Here is a treat of treats for those who happen to be within driving distance of Toronto. After bringing the house down in the best possible way at the 2006 edition of Toronto After Dark festival (something the film did at pretty much every festival it played), the University of Toronto’s Student Union (CINSSU) is bringing back Katsuhito Ishii’s Funky Forest: The First Contact to the big screen and a public audience. This film is a group experience, a communal bonding ritual of insanity, a cinematic mix-tape, and a really, really fun trip. And it is playing on 35mm at the Innis Town Hall theatre in Toronto for Free this Friday, September 26th at 7pm. Bring a lot of friends, the uninitiated preferably, and blow their minds.
(And while we are talking local fun; The Bloor Cinema has a Paul Verhoeven/Ed Neumeier double bill tonight with Robocop and Starship Troopers 35mm prints. Nice)
I have been reminded this week that not all of our readers have the access to import DVDs or enjoy the benefits of all-region players. Nor may they have friends like Todd who program stellar international programs into festivals like FantAsia, FantasticFest or Toronto After Dark where you can see such films. So, I have to remember that not everyone has seen films like Kiyoshi Kurasawa’s Retribution yet and any R1 release should be noted and praised. That is why I am a couple days behind on this, I would normally ignore such an announcement, but this news is for the benefit to those who do not have the access…
A few days ago Lionsgate Home Entertainment announced Retribution (Sakebi) will presented in anamorphic widescreen, with a Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround track with English and Spanish subtitles. Extras will include a Making of Retribution featurette, an interview with Director Kiyoshi Kurasawa, and an alternate ending. Available on April 15th you can get your hands on this dandy of a ghost story, a film we like quite a lot around here.
Perhaps in this day and age of blog and forum discussion, the word Auteur is thrown around a little too lightly. Nevertheless, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s work of the 1990s and early 2000s has lifted the prolific filmmaker into auteur territory by the benchmark that you can simply tell you are watching one of his films by viewing only a few frames. It is fair to consider his latest work, the J-Horror police procedural whodunit Retribution, both a primer for and a culmination of his work.
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All you budding or established genre filmmakers out there pay heed to our words. There is only one more week left to submit your film for the 2nd Annual Toronto After Dark Film Festival coming up in October. Twitch will again resume its role as an online sponsor of the festival and we will have advance previews of the final selection as the festival draws near.
Toronto After Dark Film Festival : Final Call for Horror and Fantasy Entries. A quick reminder: the FINAL deadline for horror, sci-fi, fantasy, action and cult filmmakers to submit their entries to the 2007 Toronto After Dark Film Festival is this coming Friday, June 22. This is only the second annual edition of the fest, but Toronto After Dark has already established itself as one of North America’s leading showcases of international genre cinema. Over 4,000 cinemaniacs came out for last year’s 5-day event. This year the showcase expands to 50 new films, both shorts and features, playing over 7 nights.
If you want to be considered for this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival, which runs in Toronto, Canada, October 19-25, 2007, be sure to complete your submission form online at the official website by the final deadline of June 22 (screeners will then be accepted as long as they arrive by June 29). Full details, including the online submission form are available at the official festival website here
We all love movies and film. We don’t write here because someone is twisting our arm and no one is holding a gun to your head making you read our site. We’re all here because we love movies and film. But I believe there is something greater than just watching a movie or film. A great movie is only made greater by the experience of watching that movie. Even a bad movie can be redeemed by the experience you have watching it. There is the build-up leading up to the viewing. There is the type of audience you watch the movie with. Anything that is done by the presenters can also enhance the screening. Even the venue you watch it in can play a part. These things and among others only make the movie going experience so much better. So, to celebrate the experience of film watching I have compiled my list of five great experiences.
And then afterwards, if you feel so inclined, share with us your great film watching experiences.
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The Toronto After Dark Film Festival, of which we are a media sponsor, is reminding everyone that the early-bird submission deadline has passed but that only means that the keeners have already put their names in the hat. If you’re still slaving away to get that last bit of score done, that final cut in editing to print, you’ve still got time. The official deadline for submissions is May 24th. So get cracking filmmakers. Find the requirements for submissions here.
This year, the 2nd Annual Toronto After Dark Film Festival expands to seven nights, and runs October 19-25, 2007. We have also more than doubled the number of awards, to five categories including Audience Choice Awards for both shorts and features, plus will be giving out $1,000 in cash prizes. Toronto After Dark now has more chances than ever for independent genre filmmakers get their films seen by large and enthusiastic film crowds made up of devoted genre film fans, press and industry, plus have their talent recognized with awards.
Like your old man taking you to the bar when you’re of legal age, or paying the local villiage prostitute to welcome you into manhood, everyone should have a Rite of Passage that they wish to bestow upon the younger generation. When you’re older, you’ve reached a certain maturity level, and you have exemplified a tolerance for things outside of the box, then you are ready to explore the world around and grow furthur.
I have been in a fortunate position for the past 15 years mentoring teens through many student ministry groups. Apart from walking with them and their decisions about faith this also puts me in a priviliaged position where I can also influence them and their film watching habits. I’ve had 15 years full of young impressionable minds ready and begging to be broken free from the mold of the Hollow-wood demographic, or so I just assume they are begging. I tell them they are begging to be free and they pretty much just say yes. I wait for the opportunities. I wait for someone to show me a thirst for something more than the norm. I wait for someone to show me a maturity to handle sensitive themes, issues or content. And when the time is right I will break out these beauties in hopes that they will open up a whole new world of cinematic wonder for these kids. I hope to show them that there is life beyond the Hollow-wood deadlands and that film can shock, amaze, entertain but can also provoke thought and discussion.
As it stands these five films are my Rites of Passage. Should you be deemed worthy of them new worlds of cinema will open up to you. You will be challenged and entertained. And you will also become a man [I’m sure you would become a woman too but since a major faux pas of student ministry is having girls in your house when you are a male leader these Rites of Passage can only be bestowed upon the young men of our group].
Thus and therefore I present to you, my Rites of Passage.
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Pardon me if I feel a little burst of parental pride over this ... Dutch slasher film SL8N8 AKA Slaughter Night received its North American premiere - and second public screening anywhere - at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, a festival I programmed, and while I’d heard rumblings that some buyers were sniffing around it in the aftermath of the festival I’d heard nothing definite until just now.
Tartan Films have bought North American rights to the picture and will be releasing it on DVD April 10th. Nice.
SL8N8 trailer (downloadable MPG)
Mack’s Review
Setting out to review Funky Forest: The First Contact (AKA Nice No Mori, AKA Naisu No Mori) in any sort of detail is setting yourself an impossible task. How to describe the indescribable? How to summarize and categorize a film that so thoroughly rejects every rule of conventional narrative? It isn’t that this is a film that resists thought, it’s that it is a film that transcends it utterly. It aims for something completely and totally other and succeeds absolutely. This is film as pure experience, pure joy, childlike wonder laced with just a trace of the disturbing other that most of us are just too damn jaded to recognize in the world around us any more.
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One of the chief pleasures of watching genre films is to encounter the entry into a particular genre which upholds the rules and yet still manages to find transcendence. The success of folks like Quentin Tarantino, John Frankenheimer, Joss Whedon and Johnnie To is based, at least in part, due to people responding to this on an unconscious level. Call it the ‘Whoa! I haven’t seen that before!’ effect.
Continue Reading "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon – Review"...
Thinking about trying to write a synopsis of Mad Cowgirl makes your head hurt just a bit. It is a messy fusion of revenge thriller, exploitation gore-fest, kung-fu nostalgia love-in and a document to the anxiety born out of our modern culture of fear. Even more than that, what is perhaps most striking and unusual is that the film is also a straight up drama in the middle of ten too many tangential meanderings. That the drama works so much better than the experimental brouhaha of the film (which includes amoungst other things a bovine overture and extended scene of female masturbation to a religious infomercial) it is bound to leave more than one devourer of underground film scratching their head. Mad Cowgirl is a film that is slightly punishing to watch in an insipid sort of way for much of its run time; most especially when the filmmakers try to turn up the heat. Against all odds, it nonetheless earns more than a bit of admiration upon reflection. It is one of those few films which is more satisfying to think about afterwards than it is to actually watch.
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Toronto After Dark drew to a close on Tuesday night on a very high note. The return to the real world wasn’t nearly as horrific as TIFF was and I can only attribute it to one thing. Not enough time to down a couple pops between screenings. Adam, Todd and the rest, if you could space the films out a bit more next year so I can cut across to the nearest pubs and down a couple before each screening I might manage a doozy of a festival hangover. What a great five days though. We all made quick friends and acquaintances throughout the weekend and soon had our little pocket of critics in the corner, quickly dissecting each film while chomping on a slice of pizza or drowning in coffee. We’ll meet again next year everyone? Same place?
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark Diary: Day 5 - SL8N8 and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon"...
Well, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival has wrapped up and we’re all greatly looking forward to being able to sleep regular hours again. I got the chance to meet a lot of Twitch readers at this things and I just really wanted to take the chance to say thanks to all of you who came out and supported us in this. The crowds were great both in terms of numbers and enthusiam and it really made the whole thing worthwhile. I mean, you plan something like this out and you think you have something that’ll work, but until the films start screening there’s always that creeping fear that when the curtain rises the seats will be empty ...
The awards have been settled upon and will be announced tomorrow - we need to let the film makers know first - and some post-fest coverage is starting to roll in. With any lucky the roving puppet reporter Faze will have his footage up soon, and for those curious Cannibal Cam has just posted his video footage from the festival.
Cannibal Cam on MySpace
Cannibal Cam at Toronto After Dark (YouTube)
[Funky Forest is currently available for pre-order on English subtitled DVD here.]
A much needed get together with an old friend took place a little too early in the morning on day four of TAD. This is relevant to my coverage of Tokyo Zombie and Funky Forest: First Contact because, even with the requisite amount of much needed sleep watching either of these films is akin to an acid trip. Throw in a little sleep deprivation and you have the makings of a first class cinematic trip.
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[Funky Forest is now available for pre-order on English subtitled DVD here.]
Moving into the week we’ve been given a bit of a reprieve from the daunting task of taking in four films, one after the other. With only two films on the schedule yesterday and today I have more time to recover and reshape my ass to its full glory instead of in the shape of a movie theatre seat. Curse you Toronto After Dark for ruining my tooshie!
Monday was Japan Day at TAD. I only dub it that because both movies were Japanese. There was no real official moniker to the day. It’s just that with the amount of silliness that ensued last night it has carried over a bit to this morning. I had already seen both of these films prior to yesterday’s screenings but the opportunity was too good to pass up and the pay off was well deserved.
The audience was also treated to trailers from The Unseeable and Tekkon Kinkurito from Studio 4°C.
Konichiwa, and read on for afterthoughts on Tokyo Zombie and Funky Forest: The First Contact…
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark Diary: Day 4 - Tokyo Zombie and Funky Forest: The First Contact"...
