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Content at last!
Jul. 8th, 2008 03:16 pmThis year four of us made the trip to Fantasia (a Montreal asian/horror/sci fi film festival): Silentq, cris, heatray, and myself. Arcanus and Nimfe would be joining us up there, but mostly operating on their own.
Fantasia continued the trend of starting the festival with a concentrated dose of Awesome. Sukiyaki Western Django was the lead film. It was a stylized western, with a mix of swords and six guns. Takeshi Miike is amazing in just about every film he does. He's known for his hyper violence, but this film stayed pretty much in the acceptable realm. He crammed just about every western trope he could except for a card game, which gave me the warm fuzzies. (Westerns are a big kick for me right now). The opening scene is a little jarring, but the rest of it is two tons of awesome. I'll be sure to have a viewing of it when I own the movie!
After our movie we stopped at a nearby pub, where I learned that cider and Smirnoff's are about twice as expensive as other drinks. We crammed into out tiny room, and learned how thin the walls were first hand. It seems our neighbors were having a better start to the festival than us, judging from their... vigorous moaning.
Saturday Heatray and I wandered up and down St. Catherine and Maisonneuve st, admiring the beautiful architecture (and people). It's surreal to see modern stores and neon set up in ancient houses. Our travel took us through the setup for the Jazz Festival, and into Old Montreal, where the buildings were even more ornate. I do miss architecture as art. We met up with the rest of the Boston crew (along with noize_girl) and Kingsley for our next film...
Machine Girl! Wacky, funny, and drenched in blood. This was a highly entertaining movie: cute Japanese school girl seeks revenge on ninjas masquerading as yakuza who killed her brother. They take off her arm, but the friends of the family replace it with a gatling gun. Eviscerations, bloody dismemberment, and wackiness ensues. I don't know if I'll buy it, but it's worth seeing again. We grabbed some good Jamaican food at Mango Bay, then Heatray and I saw our next film.
[rec] VERY SCARY! We deemed it too scary for SilentQ. I heard about this aftering seeing a trailer for Quarantine, which is an American remake of this film due in November. It's shot cinema verite style (ala Blair Witch) and follows a camera crew who's joins a fire crew for a late night disturbance. They find a woman in her apartment who's gone all feral, then find themselves locked in the building as they try to flee. It's a zombie film, and nothing is especially new in it. The camera style and editing are extremely effective in ratcheting up the tension, it uses a few other tricks as well, to have you literally squirming and leaping out of your seat. Both Heatray and I were really twitchy by the time the film reached it's grim conclusion. A VERY good zombie movie. We closed out the night by dancing out at Saphir. The music was very good, similar to Boston but with some stomy new tunes. I made use of the deck to cool off between songs, and the place was packed until three.
Heatray and I cooled off by walking back to our hotel through some really crazy crowds
Next up... sunburn and cycling!
Fantasia continued the trend of starting the festival with a concentrated dose of Awesome. Sukiyaki Western Django was the lead film. It was a stylized western, with a mix of swords and six guns. Takeshi Miike is amazing in just about every film he does. He's known for his hyper violence, but this film stayed pretty much in the acceptable realm. He crammed just about every western trope he could except for a card game, which gave me the warm fuzzies. (Westerns are a big kick for me right now). The opening scene is a little jarring, but the rest of it is two tons of awesome. I'll be sure to have a viewing of it when I own the movie!
After our movie we stopped at a nearby pub, where I learned that cider and Smirnoff's are about twice as expensive as other drinks. We crammed into out tiny room, and learned how thin the walls were first hand. It seems our neighbors were having a better start to the festival than us, judging from their... vigorous moaning.
Saturday Heatray and I wandered up and down St. Catherine and Maisonneuve st, admiring the beautiful architecture (and people). It's surreal to see modern stores and neon set up in ancient houses. Our travel took us through the setup for the Jazz Festival, and into Old Montreal, where the buildings were even more ornate. I do miss architecture as art. We met up with the rest of the Boston crew (along with noize_girl) and Kingsley for our next film...
Machine Girl! Wacky, funny, and drenched in blood. This was a highly entertaining movie: cute Japanese school girl seeks revenge on ninjas masquerading as yakuza who killed her brother. They take off her arm, but the friends of the family replace it with a gatling gun. Eviscerations, bloody dismemberment, and wackiness ensues. I don't know if I'll buy it, but it's worth seeing again. We grabbed some good Jamaican food at Mango Bay, then Heatray and I saw our next film.
[rec] VERY SCARY! We deemed it too scary for SilentQ. I heard about this aftering seeing a trailer for Quarantine, which is an American remake of this film due in November. It's shot cinema verite style (ala Blair Witch) and follows a camera crew who's joins a fire crew for a late night disturbance. They find a woman in her apartment who's gone all feral, then find themselves locked in the building as they try to flee. It's a zombie film, and nothing is especially new in it. The camera style and editing are extremely effective in ratcheting up the tension, it uses a few other tricks as well, to have you literally squirming and leaping out of your seat. Both Heatray and I were really twitchy by the time the film reached it's grim conclusion. A VERY good zombie movie. We closed out the night by dancing out at Saphir. The music was very good, similar to Boston but with some stomy new tunes. I made use of the deck to cool off between songs, and the place was packed until three.
Heatray and I cooled off by walking back to our hotel through some really crazy crowds
Next up... sunburn and cycling!
