Subscribing to that theory, better late than never here is the Star of Chocolate Jija Yanin and her message to the crowd at Midnight Madness

 

A lot of people like to turn their noses up to some Midnight Madness films. ?Oh, that?s just torture-porn or some chop-socky garbage,? they?ll say. Okay, so maybe Saw wasn?t high-brow stuff like a 6 hour documentary on some war over grazing rights in southern micro-ghanistan? But that doesn?t mean our own brand of TIFF madness doesn?t have endearing cultural value. Heck this years slate was down right educational. Take for example some things I learned this year:

1) Just cuz someone is 46 doesn?t mean they can?t kick your butt with BOTH hands tied behind their back (JCVD).

2) If America invents it, odds are Japan can STILL improve it. That includes Death Metal Music (Detroit Metal City)

3) Be nice to the environment, who knows when or how it will fight back? (The Burrowers)

4) Trees are our friends, be nice to the trees? Very nice to the trees. (Eden Log)

5) Just because you have the ability to create zombies with your fancy brainscanner doesn?t mean you SHOULD create zombies with your fancy brainscanner. (Sexykiller)

6) Odds are pretty good that you neighbors are a lot creepier than you thought. (Acolytes)

7) If you find a dead body? leave it alone! (Deadgirl)

8) Beauty truly is just skin deep, but love the skin you?re in nonetheless. (Martyrs)

9) Just cuz someone is developmentally disabled doesn?t mean they can?t kick your butt. (Chocolate)

10) There?s a lot more to Australia than Yahoo Serious, Steve Irwin, & Fosters! (Not Quite Hollywood)

It's now October and the fest a fading memory but the writers are still cranking out words from the Madness here is an article from online magazine FLYPmedia.com click here for the link.

J.T. Petty (The Burrowers) has his own blog at the fancy new FEARnet site. He's got one post up so far. And cult and horror star Sid Haig (The Devil's Rejects) has a blog there, too.

(typewriter art via Monkey Pharmacy)

Actually, they restore old movies.  But how? I can't even get my VHS copy of 'Drop Dead Fred' to play without kicking the VCR halfway across the room.

Well, Gizmodo is here to tell you! Check out the article while you wait for the Criterion version of Hard Target.

'Ow does it feeeeel...TO BE HUNTEDDD???

 

Sometimes the thrill ride that is Midnight Madness is a little too fastpaced for my slow ponderings. And so I  have posted an article about Detroit Metal City at the Cultural Gutter where things are just a little slower and old coots like me sip fresh-squeezed lemonade while our rockers gently creak.

"We live in a time of film adaptations of comic books massive and tiny, from Iron Man and The Dark Knight to Wanted and the More...

If you're like me and saw upwards of 25 movies last week, the last thing you want to do is watch another one now.  Personally, I'm catching up on some of the TV I missed (Weeds, Mad Men, 30 Rock), and tackling the insurmountable pile of laundry that accumulated during the Festival.

But there is one other diversion of which I'm quite fond - video games.  And for those that aren't big gamers but are horror fans, there are several incredible gaming experiences out there that can be every bit as terrifying as a movie.

For me, these games are spine-tingling because they are interactive and also because their story unravells over 8-10 hours rather than 2.  They put you in the protagonist's shoes for quite a while as they run from (or more appropriately, blow the heads off) voracious packs of zombies or bloodthirsty aliens, so it personalizes the experience quite a bit. With the advent of new technology like the PS3, Xbox 360, and the Wii, developers have managed to make these games even more immersive than in the past, though there is a handful of older games that are also good for a fright.  I'll run down a few of my favourites:

Silent Hill 4: The Room (PS2)

Unlike the movies, all of the Silent Hill games have terrified me in one way or the other.  The early entries in the series featured a lone protagonist wandering through a seemingly-abandoned, mist-filled town looking for his daughter. Silent Hill 4, however, was a departure from this storyline for something much more surreal. The meat of the game takes place inside one tiny apartment in a first-person view.  As you explore the objects in the room and the pictures on the wall, dark fog envelops you and takes you into the game itself, slowly unravelling the narrative.  This is a fantastic device that really makes you feel the claustrophobia and anxiety of the situation, and is a must-try. 

Fatal Frame (PS2)

Two Japanese girls, armed only with a camera, fight off ghoulish creatures in a forest.  Using the camera as a device is really clever.  In this case, the camera's function is to exorcise the ghosts and trap them inside the camera itself. These games are every bit as scary as some of our favourite Japanese horror selections at Midnight Madness, and just as well-written, too. The imagery in some of the scenes is simply chilling. 

Resident Evil 4 (Wii)

The very fact that you have to swing your actual arm around to fight zombies in this terrifyingly surreal version of a small Eastern European village is pretty crazy. This game also features one of the most unbelievably frightening scenes I have ever experienced in a game.  You are trapped in a 2-storey cabin, armed with a shotgun and charged with protecting a young girl who is hiding in a cabinet. The scene gets eerily quiet right before zombies begin to attack every door and window of the cabin like it's a Romero flick, even going so far as pushing ladders up against the wall to climb up to the second floor.  The sequence is exhilarating as you run upstairs and downstairs, pushing furniture against the doors to stave off the onslaught, and pushing the ladders down to stop them from getting in.  Yikes!!  And that chainsaw guy on the box? Yeah, he's not happy.

Siren: Blood Curse (PS3)

This episodic horror was available in 4 chapters that were downloadable  from the Playstation Network, and is about an American news crew sent to Japan to investigate some strange happenings in a village rumored to have been the setting for some human sacrifices.  The visual style is very Ringu-esque and the fact that you had to wait each month to find out what happened next was pretty awesome. Though you can download the entire thing now, I highly recommend experiencing this game in the small doses in which it was delivered. It's pretty cool because it concurrently follows a few different characters in varous episodes, something a movie can't really do because of its limited timeframe.

 

So there you have it, a couple of games to scare the crap out of you while you wait for the movie hangover to subside. But as we know very well, you'll be back for more soon enough.  Oh yes.

 

Jija set the place on fire!

 

MM Scorecard:

Screenings Attended: 42/47

Screenings Missed: 5

Average Hours Slept Per Night: 4.5  

It's a good thing there was a firetruck nearby after the midnight screening of Chocolate because the  crowd was on fire!  Prachya Pinkaew's triumphant return to midnight madness once again brought the crowd to its feet and introduced us all to another Thai whirlwind: Jija Yanin. The icing on the cake was the brutal outtake sequence that showed the audience what our beloved action heroes go through to keep us on the edge of our seats. And an event that started with an aging JCVD regaining past glory concluded with the emergence of a new bone shattering Thai butt kicker.

 

The adrenaline rush from the last madness usually keeps the post fest blues at bay for a few weeks, but after that usually we're on our own for about year. However, this year a few of us dedicated bloggers are gonna keep the blog alive, or at least undead, so hopefully it'll help stave off madness withdrawals for awhile.

 

As promised here is the Intro & Q&A for Chocolate: More...

In doing some "housekeeping" after TIFF, Michael Sicinski has an idea for a new direction at TIFF:

"Now, for some real fun, let's see Madness's Colin Geddes and Wavelengths's Andréa Picard attempt a co-presentation!" 

He also has some thoughts about Pontypool. 

VIDEO: The Sexykiller speaks!

I heard there was some footage of Chocolate star JeeJa Yanin fighting Street Fighter characters. And it's true there is. Here she is on Thai Game Show 2008.





(via icylifememories.blogspot.com)

Full Love

From Jean-Claude Van Damme
Monday, September 8, 2008 at 2:52pmJean-Claude Van Damme sends you his hello from Thailand. He turns his next film "Full Love" as actor and director. Everything goes well, he promised us beautiful scenes of actions, many twists and maybe even... a love story?

Twists! Beautiful actions! A love story! Could we ask for anything more?

Bloody Disgusting reported today that JT Petty, director of The Burrowers is going to be working very soon on a film for Dark Sky Films and Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix entitled, There's No Place Like Home.  I'm glad JT's getting back behind the camera so quickly.  I'll see anything he makes at this point.

Check out the full story here.

It is the day after Midnight Madness and the post fest blues are setting in. Being in the film festival world is a crazy and surreal world. For ten days I get to embrace my obsession and meet many others who share the same obsession in film.

JT Petty's The Burrowers had a great reception at the fest this year, and with S&Man (his notorious MM debut feature) finally getting a DVD release, things continue to look promising for the director.

Currently on his plate, is the adaptation of a Japanese IP which has both been novelized and gotten the manga treatment: Goth.

Goth stories the exploits of two highschool social misfits who use and abuse their detective skills, toying with a handful of serial killers.

I got a line on JT, and asked him a couple questions:

***

Darryl:

Talk to me about Goth!

JT Petty:

Goth felt like a remarkably honest way to do a coming of age / teen romance picture, you cancel out all the maudlin and excessively cute dross that usually clogs those kind of movies with a good dose of sociopaths and serial killers. I've never known a teenage boy who wasn't at least a little bit of a sociopath.

D:

For Goth's cast... Anyone attached or in mind yet?

JT:

Goth is some ways off; the only thing I'd say of casting now is that I'd hope to god I'm able to actually cast teenagers. So hard to really accept a movie about high school where your leads look thirty.

D:

Where did The Burrowers come from?

JT:

Burrowers started from me wanting to make a western; the more I researched the more natural it seemed to make it a horror story, and specifically a monster story. The Old West was such a frightening place, and so alien to the settlers trying to survive there. Once I had a general direction I started coming up with the rules of the monster (always been a big fan of people being buried alive) and worked backwards from there.

D:

What was the major victory that decided S&Man's DVD release?

JT:

S&Man's basically made it into the world through fan demand overriding the legal hassle of getting it releasable. Hopefully it'll be on shelves within six months.

D:

Splinter Cell... You pick the question!

JT:

No idea about the Splinter Cell movie. I was hired to write an adaptation when Peter Berg was on as the director a few years back, but it fell apart when he went on to make The Kingdom instead. Would love to be involved, but who knows.

***

There you have it! Fan support DOES produce results.

It was 1968 all over again at the Isabel Bader theatre on Saturday afternoon during the Mavericks presentation of A Time to Stir, Paul Cronin?s exhaustively researched and thoroughly engaging documentary about a pivotal student protest at New York?s Columbia University in April 1968. Introducing the film, Cronin admitted that the four hour film we were about to see was a work in progress, and that he?d even filmed two more interviews during his time at the Festival that he needed to figure out how to cut in with the rest of the footage. A soft-spoken, self-deprecation Englishman, Cronin said he wasn?t even comfortable calling it a film, and preferred instead to think of it as ?visual history.?

Whatever one might call it, A Time to Stir is, in its current form, an extremely well-edited, well-structured and absorbing document of those fateful days in April 1968 and, perhaps more importantly, of the people involved and their various different perspectives on the issues they were protesting at the time. It?s ironic to note that the protest, which was galvanized around the ?racist policies of the university?, was itself segregated, with the Student Afro American Society (SAS) and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) occupying different ideological ground and therefore different university properties during the protest, which saw the two groups shut down the school for a week while they barricaded various buildings.

The differences of opinion that divided the protestors along racial lines provide the film with its subtle structuring strategy. Members of SAS describe those in the SDS as ?people who alienated people, sadly? who were ?talking politics while we were talking logistics.? Indeed the idealism of the white SDS protestors prevented many of them from seeing the naivete and hypocrisy in their demands for amnesty, while the SAS protestors accepted fully the consequences of their illegal actions; the SDS saw the protest as a revolution (?This is a revolution. I should know ? I?ve lived through 8 of them,? one professor is said to have remarked), while SAS regarded it simply as a demonstration.

Following the film, three of the protestors ? Mark Rudd of the SDS (and of the Weather Underground), Bill Sales of the SAS and Carolyn Eisenberg of the student strike committee ? were on hand for a very articulate and passionate discussion moderated by TIFF programmer Thom Powers. Sales appreciated the manner in which the film puts the SAS contribution, which had been overshadowed by the more media-friendly SDS at the time, back at the centre of the struggle. As did all the speakers, Sales also spoke to lessons that remain to be learned and the manner in which history is sadly repeating itself. ?We didn?t imagine something could be more brutal than Vietnam,? he said. ?Now we know. Nor did we know that two presidential elections could be stolen right in front of the American people.? Sales concluded by stating that it was absolutely essential to continue the struggle, and everyone there that afternoon was in full agreement.

Watching Kim Jee-woon's The Good, The Bad and the Weird at the Elgin, all I could think was, ?I wish I were seeing this with the Midnight Madness audience.? It's interesting to see how the daydwellers live, the Elgin is beatiful and being short I love nearly any theater with stadium seating. I'm not ashamed to admit it's a big part of why I miss Midnight Madness at the Uptown. But still, I missed the enthusiasm.

I guess I should also admit I'm exaggerating just a little how much I thought about the daytime crowd since from the opening shot, I didn't think about anything but the movie.

I like Kim's films (A Tale of Two Sisters, The Foul King and The Quiet Family, remade as The Happiness of the Katakuris by Takashi Miike) and he makes a damn fine Western. The opening tracking shot following Song Kang-ho's (The Host and yay!) back as he walks up a train selling rice cakes and candy rivals the opening tracking shot in JCVD. Not in the complexity of action, but maybe in the beauty and in a different low tech complexity. I think that Kim Jee-woon's ?steady cam? wasn't just a ?human-cam? as he mentioned in the Q&A. It seemed like it might've been hanging from a board a la Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films. Kim Jee-woon mentioned Sam Raimi's Spider-man as an influence, so I can't help wondering. But regardless, the shot's amazing.

The Good, The Bad and the Weird is funny and there are anachronistic elements intended to translate through time, but it's not detached from the characters or the situation. There's no fear of engagement. Kim Jee-woon told us afterwards that he always thought that Manchuria in the 1930s was incredibly postmodern. Miike uses similar postmodern elements in his Western, Sukiyaki Western Django, and they seem to move his film out of time. But I never doubted that The Good, The Bad and the Weird was in a particular time and place. Even the Sergio Leone references aren't intended for abstract appreciation and it didn't really matter that many in the audience might not catch little things like Park Chang-yi's (Lee Byung-hun) suit or hat-shooting.

Look at that suit!

You can line parts of The Good, The Bad and the Weird up against Sergio Leone's Man With No Name trilogy, but it doesn't matter all that much. Kim Jee-woon isn't playing collect them all. There's a lot more to this film than that.

I did really like the musical references, though. Westerns are about landscape, it's true, but they're also about sound, or maybe about silence and when to break it.

Look at him go!

Also, Jung Woo-sung rides better than any actor I've seen. Maybe even better than Mifune Toshiro in The Hidden Fortress.

He also successfully wears a cowboy hat in Manchukuo.

Dead Lau Ching-Wan also successfully wears a cowboy hat.

After The Good, The Bad and the Weird, Sukiyaki Western Django, Tears of the Black Tiger and even Johnnie To's Exiled, the world is clamoring for more Asian Westerns. Or at least I am. They seem like the best ones around right now. Well, except maybe weird Westerns, like J.T. Petty's The Burrowers.

And so it ends with a Bang, not a Whimper, as our fantastic run at this year's TIFF culminated in a packed, boisterous sold-out show on Friday at the AMC. The entire run was exhilarating, exhausting and enormously gratifying for us, as the audiences were extremely receptive, vocal and laughing! Nothing better than makin' people laugh. We couldn't have asked for a better world premiere. If you asked me on the first day of principal photography if I would be eating steak and creme brule at the Rosewater as a guest of Piers Handling & Cameron Bailey as Coopers' enjoyed three sold out screenings at the Varsity and AMC --- I would have said, "only when I dream."   I thank my producers Sean Buckley, Nicholas Tabarrok and John Kozman for letting me dream,  Jason Jones and Mike Beaver for writing such a hilarious script, and my cast and crew, wife and family, for getting me there.

Everyone at TIFF was so incredibly supportive and accommodating (thank you Jesse, Matt and Steve! Thanks Magali! - and of course Piers and Cameron) --- and the festival itself was a fantastic cinematic circus.  I'm sure your TIFF stories are just as kinetic and overwhelming as mine. TIFF, as it turns out, is for everyone - filmgoer and filmmaker alike.

One of the best things about the fest was meeting some of the other incredibly gifted, friendly and cool filmmakers at the various parties, dinners and just-on-the-street-happenstances (thank you Match Club and Kodak Lounge).  Especially my fellow Canadian filmmakers - Neil Burns (Edison & Leo),  Terry Miles & Kristine Cofsky (When Life Was Good), Bruce McDonald (Pontypool), Tim Hamilton (The Catsitter), Ingrid Veninger (Only), Randall Cole (Real Time), Marie-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu (Before Tomorrow) the list goes on and on... (Ed- Gass Donnelly, Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck...)  and getting to meet Patricia Rozema and Kari Skogland were absolute hightlights.

So as one chapter - the first chapter - of Coopers' public life closes, another begins - as we prepare to take the film out to more festivals, movie theatres and home screens in the future.  I hope to make'em laugh as well - but TIFF '08 will always, always hold a special place in my filmmaking career and heart. It's nice to open at home.

Someone at the fest asked me, "what's next?" -- and I have to say, I am on the craziest, most exciting run of my life... 

I'm in Vancouver right now, still trying to recover from TIFF, about to go to camera on my next movie "Merlin" (swords & sorcery!), while the film we shot shortly after Coopers' Camera, "Puck Hogs" (hockey comedy!) is going through editing. "Puck Hogs" will be ready early in the new year. 

I have various projects set up with Sean and Nicholas (can't wait to make another movie with them!) - I really think Sean's Buck Productions has arrived on the filmmaking scene in Canada with a bang - and he's here to stay. His company has some of the most talented people I've met so far in my movie-making travels and Sean himself is  committed to making fresh, exciting films with young, passionate writers and directors. He's truly a filmmaker's producer (and a director himself). Nicholas's Darius Films is kicking into high gear with a slew of amazing new projects (after a whirlwind TIFF this year with Coopers' and Justin Simm's stirring "Down To The Dirt").  In a very short period, Nicholas has become this country's producing mover-and-shaker (Variety magazine said so!).  I am lucky to be able to call them not only producers, but good friends.

And finally, I have several other feature films in the hopper including a tasty romantic comedy called "Textuality" written by Liam Card and produced by Marc Rigaux and Michael Baker that we hope to get going incredibly soon (Liam's script is top-notch!!), a multi-director, single-story cinematic treat called "Alters" with visionary co-directors Charles Officer, Anita Doron, Randall Thorne and Aden Bahadori, a horror/thriller called "Sleeptalkers" with Vancouver producer Tom O'Brien and a new movie with producers Rob Wilson and Patrick Cameron of 235 FILMS (my music video house), so I hope to see you at the theatre or TV screen soon! And perhaps, if the stars align once again, one of them might be invited back to TIFF.

As long as they let me, I will keep making movies. It's been a privilege making this one for you.

Shoot Good Film,

WPS

Here is day five footage of Acolytes at Midnight Madness plus a video interview conducted myself with Jon Hewitt at the Big Slice pizzeria on Yonge street shorty after his film premiered.


                

Canadian Film is unrestrained and full of promise.  This year I was exposed to a deep resevoir of of rich and fantastic home grown cinema.  Canada's stock on the world stage has increased exponentially.  We've have risen above and now we're in flight for the next level of excellence.  The skys the limit but after this festival anything is possible. An explosion of great Canadian film hit screens throughout the Toronto International Film Festival with a beam of awesome creativity and consciousness. Paul Gross who's film  

Ah, day 10 of the Festival. That day where you fill every possible second of your day by rushing movies you wouldn't consider seeing otherwise.

Case in point: I'm typing this from the cheap seats at the AMC where I am about to watch Sunshine Barry and the Disco Worms. The fact that I'm here without a four-year-old in tow (like everyone else apparently) is a testament to...Well, I'm not really sure what it says about me at this point, except perhaps that it's indicative of a desire to see, on film, the disco-dancing earthworms that I've been hallucinating due to lack of sleep.

Yes folks, it's been an exhausting festival. I'm nowhere close to my fellow blogger Sanjay's record of 50-something movies this week, but I think it may be time to let you in on a secret: Sanjay is a cyborg. I've spent hours in rush lines for Synecdoche, New York and Slumdog Millionaire, I jumped out of my seat and popped for Randy ?The Ram? in The Wrestler, I admittedly slept through a good bit of Plastic City, and most importantly, I rode the Red Bull like it was the Calgary Stampede and attended almost every Midnight Madness screening on offer ? throwing beachballs, corralling zombies and the Japanese media, and being completely and utterly disturbed by Martyrs.

Does this sound like a cry for help from a desperate film junkie yet? Well maybe it is but for most of us, Monday means that we go back to work or school, leaving behind this week of pure escapsim for the real world. To everyone involved with the Festival, from the programmers to the filmmakers to the wonderful staff to the horde of my fellow volunteers, I thank you, and I'll see you all next year.

Anyone in attendance at last night's screening of Sexykiller was privy to, in my opinon, the most unbelievably fun movie (with the possible exception of last Friday's Detroit Metal City) of this year's Midnight Madness programme. In true Midnight Madness fashion, the beach balls were busted out and there was no shortage of zombies on hand to liven up the red carpet!

Sexykiller was truly an overture of love from director Miguel Marti to his favourite horror films. Macarena Gomez's Barbara rips through an unsuspecting campus while extolling her love for The Silence of The Lambs, Evil Dead, Friday the 13^th, and several others.

In this way (and really, in only this way), Sexykiller reminded me a lot of Martyrs, which also contained references ? albeit subtle ones ? to many other classic horror films. Martyrs' last scenes were quite reminiscent of both Hellraiser and Rosemary's Baby. Visually, it would be difficult not to think of Saw during some of the 'dungeon' sequences as well. Similarly, the chase sequences during the first half of the film were somewhat evocative of Japanese horror films like The Grudge or Ringu.

Last night was nothing less than a celebration of the genre and, for me, was one of the highlights of this year's festival. Don't miss the second screening of Sexykiller at 1:30pm today at the Varsity!