The Horrors of Fantasia: Day 5 & 6
Johnny Butane
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Ahhhhh… another beautiful day in Montreal. I really love this city in the summer, the only time I’ve ever been here really. It’s a beautiful city, the weather is just right, and the girls are plentiful.
But I guess I should talk about Fantasia for a bit, eh?
When I left you last, I had promised a review of Diary and Woman Transformation. Well, as you can see, I only made it to one of those. Diary was early in the day, and honestly, Monday it was pretty crappy here weather-wise. Michelle and I spent most of the day chilling at Evil Andy’s pad, made it out for Woman Transformation (review), then retired relatively early. One film at Fantasia and home before 11? That’s almost unheard of!
Yesterday we made up for it, though. The wife and I headed out early to visit Montreal’s China Town in the hunt for prawn crackers (my wife, being the picky girl she is, wanted one particular kind of course), then back to the pad to chill for a while, only for it dawn on me that the first film I wanted to see (Assmonster) was at 5pm and it was now 4:30. Shit!
A quick hop onto the Metro, and we were off. I made it to the film about 30 minutes in and didn’t even stay till the end. Considering the film was a product of Bill Zebub, one of the subjects in J.T. Petty’s S&Man (review), I wasn’t looking forward to much but was told it would be pretty entertaining. Instead it was full of bad acting, bad camera work, and humor that just fell flat over and over again. I really don’t get this trend of making bad, low budget horror just for the sake of selling it to losers at cons (a demographic they were targeting specifically). Though the film was trying to show the trials and tribulations of making a movie with zero money, I just didn’t care how it turned out.
After meeting up with Andy and his lady Hazel as well as Paul and his lady Annouk, we joined the massive lineup of people waiting for Sion Sono’s Exte: Hair Extensions (review), which really blew everyone away. Of all the films the man has done (Suicide Club, Strange Circus, Hazard, Noriko’s Dinner Table, etc.), Exte is likely his most accessible film with a straightforward narrative and almost normal characters. Well, not normal, but normal for a Sion Sono movie …
Sono did a quick Q&A after the film (quick mainly because he doesn’t speak or understand English very well and had to be translated to and for), in which some interesting and not-so-interesting questions were asked. The best of the bunch, though, was when someone asked him how he felt about Japanese movies being taken over by American producers for remakes. The question itself isn’t very thought-provoking, but there was a lot of back and forth between Sono and his translator for a good couple of minutes only for the answer to be “I don’t care”. Brilliant!
Then we were back in the same theater for Chris Gorak’s urban apocalypse flick Right at Your Door (review), a movie that’s been shocking audiences at film festivals for over a year now. As you can see from my review, it’s not really the kind of film that can be categorized very easily. Indeed it’s only horror in a very real-world way, but it’s a movie everyone should experience for themselves, I think.
Gorak got on stage afterwards for a Q&A as well, and though he wasn’t the most talkative of guys, he was able to answer the questions thrown at him pretty quickly. For some reason the same question was asked three times, about how much research he did into the U.S. dealing with such a catastrophe, just in various ways. It was kind of annoying, but he took it in stride. Unfortunately he didn’t join us afterwards for drinks, being whisked away right after the Q&A, cause I would’ve like to pick his brain about it a little bit more.
Then: the drinking. John Fallon (aka Arrow in the Head) met up with us right after the movie, and we headed out for an hour or so to catch up, bullshit about movies, and, of course, talk about girls. I finally got to meet Todd Brown of Twitch Film, too, which was very cool because I love that damn site.
Today we have the first Mexican horror movie made in many years KM 31, the new Miike headfuck Big Bang Love: A Juvenile, and (FINALLY) David Arquette’s The Tripper so look for even more reviews and coverage tomorrow!
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