montreal

Another Fantasia visit wrapped for me and S! I already talked about how nice it was to be back in Montreal; that continued to be awesome. I spent an hour or so after I got back going through and meticulously adding theater tags to my old Letterboxd Fantasia entries, so I can now say that I have spent around 128 hours sitting in Théâtre Hall (the main theater), 108 hours in De Sève (the secondary theater), and 8 hours in Cinéma du Musée (the spillover theater). All in all this is a significant portion of my movie-going life. I’ve spent more physical time in SIFF Uptown, but fewer viewings thanks to all the shorts. ...

We’re a little more than halfway through Fantasia by any measure. I’ve seen more than half of the movies I’ve got scheduled, it’s the sixth day of a ten day trip, and my ass has been in semi-comfortable lecture hall seats for an awfully high percentage of the day. So far so good. The trip feels a bit longer because I’m really used to flying out here on the first Saturday of the festival, given work constraints. This year we arrived on a Thursday night in order to make sure we could catch Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma so my mental clock is off. Well worth the mental disruption; it was the best thing we’ve seen so far this year and I don’t think anything else will supplant it. It’s a daring exploration of the slasher genre, it’s funny as hell, and Gillian Anderson is great. As is Hannah Einbinder. ...

It’s so good to be back. Previously: 2004, 2006, 2015. So I guess this is my 20th anniversary Fantasia, which is unplanned but nice. I’d like to go more than once every ten years — remind me in 2028, right? We might have squeezed one in around 2020, but the pandemic. View of a modernist college building with a line of people curved around the corner. ...