fantasia

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 (original) 9:30 Ghost House 7/22 5:00 All Babes Want To Kill Me (original) ...

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 (original) 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. ...

Here’s the plan: FanTasia 2005 (original) 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. ...

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 (original) 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.

I just unloaded a bunch of FanTasia pictures from the camera in preparation for GenCon; my blog is the beneficiary of this wealth. It wasn’t a heavy picture-taking trip for me but I got a few good shots. Please keep in mind that Montreal is much prettier and funkier than one might think from my photography.

That was kind of like finding a string quartet in the middle of a Metallica album. (Yes, I know.) After two days of gleeful carnage, sudden action, and low humor, Robot Stories came along and provided two hours of gently humanistic science fiction. There’s science fiction as the literature of ideas, in which the driving force is the concept; then there’s science fiction that uses the tropes of science fiction to tell stories that couldn’t exist in the world in which we live. Greg Pak’s movie is the latter. The best of the four independent segments is the last, “Clay,” which tells the story of a dying sculptor grappling with the possibility of uploading himself and finding immortality. It’s a common enough science fictional concept, but the segment is not about the implications of uploading — although Pak clearly understands them — it’s about the implications of the human decision to upload or not upload. ...

Tomorrow I begin the trek up to Montreal for FantAsia. I am so much looking forward to this I can’t even begin to explain. Sadly, I won’t make Porco Rosso, but Cutie Honey is an acceptable replacement. To do: Pack (clothing, toiletries) Update iPod, get rid of 9/11 speeches (good but they take up room), add Germany 70s electronica Charge camera battery Detach USB cell phone charger from keyboard, tuck into laptop bag ...

So that’s settled, then; my pal Chris and I are venturing up to the Great White North (in the form of Montreal) the last weekend of this month to partake in movies. My schedule is basically the same one I outlined earlier, plus Saving Private Tootsie (original). I chose Hillside Strangler and Into the Mirror over my alternative choices in the end. I have tickets and I have a hotel reservation. If anyone happens to be in Montreal that weekend, lemme know and we’ll have beer or coffee or something. My free time will be sparse for obvious reasons, but I imagine… maybe I should say “we’ll have popcorn.” ...

Of course, if I went to Fantasia for a weekend — say, July 30th through August 1st — I could still catch about a dozen movies and have a great time. Say… Hillside Strangler for weird American avant garde serial killer cinema (or Heaven’s Seven for the Thai take on Vietnam, it’s a hard choice). One Missed Call (original) cause who doesn’t love Takashi Miike? This looks like his take on Ringu. Deadly Outlaw Rekka (original). Two hours of Miike is good; four hours is superb! Um. Porco Rosso, Miyazaki, yes. Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace (original), for cheap laughs. Executioners From Shaolin (original), the classic Shaw Brothers movie. Enter… Zombie King! (original), cause masked wrestlers and zombies can’t be skipped. Toolbox Murders (original), because it’s the only thing in that time slot and I like to hurt myself. Malice@Doll (original) (or maybe Freak Out (original)) — ooo, wacky CGI anime! Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles (original), classic machinima, and I would love to see this on the big screen. Robot Stories (original) makes a nice contrast to the machinima. Into the Mirror (original) — Korean horror is not always good but so far in my experience it’s been interesting. The Bodyguard, cause I want to see more Thai martial arts action. ...