans - few films that reach North America set in 1980s South Korea suggest people would miss it - it's actually got the wit to make that work when it needs to.

Lim Na-mi (Yu Ho-jeong) is in her early forties, a good wife and mother, and a dutiful daughter as well, making sure to visit her ailing mother in the hospital every day. It's after one of those visits that she notes the patient name on the door of the next room, "Ha Chun-hwa" - and is shocked to discover that the woman in that room with two months to live (Jin Hee-kyung) is her best friend from high school. Back then, Chun-hwa (Kang So-ra) befriended Na-mi (Sim Eung-kyeong) when she was the new kid after moving to Seoul from the rural Jeolla-do region, including her in "Sunny", her group of friends that included upbeat Jang-mi (Kim Min-yeong), foul-mouthed Jin-hee (Park Jin-joo), model-pretty Su-ji (Min Hyo-rin), pugnatious Geum-ok (Nam Bo-ra), and Miss Korea hopeful Bok-hee (Kim Bo-mi). Chun-hwa would like to get the group back together one last time before dying, and while Jang-mi (Ko Su-hee) and Jin-hee (Hong Jin-hee) prove easy enough to find, the rest will take a little more effort.

There's also stuff going on with Na-mi's teenage daughter Yae-bin (Ha Seung-ri) in the present and 1985 subplots involving a boy Na-mi has a crush on and a similarly composed group of girls from another school. It's a busy movie that splits its time roughly equally between 1985 and 2010, throwing a lot of period pop - both western and Korean - onto the soundtrack. Plenty of garish 1980s fashions make it on-screen too, making the flashback scenes especially colorful, especially when you consider that the girls aren't wearing school uniforms like Yae-bin and her classmates. That's likely a pretty deliberate sop to nostalgia; kids then were colorful and individual even when buying the same brands, while the next generation are missing that sort of variety.

Full review at EFC.

Despite the Gods

* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Documentaries From the Edge, HD)

It takes a special kind of movie for a "making-of" piece to morph into really interesting documentaries, and it certainly appears that Hisss was that sort of movie. It was always going to be odd but had the sort of calamitous production that leads to plain disaster.

The interesting thing about Despite the Gods is that it doesn't necessarily feel calamitous, but rather more like something that just got stretched out for no definitive reason until so much had been invested in it that it could neither stop nor possibly be a commercial success. Director Jennifer Lynch mostly seems to get along with her cast and crew until right up to the end, even if she does clash with producer Govind Menon. They're a pair of strong personalities, with Lynch often appearing more tortured because of her being out of her natural element.

Director Penny Vozniak does a nice job of putting the movie together, and it's a good look at making a movie in general as opposed to making one which went awry.

Full review at EFC.

Leobeu Pikseon (Love Fiction)

* * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)

A romantic comedy that never quite gels, despite a pair of fairly likable leads and Jeon Kye-soo's script having a quirky, individual voice. The trouble is that said voice is often using unusual words to say the same old thing: Guy meets girl, they fall in love despite their own baggage, guy selfishly does something she has specifically asked him not to do, and then must try to pick up the pieces.

There's ways to make that feel fresh, but Jeon doesn't find them; instead, the quirks seem to be very obvious ornamentation on a too-familiar skeleton. Just as frustrating was the occasional impression that Jeon had backstories and lives laid out for both main characters but didn't include them beyond the superficial; it could have been more interesting than it was.

Full review at EFC.

Vulgaria

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

Funny, funny stuff, and Pang Ho-Cheung is just crazy prolific right now - a couple years ago, he made Love in a Puff in the middle of post-production on Dream Home, and now he has Vulgaria come out just a few months after Love in the Buff, supposedly with just a 12-day shooting schedule. Which seems exaggerated, because while there's no one hugely elaborate scene, it's got a fair number of locations and characters.

However quickly he cranked it out, it's hilarious, with Pang and company pouring a ton of raunchy jokes into ninety minutes and Chapman To delivering a marvelously flustered performance as a B-movie producer facing hard times and a project that began under dubious circumstances and gets weirder by the minute. Few jokes are repeatable, but most are among the funniest of the year.

Full review at EFC.

En las afueras de la ciudad (Hidden in the Woods)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)

Yep, this certainly does live up to its introduction as an envelope-pushing bit of cinema; it sets out a ghastly premise and doesn't hesitate to make each segment more horrific than what came before. Director Patricio Valladares is also good enough to not just throw more blood, guts, and sex on-screen, but to really connect it to the audience emotionally.

So why, when it is all said and done, did it leave me relatively cold? I'm not sure. I think part of it was that I found myself confusing the two sister characters; as Valladeres cranked through a lot of backstory in the opening minutes, I found myself unsure whether Anny or Ana was supposed to be older (and the names didn't help much!), which one was Manuel's mother, which one was doing A while the other was doing B... Making them feel so interchangeable took what seemed like horrifyingly personal stories and made them a little dehumanized. And once you've done that, the impression is less a horror story that strikes to the bone and more blood & guts exploitation.

Full review at EFC.

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.18 (5 August 2012): Blood-C, Sorcerer & White Snake, Berserk, Columbarium, Poongsan, etc.

Once again, I can sit here, or I can go see movies, and after arriving at Concordia just in time for the start of Blood-C, I'd like to give myself a little more wiggle room today. So on to the photography!

Not shorts Sunday, and with most of what I saw coming from the far east and Australia, there weren't a lot of guests. Except, naturally, from the one made in Quebec.



If you look closely, you can see that director Steve Kerr is actually wearing a Fantastique Week-End badge, which makes sense; that's the series of screenings of Quebecois short films, although his feature being locally produced and (mostly) in French certainly fits in. It gave me a moment or two of panic, though, as I had visions of the movie starting and being in French and having to really test what I remembered from high school. Not the case, although I did wind up sort of following the room's lead at when to applaud during the Q&A afterward.



Hey, the "panorama" function on my phone is kind of neat, estpecially when there's a lot of people on the stage. I don't think it was really designed to be used on a group that close to the camera, thus the distortion of things that really should be straight.

I panicked a bit when I looked up and saw that Gilbert Comptois had joined the group while I wasn't looking, sitting to the right of every one else (left to right, the picture shows actor Maxime Dumontier, director Steve Kerr, host Stephanie Trepanier, and actors Pierre Collin & David Boutin). I didn't take another picture, because I figured just getting this one decent was pushing my luck. Sorry.

One last note: The anime screenings are a somewhat different beast from the rest, attracting die-hard fans who are tremendously enthusiastic and know exactly what they're getting into. Manga/anime is one of the oldest fandoms in North America, and it's kind of interesting how, while the folks I meet who love this stuff at the Million Year Picnic tend to have very broad genre intrests, there really is this group that is still very separate and focused, reading manga but not American or European comics and obsessively collecting anime but not much other home video.

OK, right. Today's plans: Sunny, Despite the Gods, Love Fiction, Vulgaria, and Hidden in the Woods

Blood-C: The Last Dark

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 AXIS, HD)

I wouldn't recommend seeing Blood-C: The Last Dark at all, but above all else, do not go in to see this movie cold. Seriously, don't do it. I am pretty sure that this would be a tiresome excuse for a movie with overly frantic action, a protagonist completely devoid of personality, and a laughable CGI monster at the finale who goes down way too easily even if I had seen Blood: The Last Vampire recently (or at all; I honestly don't remember whether I saw it or not) or had picked up any of the multimedia tie-ins between then and now, but not having the Blood mythology in one's back pocket doesn't help.

What's kind of extra-special lame about it is that there are three character described as "hackers". You know what is exciting cinema about watching hackers working? Nothing. The closest thing they do to being cool is when there's a shot of the youngest working a second keyboard with her toes. Aside from that, their main accomplishment is being tricked into walking the heroine into an obvious trap.

Full review at EFC.

Bai she chuan shuo (The Sorcerer and White Snake, aka It's Love)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

In the opening segment of The Sorcerer and the White Snake (aka It's Love), an ice harpy played by Vivian Hsu throws boulder-sized hailstones at demon-hunting monk Fahai, who is able to dodge and counter-attack three or four times for every one that gets near him. The lesson: CGI can't keep up with Jet Li, even at this stage of his career. It will, however, try its hardest, though as is often the case, it can't make up for an iffy script.

After defeating the harpy and imprisoning it in the Lei Feng Pagoda at the Jin Shan Temple, Fahei (Li) and his disciple Neng Ran (Zhang Wen) have a bat demon to find, but unbeknownst to them, it isn't the only demon at the Lantern Festival. Susu (Huang Sheng-yi) and Qingqing (Charlene Choi), two beautiful and mischievous snake demon sisters, have come to the mortal world because Susu has become smitten with Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), an herbalist whose life she saved earlier. They fall in love, and might live happily ever after, except that Fahei discovers Susu while chasing some other demons - and there can be no intermingling between the mortal and supernatural worlds.

Put that way, Fahai kind of sounds like the villain of the piece, or at least a more complex character than he is generally portrayed as. That the movie doesn't make him examining his prejudices a central part of the story rather than something that gets brief lip service during the finale isn't really a failing as much as a notable missed opportunity and indicative of how the film rushes between extremes. There's the pure doe-eyed love between Susu and Xu Xian one minute, effects-driven action the next, and if something is less than immediately gratifying, it falls by the wayside. Qingqing and Neng Ran disappear for most of the movie, and some non-trivial amount of money was spent to give Susu talking animal friends in one scene that never show up again (well, except for the rat).

Full review at EFC.

Beruseruku: Ougon jidaihen I - Haou no tamago (Berserk Golden Age Arc I: Egg of the King)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

As you can see from the number of descriptors in that title, the Berserk manga is huge, and this 70-odd-minute movie covers but a fraction of it. As a result, Egg of the King isn't close to a complete story, but it's a pretty good start to one.

Guts (voice of Hiroaki Iwanaga), a mercenary who carries an incredibly large sword, has turned the tide in battle by defeating the monstrous Bazuso, but delines to join the army, instead taking his reward and setting out of new challenges. He's soon recruited into the Band of the Hawk by its leader, the striking Griffith (voice of Takahiro Sakurai), and they are soon close companions - an arrangement that makes warrior woman Casca (voice of Toa Yukinari). Griffith possesses a strange, living amulet, the Crimson Belehit (aka "The Egg of the King"), and though the Band are loyal comrades, Griffith increasingly seems to have his own agenda when he enters into a contract with the Kingdom of Midland and starts romancing the king's daughter Charlotte (voice of Aki Toyosaki).

And that, no kidding, gets the story frighteningly close to its end, at least for this episode. Expecting full closure from a film that both has "part one" in its title and is based upon a serial that has run for nearly 25 years so far is foolish, but this one's climax seems like it would be a turning point in other films, leaving the audience wanting to see how it plays out right away rather than waiting a few months for the next installment. That being said, it's good set-up; the Guts/Griffith/Casca triangle functions more on loyalty than sexuality, but the movie acknowledges that the latter certainly seems to be in the air (Griffith is the sort of very pretty man where the audience might infer it anyway). Folks should find the characters interesting and the cliffhanger compelling not just for what will happen as fallout, but what it reveals about Guts.

Full review at EFC.

Columbarium

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Fantastique Week-end, HD)

Nothing fancy, just a good, solid story about what may be a ghost driving a guy nuts as he and his half-brother are alone in an isolated cabin. Solid acting from David boutin and Maxime Dumontier, especially with how they work with writer/director Steve Kerr to hint at what an inherently difficult relationship the characters have before laying it all out there.

Well, there is one "fancy" thing - part of the gimmick is that the aspect ratio narrows as the movie goes on, until by the end it's narrower than something shot on a phone held vertically after starting out as scope. It's a bit showy, and I think part of the french stuff announced to the audience was not to complain about the projection because this stuff was intended, which sort of blunts the impact a bit.

Still, darn good movie, tense and well-acted.

Full review at EFC.

Poong-san-gae (Poongsan)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)

Another one which gets sort of gimmicky - the title character played by Yoon Kye-sang is not just silent, but almost absurdly uncommunicative in a way that is almost ridiculous - but which manages to be quite incisive when talking about the partition of Korea. It tells the story of a man who is unique in his ability to slip across border and how everything goes to hell when he gets involved with the government.

Well, that and a woman, who provides us with a great look at the tension between the two countries as she is brought across and becomes a pawn in a larger game that she really wants no part of. It's a fascinating film, really, with a pretty marvelously constructed script from Kim Ki-duk that Juhn Jai-hong executes very well indeed. The only thing close to a flaw is that it seems to go on past its natural end-point, but the stuff that happens after is good enough to allow it.

Full review at EFC.

Hail

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

I may try catching this again on Wednesday, especially if the thunderstorms in the forecast show up, because while I probably wouldn't have to fake very much in a review, there are a lot of details I'd like a somewhat firmer grasp on if I write it up, and a movie with this film's particular style can be a rough one to stay fully alert through at 10pm after five others.

It's kind of amazing, though, with director Amiel Courtin-Wilson seeming to set up like a fly on the wall of released con Daniel to watch him and girlfriend Leanne try to get their lives back together, only to inevitably backslide and then... Well, wow. The movie goes somewhere I didn't expect at all and is riviting. It's unconventional to the core, documentary-style with the leads playing themselves but a fictional story and with scenes pulled together by Steve Benwell's atonal music, but really worth seeing.

Full review at EFC.

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.17 (4 August 2012): Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Grabbers, and Revenge: A Love Story

Once I saw I was running too late to catch Berserk, I figured some brunch may be a good idea, and remembered Kurt Halfyard raving about a place called Cacao 70 earlier in the festival (and also still highly wired from the mocchachino, hours later). So I figured I'd try that out - an hour would surely be enough time to get in and out, right?

Apparently not - it was fifteen minutes after I was seated before someone took my order, and 50 minutes after that before my breakfast came. Maybe they were short-staffed or something, but really, how long does it take to make a waffle? A good waffle, with delicious melted chocolate and caramelized bananas, but honestly...

Combine that with not wanting to see Excision again and the short program opposite it being in French, and it was a short day that maybe should have been shorter - by the time midnight came, I was full of poutine and couldn't make it through Revenge.

Horrible photography? Sure!

The Q&A for Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal was a good one; Boris Rodriguez is local and had a lot of friends and family there. Dylan Smith, second from the right, played Eddie, and there was a fair amount of "we can joke about it now, but damn, I almost got frostbite" when they discussed shooting him running aorund out in the snow in his underwear. Real snow, real cold.

Fantasia's Nicolas Archambault with "Attack of the Brainsuckers" co-writer Chris Bavota and director Sid Zarforlin. Their short played before Grabbers, and was a pretty good one (loved the sci-fi-loving little girl in it), and they mentioned that they had come to the festival for years but this was their first time with a film.

OK, time to hit the metro. My plan is Blood-C, The Sorcerer and the White Snake, Berserk, Columbarium, Poongsan, and Hail.

Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, 35mm)

We've all heard (or used) some variation on "my art comes from a dark place" before; there's also its close relative "suffering for one's art". Not exactly the inspiration you'd expect for a movie named "Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal" - which, not surprisingly once you accept that premise, turns out to be more about other people suffering for ones art. By proxy.

At one time a brilliant painter, Lars Olafsson (Thure Lindhardt) hasn't produced new work in years, and is now starting a teaching job at an art school in rural Canada. A recent bequest to the school requires it to see to the well-being of the benefactor's nephew, Eddie (Dylan Smith), a tall, simple mute of a man, and since he and Lars hit it off, Eddie winds up staying at Lars's place. It turns out that Eddie had a sleepwalking issue as a child, which involved attacking and eating small animals without knowing it, and it returns his first night in a new house. Except now he's bigger, the issue escalates... and when he sees the result, Lars is suddenly painting again.

The way Eddie approaches the artistic process is interesting. Many movies have played with the idea of artists claiming that a lasting great work is being worth sacrifice, but the merit of the art in the larger world is seldom the issue here; it's all what Lars will do or allow, directly or indirectly, to be the one who creates it. Writer/director Boris Rodriguez never actually shows completed artwork, but does a great job of showing how an empty canvas can draw or taunt an artist so that the audience gets a feel for the forces acting on Lars, and how it can cause him to respond in terrible ways.

Really, Lars is a heck of a role, and Thure Lindhardt is pretty much perfect in it. He seems to shrink and expand along with Lars's connection to his art, and even after Lars has enabled monstrous things, there's a humility to him that keeps the character quite appealing - it's that quality being stripped away that makes Lars seem his worst. He's also got a natural, unforced chemistry with Dylan Smith as the title character. Eddie is interesting on his own, as well - Smith is expressive without words or much exaggeration in his facial expressions, and he embraces the man's childlike nature without seeming to play an overgrown kid. Then, of course, he changes his whole performance when Eddie sleepwalks, in a fog but also far more sharp and decisive.

For as much as things feel real, they play into a plot that is more than a bit absurd, and Rodriguez shows a wonderfully twisted since of humor about it. The mayhem is gross but also played larger-than-life, and the radio is a great running joke. The complex main characters are countered by simple, funny supporting ones, particularly Stephen McHattie as Lars's agent, Alain Goulem as the ever-optimistic school administrator, and Paul Braunstein as the local constable. Georgina Reilly splits the difference as Lars's love interest, mixing personality and easy charm with enough substance to play off Lindhardt very well indeed.

Rodriguez does a really fine job mixing the movie's two tones, building Eddie so that it just needs the right nudge to go from funny to serious and back again, getting every point he's looking to make across from the first scene. The operatic soundtrack is well-chosen, and he makes good use of the wintry, barren environment without overdoing it as symbolism.

There's a lot of ways that this movie could have been overdone, but most if not all are avoided, and avoided without feeling like the film has been neutered in any way. "Eddie" has an out-there premise and some odd humor, but it's also quite smart and savvy when at its best.

(Dead link to) review at EFC.

Grabbers

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, 35mm or DCP)

Even if the name of Grabbers didn't make one think of the monsters in Tremors, the rest of the movie would, in the best possible way. It has the things that this sort of movie needs to succeed - a cryptozoological threat and an enjoyably eccentric cast of characters, with the latter naturally providing humor from their interactions while still having the sort of ingenuity needed to counter the former's very real danger.

Soon after the crew of a fishing boat mysteriously disappears near Erin Island, Ireland, another boat arrives, this one a ferry bringing model Dublin Garda Lisa Nolan (Ruth Bradley) to work alongside Ciarán O'Shea (Richard Coyle). The two events aren't related; the island's other local officer just needs someone reliable to share duties with oft-hungover O'Shea while on holiday. Of course, when a pod of pilot whales washes up on sure, mutilated, and local lobsterman Paddy Barrett (Lalor Roddy) catches a small "sea monster" in his trap, things start to get hairy for the cops and marine ecologist Adam Smith (Russell Tovey). It seems that this never-before-seen organism feeds by sucking its victims' blood, and can do so from a distance, but the good news is that it reacts poorly to alcohol.

Yes, writer Kevin Lehane means to have some fun with certain Irish stereotypes, and if you don't foresee large chunks of the last act involving the characters "defending themselves" in the island's pub, you are very easily surprised. It's good fun, though, in part because it never seems to be the result of laziness or a celebration of boorishness - there's thought put into how this is deployed, the characters are different sorts of drunks, and O'Shea's alcoholism doesn't suddenly become a good thing. Grabbers isn't a one-joke movie earlier on, and it doesn't become one in its last act.

An even more pleasant surprise is that while "straight-laced cop has to get drunk to save the day" is pretty much inevitable, Lisa is actually a lively character from minute one, chipper, confident, and capable rather than being a humorless hard-ass. Why, she and Smith even flirt adorably, much to O'Shea's consternation. She is fun just about every second that she is on-screen, which holds true for just about the entire cast; it's an enjoyable ensemble of actors and characters that each has a distinct personality and who all work well together; there's nary a weak link to be found.

The monsters are as much fun as the humans, establishing themselves as a threat early on and actually scaling nicely - director Jon Wright has exciting scenes in a bathroom and then increasingly larger environments before getting to an SUV being chased on an open road (with the tentacled beast looking and moving much better than such things usually do on land). The effects work is nice - the CGI is often aided by darkness, but still looks good, and the practical effects are actually effective rather than lame and rubbery.

Wright creates a fun atmosphere without winking at the audience too much; there is seldom a gag that doesn't arise naturally from the characters and he's not looking to gross the audience out with blood and mutilation. The big finale is a proper action set piece, the soundtrack is occasionally slyly funny (Wright and composer Christian Henson opt to pay homage to the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Fantasia at one point).

It's a genuinely entertaining movie from what could have been a highly annoying premise. Charming monster movies aren't a dime a dozen, so this one is worth checking out.

(Dead link to) review at EFC.

Fuk sau che chi sei (Revenge: A Love Story)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 4 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, video)

I strongly suspect that while Revenge: A Love Story is many things, a midnight movie is not one of them. It's got a fractured timeline, events re-examined from different perspectives, and what seems like a really tight, intricately constructed story.

It seems to, because I was out for a good chunk of it. Not the movie's fault at all - it starts with grisly, memorable imagery (murders of pregnant women who had the fetuses snatched from their wombs) and what I did see looked like a pretty great crime story. It's going on my list of "screeners I want", that's for sure.

The Fantasia Daily, 2012.16 (3 August 2012): Isn't Anybody Alive, Carré Blanc, Lobos de Arga, New Kids Turbo, etc.

Horrible photography? Sure! Both come from the Game of Werewolves screening.



First up - "The Local's Bite" director Scott Upshur, who made a nifty litte short based on a unique setting - the lifts that locals use to get up and down the mountain in Telluride, CO. Pretty well shot (although the compression here didn't do its dark scenes many favors), although I think it kind of has one big problem - it SPOILERS! works on the basis of a potential victim turning the tables on her attacker, but blows right past misdirection to having that character act in a way that's blatantly contrary to her eventual actions. !SRELIOPS Nice try.

There were a couple other shots. I didn't arrive at Carré Blanc in time to get shots of the guys made "Elko", which is just as well. I didn't really like it; it struck me as all darkness with no real point to it - or, at least, being too preoccupied with the darkness to really build on its idea of how the victim is rediscovering joy in life as the bad fate she signed up for approaches. A little too much for me, perhaps, especially as it left practically zero time to unwind between Isn't Anybody Alive? and Carré Blanc.

Dead Bite, meanwhile, was preceded by "Petit Mort", and let me tell you, if you've never seen a mime going through the motions of buying a porno magazine and reading it, man, you should hunt Louise Archambault's short down.



Gotta love Juan Martinez Moreno here; he made a good movie in a genre he loves, and his enthusiasm was very clear, especially when talking to Mitch about the Spanish werewolf movies that were his movie's forefathers. I also love that he hates his film's English-language title (hopefully whoever picks it up will change it or just stick with the Spanish "Lobos de Arga"), and that while he loves dogs, working with the one who played Vito in this movie was a pain in the neck. Lots of stories about how if the dog did his thing in a shot, the actors better hope they got it right, and how after about a week or shooting, the dog learned the word "Action!" and would run away when he heard it, necessitating a new code word to start every day of filming. Apparently the dog was smart about being trouble.

Okay, quick shower and then downtown for brunch, Space Battleship Yamamoto, Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Grabbers, and then maybe Revenge: A Love Story if I don't call it an early night because I don't want to see Excision again.

Ikiterumono wa inainoka (Isn't Anybody Alive?)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)

It is, I suppose, unfair to judge Isn't Anybody Alive? for not being conventional enough; it's meant to be unusual and relatively plot-free. The question is, if you strip the basic building blocks away, what's left? Isn't Anybody Alive? becomes an end-of-the-world movie whose detachment isn't shocking or philosophical or even that interesting.

But it could have been something beautiful and tragic. It does a really spectacular job of building characters worth following in the opening acts, getting a large young cast to give everybody distinctive personalities and relationships, so that when the first death happens out of nowhere, it's shocking and horrifying. By the end, though, it's become a perfunctory joke that doesn't work. It's just more, with the actors having to work much harder to get the same reaction. Maybe that's the conceptual point, I guess - showing how audiences can go from empathy to disinterest, but it gets tiresome.

And it kind of undermines all the good work done throughout the movie. The cast is, in large part, terrific, there's a crisp look to Yoshiyuki Matsumoto's cinematography, and what director Gakuryu Ishii and writer Shiro Maeda do is frequently strong. The music is unusual and good in all the right ways. It just feels empty, and while maybe that's the point, why do that?

Full review at EFC.

Carré Blanc

* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)

So you've created a dystopic future based on existing brutalist architecture and creative cruelty. Now what? That's a question that one can easily spend a lot of time asking during Carré Blanc before it ultimately offers an answer. It's a good-enough answer, although many viewers may want more.

Sometime in the future, the human race is dwindling, with one of the sad statistics being Philippe's mother (Fejria Deliba), whose suicide sends him to a corporate orphanage of sorts. Though his making it to adulthood is in some ways a near thing, he (Sami Bouajila) winds up working for the company that raised him. In many ways, he's become just as heartless as the rest of the world around him, in marked contrast to his wife Marie (Julie Gayet), who is just about ready to leave him.

There are hints of a world interesting both for being satiric and speculative scattered throughout the movie, mostly in the form of radio snippets that suggest the world population is dropping precipitously and that croquet is the most popular form of entertainment. Humanity seems to be consuming itself, quite literally, faster than it can reproduce, with an increasing callousness and dehumanization of what should be one-to-one interactions.

Full review at EFC.

Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)

First, forget that stupid title. Juan Martínez Moreno hates it, there's no game involved, etc. Instead, focus on what a really great horror-comedy this is - so good that including the "comedy" after the hyphen really seems to discount how well Moreno recaptures the feel of classic monster movies, with tons of atmosphere, horrible curses, and practical effects that may not always be seamless, but certainly get the point across.

It is funny - it's got an early nominee for "best supporting canine" and friendly banter that gives way to twisted comedy. It does a charmingly good job of playing against genre tropes and cultural prejudices. And it's particularly cool that the heroes, for all their goofiness, want to do the right thing as opposed to just go through the motions. Add that to some pretty darn good action, and you've got yourself a heck of a werewolf movie.

Full review at EFC.

New Kids Turbo

* * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 Action!, DCP)

New Kids Turbo is a movie about not just one boorish asshole, but five, and I won't lie - those are sort of hard for me to get behind as protagonists. Part of it's snobbery - I have met too many people who wouldn't fully get the joke and see something appealing about these characters - but isn't snobbery sort of what their creators are appealing to, that the audience will laugh at these morons?

And, don't get me wrong, I surely did laugh on occasion - throw 200 jokes out there in an 84-minute movie, and some are going to work - and it's hard not to admire the sheer energy these comedians and filmmakers bring to the table. But there's laziness, too - the film's supporters seem to talk a good game about this movie's social commentary, but it's all broad swipes at low-hanging fruit that only seems clever in comparison to idiots calling people they don't like "homo".

Full review at EFC.

Gancore Gud (Dead Bite)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)

There's actually a pretty fun movie inside Dead Bite doing all it can to get out, and it could be just as happily trashy as the one we got. After all, it's got a charismatic-enough lead in Thai rapper JoeyBoy, a potentially fun ensemble in his group Gancore Club, and all the other ingredients for B-movie fun: Pretty/busty girls, gleefully bloody mayhem, and fun monsters. The beautiful Thailand scenery doesn't hurt at all.

But, wow, does it get away from him. There's bloodbaths that happen too fast to process broken up by long stretches of people sitting in the woods, doing not very much, not even bickering in a way that increases tension. There's savages and sea-zombies and mermaids and more and they don't really fit together. New characters and plotlines are introduced midway through because they killed too many off early, and there's a framing sequence that is returned to an awful lot for one final gag.

Dead Bite is a fun midnight movie, no question. It's probably just a little too much writer/director/producer/star JoeyBoy pouring the disorganized images of "stuff that would make a cool movie" onto film in raw form.

Full review at EFC.