Tag: fantasia

Really, the festival is pretty much what I’m thinking about right now. The links here go to IMDB, rather than the Fantasia site (like the ones in the last post).

Saturday

Three Mighty Men: bad Turkish 70s flicks are really hot on the festival circuit right now, and I kinda wish I was kidding, but I kinda don’t because if I was kidding I wouldn’t have the chance to see this one. This is also the only movie I’ll see at this year’s festival with a masked wrestler, unless someone else holds a surprise for me.

All-Out Nine: Field of Nightmares (no IMDB page): come to think of it, I’m probably stoked about this because I liked Cutie Honey so much; I’m hoping we get another mega-enthused translation of manga to film. And, OK, as a sports fan I can’t but be intrigued by the subject it parodies. Japanese Bad News Bears, right?

Hell: I’m really curious to see if Thai film’s changed much in two years. As devoted readers will recall, Saving Private Tootsie and The Bodyguard did not me overwhelm in 2004. Also, grand guignol is fun.

Shinobi: big gloss. Action. The trailer is pretty awesome. Tak Sakaguchi, who rocked my world in Versus and who did action direction in Death Trance which I really gotta see, is in it. So yes.

Arthouse Ultraman (no IMDB): Double Miike! Doing television! Ultraman! Sure!

Sunday

Vampire Cop Ricky (no IMDB): I’m pretty much all about the Korean SFX action slash sex farce horror flicks, sure.

Samurai Commando 1549: more widescreen Japanese action! I’m either gonna be really burnt out on the stuff or very happy by the end of the weekend. This doesn’t have a pedigree that turns me on, but I like the premise, so why not?

Train Man: OK, this just seems really sweet and cool and touching. And maybe a true story! So it’ll be a good breather from the action and the horror and so on.

Junk: Fantasia’s doing a lot of Russian films this year — it’s a focus — and that seems like a good thing to take advantage of. The story is not wacky or weird or anything, which makes this a good chance to see how a different culture works with the basic tropes of suspense.

It looks like this:

Three Mighty Men
All-Out Nine: Field of Nightmares
Hell
Shinobi
Arthouse Ultraman
Vampire Cop Ricky
Samurai Commando 1549
Train Man
Junk
Wilderness
Red Shoes
Isolation
Synesthesia
The Gravedancers
The Kovak Box
Storm
Pusher 3
The Echo
Subject Two
The Descendant
Reincarnation
DJ XL5 Zappin’ Party Cavalcade
Ressonances
Evil Aliens
The Order of One
Five Deadly Venoms
Aziris Nuna
The Great Yokai War
Executive Koala
Arcanum
My Dead Girlfriend
Kebab Connection

Commentary perhaps later.

It looks like this:
Three Mighty Men
All-Out Nine: Field of Nightmares
Hell
Shinobi
Arthouse Ultraman
Vampire Cop Ricky
Samurai Commando 1549
Train Man
Junk
Wilderness
Red Shoes
Isolation
Synesthesia
The Gravedancers
The Kovak Box
Storm
Pusher 3
The Echo
Subject Two
The Descendant
Reincarnation
DJ XL5 Zappin’ Party Cavalcade
Ressonances
Evil Aliens
The Order of One
Five Deadly Venoms
Aziris Nuna
The Great Yokai War
Executive Koala
Arcanum
My Dead Girlfriend
Kebab Connection

The Fantasia schedule is up!

Take one on a possible Fantasia schedule. Times are rough and not completely accurate. The 5:20 Sunday slot is probably a rest slot, since my tolerance for goofy doesn’t necessarily extend to bad Turkish movies… although damn. Tempting. Note that I’m also assuming a Thursday arrival, since I’m thinking about that, but the two Thursday movies aren’t essential.

7/21

7:30 El Lobo
9:30 Ghost House

7/22

5:00 All Babes Want To Kill Me
7:30 Spider Forest
9:45 Some
11:45 Three… Extremes

7/23

12:30 Ghost Talker’s Daydream
2:45 Ultraman: The Next
5:15 Spin Kick
7:20 Night of the Living Dorks
9:20 Survive Style 5+
11:40 Shadow: Dead Riot

7/24

12:00 White Dragon
3:00 Heroes of the East
5:20 G.O.R.A.
8:00 One Nite in Mongkok

Blah.

To my infinite annoyance (and resigned acceptance), I find that I am unable to attend FanTasia this year in the manner I had hoped. We have a product launch the second week of the festival, and I can neither be out the week before that launch or the week after.

I may be able to make a long weekend of it again. I’m a touch dejected just now. We’ll see what the schedule looks like.

I am fantastically excited: Fangoria has the first peek at the FanTasia film festival lineup. As I’d hoped, Night Watch and Kitamura’s Godzilla: Final Wars will be there. Night Watch is the Russian conspiracy modern fantasy epic which has a ton of buzz, and Kitamura is of course the director of the insanely spirited Versus. Those were the movies I’d really wanted to see.

Lots of other cool stuff, too. Lion’s Gate has a small slew of J-horror sequels, which I’ll see if it’s convenient, and the horror anthology film Three… Extremes by Miike, Fruit Chan, and Chan-wook Park. I’ll see that for shock value. Lots of zombie movies. Hm, and Paul Spurrier’s “P” — made in Thailand by a British director, looks interesting, gives me some creepy vibes. I love fusion and I want to see that one badly.

Speaking of creepy, Creep looks intriguing as well. I don’t know a lot about it, but I like subway movies and I like Franka Potente. There’s a capsule review of it on Twitch, from whence I also got the Fangoria link.

I love this festival so much.

Here’s the plan:

FanTasia 2005 takes place from July 7th to July 24th of this year. I’m going for either one or two weeks of that period; haven’t decided which yet, won’t decide until the schedule is out, which will be sometime in June. I’ll be renting a furnished one-bedroom near the venues, and anyone who I know and don’t mind sharing space with is welcome to come crash there for any or all of my visit. I figure it’s my God-given duty to inflict weird and fantastic movies on people, see.

My coverage of last year’s FanTasia begins here. If you’re interested but not sure if you’re invited or not, drop me a line. I’ll post more when the schedule is out, including recommendations.

The Boston Film Festival has a terrible interface. You select which movie you want info on from a pulldown menu, which is bad; the movie pages don’t have information on which dates the movies are playing, which is lame; and the pages for each individual date don’t have links to the movie description pages. Buh. The film list helps a little but not enough.

Anyhow, it all starts tonight, and I would be remiss if I did not point out a few movies.