The helper-monkeys over at Toronto After Dark are busily compiling links to all of the press generated by the 2007 edition of the festival and won’t be updating the official festival website with this bit of news until that update is also ready to go live but word is out that, fresh off of its sweep of the LA Screamfest awards, Thai horror picture Alone has won the Audience Award at Toronto After Dark while taking top prize for the shorts was Danish puppet zombie splatter picture It Came From The West, which is currently being developed as a feature. We’ve been championing both of these pictures for a while in these pages and have to say that both awards are very well deserved.
[Ah, my final submission from Toronto After Dark. Having had to work full time all week, take in two films per night and somehow miraculously pulled off a scheduling coup and gotten Saturday off to catch up on sleep and some writing, my time with TAD2007 comes to end. Kudos to the programming team. Not everything was a hit but then reactions to each film are subjective. I still had a good time this year and our posse of part-time critics continues to grow each year. Given enough time perhaps we’ll take up an entire row soon enough]
Lonely New York Traffic Enforcement Agent Chris finds an invitation to a mysterious Halloween party taking place across town in the warehouse district. Rather than spend the night at home with only his cat, Sir Lancelot, too keep him company he decides to live a little on Halloween night and attend this party. Clad in his homemade cardboard knight’s costume, Chris ends up the unsuspecting guest of honor at the Murder Party. He’s tied up and tortured by a collective of pompous art students intent on turning his death into an art installation.
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Five college friends choose to spend their vacation debauching at the riverside in gold prospecting country. They hear about the local folklore, of the crazy killer who kills one victim for every year he is alive, and how there is some catching up to do for past years. Dismissing the tale as urban myth they find the perfect place to camp out, smoke up and entertain their carnal desires. No sooner do they end up crossing paths with twin brothers Simon and Stanley. One of these brothers has a surly disposition and soon begins to pick off our horny gaggle of hapless victims, including a poodle and a group of weekend warriors. You would think that this was a guaranteed good time at the cinema…
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark 2007: Simon Says review"...
Pim, a young Thai woman, returns to home from Korea after her mother is hospitalized. Soon after her arrival she is plagued by visions of her sister Ploy, a conjoined twin who didn’t survive the surgery to separate the pair, a procedure Pim insisted on. At first there are doubts if her visions are real and perhaps her return to Thailand has brought up old memories and guilt. Those doubts are quickly casted as Ploy becomes more forceful in her appearances, and more violent. It would appear the dead sister is out for bloody revenge and wishes to be reunited with her sister once again.
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark 2007: Alone review"...
[I’ve had to catch up today with a lot of TAD follow up. You’ll forgive me if I steal Todd’s movie description from the TAD site] The sole survivor of the Gray Dog clan, the warrior Wolfhound lives for revenge. Nursed back to strength by a mystical druid after escaping a life of slavery in cruel mountain mines, he has spent years pursuing the villains who murdered his family before his very eyes during childhood. Now a paid mercenary, the fierce fighter is swept up into a battle to stop an evil sorcerer from freeing an ancient god of destruction accompanied only by a blind healer, a young scholar, and a beautiful slave.
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Japanese cult filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto has both a reputation and a resume well past the point of having to prove anything to anyone of his bona fide auteur status. His latest film, Nightmare Detective seems to have attached to it the stigma that this is merely a mainstream genre exercise rather than the director pushing forward. This is probably compounded by the casting of two well known (in Japanese circles) pretty faces in the lead roles (Nana‘s Ryuhei Matsuda as the titular detective, pop-singer Hitomi in the films formally lead role). Variety goes so far as to label Nightmare Detective as little more than a franchise or remake opportunity for Tsukamoto to fund more personal projects. By the 20 minute mark into the film, it becomes quite clear that not only is this assessment incorrect, but also that Tsukamoto is very likely incapable of making that type of straightforward film (even if in fact that were his initial intentions). What is delivered, snugly in the bosom of the directors main motifs, is a film that functions somewhere in between the Bermuda Triangle of Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Pulse, Satoshi Kon‘s Paprika and Michael Haneke‘s Funny Games. If despair, loneliness and graphic suicide are considered the hallmarks of what passes for the mainstream, well then pass me the Kool-Aid. This viewer is ready and willing to follow Tsukamoto on whatever trip he wants to take.
Continue Reading "TAD: NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE (Akumu Tantei) Review"...
“And that is a story that no one can beat,
When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street.”
I have no idea whether writer Nick Damici and director Jim Mickle are fans of Theodore Geisel. Besides sharing the titular street, their surprising little film has the same minimal and overreaching spirit as Dr. Seuss‘ 1937 story and features an ever escalating series of events told a tone in equal parts glee and serious determination. An infection/zombie flick that sits on the distinctly more serious end of the spectrum of things (if the scale for this growing little subgenre ranges from 28 Days Later to Black Sheep). It is distinctly more than the sum of its parts due to an excellent screenplay that emphasizes character and subtext over gore and action. The infected slowly turn into flesh-hungering were-rats, complete with protruding teeth and body hair, but the effect is produced as much with lighting as with make-up and better for it. The balance here combined with jugging only a limited amount of money marks a pretty impressive debut feature effort.
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After a year of college Arbie has lost his high school virtuous sweetheart, the beloved Wendy, to a lesbian activist group. They are leading a protest against the latest American Chicken Bunker being put up in their town. The thing is, this American Chicken Bunker was built on the Tromahawk Tribe Indian burial ground and the angry spirits of the deceased want revenge. Through a number of increasingly violent and bloody deaths it is just possible they may succeed. Only Arbie stands in the chicken zombie horde’s way. Can he save the day, the restaurant and the girl before all is lost?
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark 2007: Poultrygeist Night of the Chicken Dead"...
It doesn’t happen every day at school. One of the students has bitten his teacher in a ferocious and bloody attack. Three young friends, led by Chris (Garret Jones), embark on a road trip for a concert in town. Something’s not right though. The highway is empty when it should be crammed with rush hour traffic. When they arrive they discover a quiet and seemingly empty city center. But it’s not empty. Something is out there. Chris and his friends quickly discover that the city is very full- full of savage zombies out for blood. The three friends then fight off attacks from the zombie hordes and try to return home and rescue any surviving loved ones.
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark 2007: Automaton Transfusion review"...
What’s that? You’re in Toronto but foolishly skipped the shorts programs at Toronto After Dark? Or perhaps you live far, far away and can only dream about attending such good and lovely events ... okay, I’ll stop now. Point is that the shorts programs at this year’s TAD have been exceptionally strong, particularly the horror block, and the lady-friend - who has seen every film screened at the festival thus far - is of the general opinion that animated short Dear Beautiful may well be the best thing she’s seen so far. Well, for those of you seperated from the film by distance or foolishness here’s a fresh chance, TAD shorts programmer Peter Kuplowsky having just dropped a line to tell me he’s found the short online in its entirety. It’d be nice to have a larger version but this is one beautiful, evocative piece of work so head on over, turn the lights down and the volume up.
In the near future, two weeks from now, gas prices have risen to astronomical levels. Gas prices are so high that no one drives their car anymore though promiscuous teenagers will go to car graveyards to get their backseat kicks. Motivated by social consccience and moral conviction mild-mannered school teacher Archie Andrews spends his spare hours creating an alternative fuel powered automobile using a new bio-fuel using Wheatgrass juice. Frustrated with little progress being made nothing seems to work until one day, in a vodka-fuelled scientific rage he accidentally cuts himself and his blood mixes with his bio-fuel. His experimental engine starts to whir. But will it work in his car?
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark 2007: Blood Car review"...
Having wrestled myself from work at the end of Saturday I was finally able to catch up with my screening posse, our own Kurt, Andrew from MoviePatron and the newest addition to our motley crew, John from FilmGrotto, at this year’s edition of the Toronto After Dark Festival. Heavily caffeinated, I hunkered down with my festival comrades and bore witness to my second Dr. Uwe Boll movie in as many weeks, in the same theatre nonetheless, having never thought nor admitted to anyone that I was doing so. In Boll’s movie, In the Name of the King, Jason Stathem is Farmer, a man who tills his land and yearns to live a peaceful life with his wife and son. A violent upraising against King Konreid spills into the countryside and Farmer’s son is killed and his wife taken captive. Rather than join his King’s army and fight the horde full on our hero and his companions embark on their own journey to rescue his wife. Little does Farmer know that his adventure will become something greater than he could ever imagine.
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[Audience of One screens Sunday, October 21st as part of the Toronto After Dark festival.]
Is San Francisco pastor Richard Gazowsky delusional, a compulsive liar or merely staggeringly naive? Frankly, the chances of anyone being able to answer that question are slim to none. What we do know for certain about him is this: in 1994, at the age of forty, Gazowsky saw the very first film of his very sheltered life. It was The Lion King. Shortly thereafter Gazowsky claims that he received word from God that he was called to create the greatest film ever seen, a sci-fi epic titled Gravity based on the biblical life of Joseph. Ten years later Gazowsky is ready to begin production and documentarian Mark Jacobs is there with his camera to witness it all.
Continue Reading "TAD: AUDIENCE OF ONE Review"...
Two excellent pieces of news here revolving around John Bergin’s From Inside, the post apocalyptic animated feature adapted by Bergin from his own graphic novel of the same name. We’ve beent racking this one for a good while now and there’s finally movement on two major fronts.
First, while the feature version of the film has been going through the rendering process - always a long process made longer in this case because Bergin is doing all the work himself on his home computer - the search has been on for a voice actor to replace the temporary track recorded earlier and that voice has been found in Corryn Cummins. The vocal track has now been recorded which means this thing is just about done.
Second, we’re gonna get to see it in October! Well, part of it, anyway. In addition to the feature Bergin has cut a nine minute short version of the film using the original temp voice track. I’ve seen it - it’s sitting on my coffee table now - it’s stunning and it has been included in the short film program at the 2007 edition of Toronto After Dark. So, if you’re local come on out and see it. It’s tasty, in a very depressing sort of way.
The final block of titles for the 2007 edition of the Toronto After Dark festival were announced today and, hark! The box office is now also open for business. Though I’m not as involved this year as I was last the five international titles were my domain and I loves them all. They are my childrens. International titles included in the first announced block were Korean animation Aachi and Ssipak - and I can’t wait to see that killer opening sequence with an audience - and Russian big budget fantasy Wolfhound. My other three selections announced today are Shinya Tsukamoto’s Nightmare Detective, Thai horror flick Alone and Vietnamese martial arts film The Rebel, making its Canadian debut. Also announced are Uwe Boll’s In The Name Of The King, Simon Says with Crispin Glover, and indie horror-comedies Blood Car and Murder Party.
