Fantasia 2011 Feedback: Final feedback

Today is Wednesday August 17^th and the Fantasia Film Festival came to a close an Sunday August 7^th, a full 10 days ago, so why still write about it? The answer is simple. Despite producing 10 full length reviews for films Between the Seats attended, there remain some gems that deserve mention. Consider the following as a ‘Capsule reviews’ column, but reserved for some final thoughts on films which received either world, Canadian, or Québec  premiers at Fantasia this past summer. 

Definitive Bond Marathon: Live and Let Die (1973)

(Directed by Guy Hamilton)

Following numerous titanic entanglements with SPECTRE and its chief operator, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, a long hidden enemy slowly emerged from the shadows: illegal drug exports. MI6 agents and contacts in New Orleans, at the United Nations in New York and on the small, staunchly independent Caribbean island of San Monique were killed in rapid succession, and company intelligence indicated that the acts were connected. 007 (Roger Moore) began his investigation in New York with CIA agent Felix Leiter (David Hedison) by attempting to find out more about Dr. Kananga (Yaphet Kotto), Prime Minister of San Monique and his Harlem based associate, Mr. Big.

During Bond’s first close encounter with Big in Harlem, he made the acquaintance of the Kananga’s personal tarot card reader, the magnificent if somewhat cold Solitaire (Jayne Seymour).  Bond thankfully escaped capture, but it a trip to San Monique was required in order to better comprehend what kept the Kananga-Big connection strong and why MI6 agents who had gotten too close for comfort had been liquidated. It was there, while trying to break Solitaire free from Kananga’s clutches, that he discovered what really drove the larger than life man’s interesting in U.S. gangster: heroine, and a plan to completely take over the market all over the United States.

Festival des films du monde 2011 and more

With one major Montréal film festival over (Fantasia), it's time to ready ourselves for another. This time, it's an event that promises more 'normal' films, the Festival des films du monde de Montréal, which runs from Thursday August 18th to Sunday August 28th 2011.

Fantasia 2011 Feedback: Marianne

Marianne (2011, Filip Tegstedt)

Some of the best horror stories are those which succeed in exploring the inner complexities of mankind.  They not only serve the more immediate purpose of entertaining the viewer, but equally help explore and possibly remind ourselves of what we are. In other words, they serve as a mirror into ourselves and can simplify, to a degree, our fears and anxieties. First time writer-director Swedish director Filip Tegstedt takes his own stab at the ghost story genre with his debut Marianne, which premiered at the Fantasia film festival earlier this summer. Focussing on serious family drama and the supernatural, it was one the event’s most eagerly anticipated films, largely in part because of the masterful poster artwork (see above) which graced the hall where the festival box office was located at Concordia university.

Fantasia 2011 Feedback: The Haunters

The Haunters (2011, Kim Min-suk)

After the onslaught of huge, mass-audience friendly superhero films cluttering the silver screen for over a decade, audiences have recently witnessed the arrival of a few off-kilter movies which tackled the issue of super heroism in a different light. Mathew Vaughn’s Kick-Ass and James Gunn’s Super were both grittier, meaner and never shied away from showing some things that would happen if masked avengers got into constant brawls with gangsters: people lose a lot of blood and possibly die. Now comes a Korean film from writer-director Kim Min-suk, who also helped pen The Good, the Bad, the Weird (check out the Shootout at High Noon marathon!), whose directorial debut, The Haunters, ups the ante by adding actual super powers to the mix of violence and destruction.

Definitive Bond Marathon: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

(Directed by Guy Hamilton)

Bond (Sean Connery) returns after some time off from government duty which, while hardly relaxing, was nonetheless ‘most satisfying.’ He and M (Bernard Lee) are invited to discuss with the representative of a significant British diamond mining company operating in South Africa, a Commonwealth country. It appears that the precious jewels are being smuggled by larger portions than ever before, and 007 is tasked with investigating the how and the why. His investigation leads him to Amsterdam and a well known smuggler, Peter Franks, whom he kills and impersonates, as well Franks’ American accomplice, the street wise and sexy Tiffany Case (Jill St. John).

The mysterious diamond trail takes them to one of the most popular and bloated cities in the United States: Las Vegas, As the clues begin to fall into place, 007 discover that rather facing a new foe, the perpetrator behind the smuggling is in fact the nightmarishly familiar figure of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (James Gray), who is using the most state of the art technology by harnessing the potential of the diamonds into a laser satellite powerful enough to destroy the world...

Capsule reviews: Rise of the Apes, Cowboys and Aliens, Capt. America

While Fantasia 2011 has taken up much of the movie watching free time I’ve had over the past 3 weeks, Between the Seats succeeded, against what we like to consider impossible odds, to squeeze some summer movie blockbusters. Here are some brief thoughts on said films.

Fantasia 2011 Feedback: The Whisperer in Darkness

The Whisperer In Darkness (2011, Sean Branney)

Stories of otherworldly creatures with seemingly god-like powers that came to Earth were a speciality of famed science-fiction author H.P. Lovecraft. Few films, successful ones at the very least, have been translated to the silver screen. Unbeknownst to me was the existence of a H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society who adapted the author’s work into a screenplay and subsequently developed a short film in 2005 titled The Call of the Cthulhu, the Cthuhlu being one of the more popular of Lovecraft’s strange creations. Cast and crew members of the aforementioned picture, like actor Matt Foyer and writer-director Sean Branney joined creative forces several years later in preparation of another Lovecraft-inspired film, this time a feature length one, called The Whisperer in Darkness, which played at Fantasia last week.

Fantasia 2011 Feedback: El Sol

 

El Sol (2010, Ayar Blasco)
*Warning: The following review contains foul language.

Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, those are the names of but some of the studios which create the world’s most well known and beloved feature-length animation pictures. Each individual studio releases one or possibly multiple films per year, to the delight of not only families who enjoy each subsequent zany, heartfelt adventure. The world of animated films however is arguably the trickiest in which one can find interesting, non-mainstream fare. The sheer dominance of the studios mentioned above goes a long way in explaining exactly why many animated films not emanating from huge studios go entirely unnoticed with very few exceptions (one thinks of last year’s Secret of the Kells). Festivals can be a prime venue to discover new, unknown talents in the genre. Such was the case last week with a screening of an incredibly quirky, audacious and unabashedly vulgar little movie called El Sol (The Sun), from Argentinean director Ayar Blasco.

Blog update

Hello readers!

First and foremost, I want to take a couple minutes to apologize for the weird delay in updates that occurred from about Thursday July 21st to Wednesday July 27th. I had a sneaking suspicion the work load was going to increase over the course of the weekend (case in point: I almost never work Sundays and yet did on the 24th). Not to mention that they were long, long days, so watching movies and certainly writing about them quickly was out of the question.Thanks for still visiting during that stretch though. Much appreciated!