Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment we’ve all been waiting for… will arrive on the 10th of March in the US of A.
Tomas Alfredson’s “Let The Right One In” has been very much lauded on these pages,
like here…
or here…
or here…
or here…
or here…
or here…
So you can bet we are glad to get a confirmed release date for both the DVD and BluRay.
Thanks go to forumer Majorforce for pointing this out!
Continue Reading "LET THE RIGHT ONE IN up for preorder in the US, on both DVD and BluRay!"...
As one of the films in Magnet Film’s sixshooter series Donkey Punch is all set to debut on our side of the pond in cinemas on January 23rd. Those lucky people over at IGN have scored themselves the unrated trailer for this stylish thriller which you can find after the break. You just gotta lie about your age and all. Quite frankly, and maybe it’s just my computer, I didn’t see anything ‘unrated’ about it. If you’re a pansy then enter your age and cover your eyes, I guess.
After meeting at a nightclub in a Mediterranean resort, seven young adults decide to continue partying aboard a luxury yacht in the middle of the ocean. But when one of them dies in a freak accident the others argue about what to do, leading to a ruthless fight for survival.
Also, I had the chance to sit down with Olly and have a nice little chat when he was here in October at TADFF. I’ll have that interview up before the release date.
Thanks Janeal.
Continue Reading "UNRATED trailer for Olly Blackburn’s ‘Donkey Punch’"...
I should have written this up after I saw this at TADFF. That would have been the proper thing to do but this was just one of those movies that I really wanted to write up but somehow found myself stymied to come up with a review. But with the one week of screenings starting tonight here in Toronto at our beloved Bloor Cinema the time is right to chime in. Love triangles, family betrayal, secrets and lies are all en vogue as Repo! delves into sonic darkness
Repo! takes place in the near future when an epidemic of organ failures devastates the planet and the scientific community gears up for a massive organ harvest. A biotech corporation, Genco, comes up with easy organ payment plans. Need a heart? Why not put that new one on easy monthly installments? How about that spine? Spread that hefty fee over time instead of today. But, these organs are subject to legal default, failure to meet your payments could include repossession at the hands of Genco’s repo men. You thinking missing payments on your car is bad? Hardly.
Continue Reading "Repo! The Genetic Opera: One week event at The Bloor Cinema!"...
The festival is over, the votes tallied and today the 2008 edition of Toronto After Dark announced their awards. Awards were given in four categories: Audience Award For Best Feature, The Toronto After Dark Vision Awards for “outstanding independent filmmaking from emerging talent”, Audience Award For Best Canadian Short and Audience Award For Best International Short:
Audience Award For Best Feature:
Gold: Let The Right One In
Silver: Repo: The Genetic Opera
Bronze: 4bia
The Toronto After Dark Vision Award
Gold: I Sell The Dead
Silver: Home Movie
Bronze: South of Heaven
Audience Choice Award for Best Canadian Short Film
Gold: Treevenge
Silver: The Facts In The Case Of Mr Hollow
Bronze: The Flower
Audience Choice for Best International Short Film
Gold: I Live In The Woods
Silver: Kingz
Bronze: Martians Go Home, The Revenge of Sarah Clockwork
Congratulations to all the winners!
Home Movie is the video document of one family’s descent into darkness by their own hand. It uses a compilation of found home-made footage, a lot of it around holidays, a time meant for family togetherness. In the remote woods, the Poe Family lives a idyllic American family life. But an unsettling evil is growing and it isn’t in the woods. Something is very wrong with ten-year old twins, Jack and Emily Poe. Evil is has a synergy David and Clare Poe make many startling discoveries about this growing evil nature in their children. No one could ever imagine or accept the evil growing inside the Poe household. It is an unbelievable nightmare pitting parents against their own children.
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Somewhere in England in the 19th Century body snatchers Arthur Blake [Dominic Monaghan] and Willie Grimes [Larry Fessenden] have robbed their last grave. Willie has already had his date with destiny with the chopping block and with just a few hours before Arthur follows he recounts his life story to Father Duffy [Ron Pearlman]. As Arthur talks about his early upbringing, developing the skills of the trade he also accounts for some truly bizarre occurrences and we learn that not all corpses are equal. I Sell The Dead presents a unique point of view of a life of crime in 19th century England. It is not very often that you see a grave robbing film that also has zombies, aliens and vampires in it. This horror comedy from director/writer/editor Glenn McQuaid gives us just that.
Continue Reading "TAD2008: I Sell The Dead"...
Dale Coop returns home from the Navy to his brother Roy’s apartment. No sooner has he sat down at his typewriter, preparing to transcribe the letters he sent his brother while abroad, and make a novel of them when there is a knock at the door. Two thugs, dressed in barbershop quartet attire come busting into the room. It is a case of mistaken identity but the two thugs must have something to show for their efforts and mercilessly beat Dale upon repeat visits. See, thing is, Roy and his partner, Mad Dog, have kidnapped the daughter of local crime lord Bobo. All Dale wanted to do was write his novel then relax in the lap of luxury the rest of his life. Unfortunately, he has no idea where his brother, Mad Dog or the girl are and that doesn’t put a smile on the face of his oppressors. And he was told he wanted to see a smile on their faces.
Continue Reading "TAD2008: South of Heaven"...
A bus load of at-risk youth are on a trip with a church outreach group. Led by Pastor Lewis they are taking a trip into the country where they are to be challenged to change their lives and turn from their evil ways. As they drive to their destination on a dark and stormy night they are involved in an accident and are stranded in the middle of nowhere. They happen upon a seemingly abandoned trailer park, except it is not. Led on by their host, the voluptuous Norma, this trailer park’s former inhabitants, hillbillies from hell, will rise from the dead and hunt down our hopeless and hapless teens one by one; as all hopeless and hapless teens should be. Get on the bus, it’s time to go to the country and meet the neighbours over at the Trailer Park of Terror!
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Proving once again that Thailand is leading the charge when it comes to Asian horror cinema, three of Thailand youngest horror directors teamed up with a veteran director and all contributed a short of their own for the anthology 4bia, or Phobia, in case the tricky use of numbers for letters got beyond you. Two of the names should already be familiar to the Twitch family. Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom are the makers of the original and much, much better Shutter as well as last year’s Audience Award Winner, Alone. They were joined by one of their contemporaries, Paween Purijitpanya, who directed Body #19, and, shooting a horror film for the first time, Yongyoot Thongkongtoon. He also happens to be the mentor of the other three directors. I cannot help but think these lines from A New Hope. Indulge me for a second.
Darth Vader-The circle is now complete. When I left you I was but the learner. Now I am the master.
Obi-wan Kenobi-Only a master of evil, Darth.
Why yes. Yes they are!
Continue Reading "TAD2008: 4bia [Phobia]"...
Seven gold collar young adults get on a boat off one of the shores of one of Spain’s coastal party towns for British party goers. The alcohol flows and recreational drugs enter the mix. Soon the lustful longings take over, couples break off from the pack and an evening of sexual indulgence commences. Having all judgment and rationale clouded by intoxication one of the young men, Josh, eager to participate and fit in, is egged on by Bluey to inflict the mythical ‘Donkey Punch’ on his consensual sex partner Lisa. Josh breaks her neck, killing her, and the mood, instantly. What happens after that is the quick degrading of social structure as they guys scheme to get themselves out of this horrible predicament.
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Early in the festival promos were run for the first zombie feature playing on Sunday. In the Kevin Tenney’s Brain Dead trailer it seemed that they were giving away decent kill shots. A lot of them. Then you get that sickly feeling that you’ve seen just about all that the movie has to offer. Or, the trailer was just cleverer than we were giving credit for and the production team couldn’t possibly give away everything! Could they? Well, the audience was hooked and with the promise of filling a theatre with a zombie horde the marketing was in full swing and you could get away with showing pretty much anything. Yep, you could scrape the bottom of the zombie barrel and feast on our brains.
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Three girls, four guys, lots of drugs and a big expensive boat in the Mediterranean Sea. A recipe for holiday disaster? You bet. Perhaps the ultimate warning on unconventional sex-acts, the titular Donkey Punch sets the stage for a battle of the sexes fraught with equal parts sex and violence from both genders. Oliver Blackburn mixes sun drenched cinematography with the dark corners of the human psyche under various forms of strain. This is not the over-the-top torture of Haute Tension or Hostel as the poster, trailer and overall marketing of the film suggest. The film lives by the more selfish (and audience relatable) pressure of how does each one try to get out of an untenable self-inflicted mess intact and free. There are some bloody moments in the picture, and enough sexuality (explicit and implied) to slap an NC-17 rating on in the United States (and make it unreleasable in Japan of all places) but ultimately it is a tale of how to trust people you do not really know in a tough situation.
Continue Reading "Toronto After Dark: DONKEY PUNCH (Short) Review"...
Does the phrase ‘delightful cynicism’ make sense? It is nevertheless appropriate for master animator Bill Plympton‘s latest feature film. An independent filmmaker in the truest sense of the word with the claim to fame that he personally draws his feature films in their entirety, his ever increasing library of short films (with the 1990s and 2000s now peppered with full length features) are instantly recognizable. Idiots and Angels takes a smokey gray palette of dive-bars and car exhaust in an effort to display the raw human experience wordlessly in 78 minutes: Guilt, joy, desire, sex, spirituality, greed, routine, mercy, disappointment, love and alarm clocks without snooze buttons are all thrown up on screen in a singular and compelling fashion.
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It’s almost redundant to write a review of Let the Right One In at this point. You should all know by now that we are unanimously in love with this film. Tonight’s screening at Toronto After Dark marked the third year for this fledgling festival and the house was packed, also marking the first sold out film screening for this festival in its short history. And when you have a film that is so simply marvellous as Tomas Alfredson’s is then it should come as no surprise that the cinemaniacs piled into the Bloor Cinema. I have watched Alfredson’s film numerous times now and it hasn’t gotten old or stale. And this was the first time I got to see it with an audience so I was also feeling out the crowd as the film went along. And the crowd loved it. What a way to kick off the festival!
So how would I review Alfredson’s film? Imagine if you will that you’re sitting down at a table with the director and begins to tell you this beautiful story about a girl he fell in love with when he was twelve. Each moment is so innocent and tender. Then, he reaches across the table and slaps you in the head and says, ‘Vampires!’. He then talks about where he grew up and the long, cold winters. The sound of the snow as it crunched under his boots and the thrill of running through fresh powder. Then, he reaches across the table and slaps you in the head and says, ‘Vampires!’. He bares his soul and he talks about the bullies in school and how they used to tease him and harm him. Each incident bears terrible heartache but he got stronger and stood up to them. Then, he reaches across the table and slaps you in the head and says, ‘Vampires!’. You start to get the idea. Alfredson has done the unthinkable and weaved a tale of childhood romance that is so delicate and intricate then punctuated it with vampire mythology and folklore. Alfredson has made a vampire film the way that Takeshi Kitano made his Yakuza films like Fireworks, Sonatine and Boiling Point. The same way that Kitano created soothing and quiet films then punctuated them with acts of violence is very much the same way I feel Alfredson created his masterpiece. It is soft when it wants to be and it is hard when it has to be.
Believe the hype. This is the best film of the year!
Continue Reading "TAD2008: Let the Right One In"...
Just a reminder to you local folk: the 2008 edition of the Toronto After Dark Festival launches tonight with a 7 pm screening of Let The Right One In - Five star reviews in the local papers! It’s a hit here, too! - and advance ticket sales have already been far stronger than any previous year of the festival. So, if you’re planning on attending - and you really should - then you should act fast.
