VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2010
Summer is almost over and the best month of the entire year is just around the corner! October is the month of Vancouver International Film Festival, my birthday and Halloween. First up, The Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs September 30 – October 15th. You can check out a Sneak Preview guide online by clicking here. I had a chance to peruse this year’s selections and as always, the horror genre looks to be seriously underrepresented. Below I have highlighted a few of the titles that aroused my curiosity. With any luck a few more genre titles will get listed in the complete guide. Until then…
AMERICAN GRINDHOUSE
Directed By: Elijah Drenner
(Taken from the VIFF Sneak Preview guide.)
American Grindhouse (USA, 80 min.) Featuring interviews with directors Joe Dante, Allison Anders, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Larry Cohen, among others—as well as a feast of florid film clips from films like 1913’s ode to white slavery Traffic in Souls—Elijah Drenner’s entertaining chronicle of zgrade movies “is a lively and stylish look at the history of illegitimate cinema.”—Hollywood Reporter
GOREGIRL SAYS: YEP. I am definitely going to see this one. The director clearly has a passion for my genre and has quite the collection of short documentaries on his resume including one on Spider Baby, Lucio Fulci, Italian Exploitation and Giallo. There are interviews with some of my favourite directors including Jack Hill, Herschell Gordon Lewis, William Lustig, and Larry Cohen. Plus, I always try to include one documentary in my annual festival watching.
MONSTERS
Directed By: Gareth Edwards
(Taken from the VIFF Sneak Preview guide.)
Monsters (UK, 97 min.) Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion, a journalist agrees to escort the daughter of his publisher through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border. Gareth Edwards directs. “If John Cassavetes had ever made a sci-fi thriller, it probably would’ve looked and sounded a lot like this…”—Variety
GOREGIRL SAYS: YEP. I am definitely going to see this one. IMDB lists Monsters as Drama/Romance/Sci-Fi but it is called Monsters, and it appears to have monsters in it so it would still pass as reviewable material for the Dungeon. The trailer intrigues me and I am a total sucker for giant monster flicks. Giant Monsters need giant screens, and this one should be fun to watch with a crowd.
SURVIVING LIFE
Directed By: Jan Svankmajer
(Taken from the VIFF Sneak Preview guide.)
Surviving Life (Czech Republic, 105 min.) Jan Svankmajer (auteur/animator/provocateur) brings the world of the unconscious to light through the story of Eugene, whose waking life begins unravelling when he visits a psychoanalyst to undergo dream interpretation and discovers he has impregnated his own anima…
GOREGIRL SAYS: YEP. I am definitely going to see this one. Don’t ask me why in the hell the plot summary is cut off like that. Not that it matters, as I would see just about anything from director Jan Svankmajer. Jan Svankmajer is an animator whose films often mix stop-motion animation with live action. His work is completely original, funny, bizarre and stunningly beautiful. Surviving Life will likely be the last film he will ever do. (I couldn’t find a trailer for Surviving Life…check out my reviews for Svankmajer’s Little Otik and Lunacy instead!).
L.A. ZOMBIE
Directed By: Bruce La Bruce
(Taken from the VIFF Sneak Preview guide.)
L.A. Zombie (Germany/USA, 63 min.) A masterpiece of melancholia, Bruce LaBruce’s oneiric second foray into the gay zombie porn genre is about an alien (who may or may not be a homeless schizophrenic, played by French porn star François Sagat) who emerges from the ocean and finds corpses in Los Angeles to bring back to life. Not for general audiences.
GOREGIRL SAYS: MAYBE. The trailer irritates me; it is far too long and it is awfully redundant. The plot summary is interesting enough I suppose. Can’t say I’ve seen anything from the “gay, zombie porn genre”. Also, director Bruce LaBruce is Canadian which wins him a bonus point. Maybe I will and maybe I won’t, I’ll decide after the full schedule comes out.
RUBBER
Directed By: Quentin Dupieux
(Taken from the VIFF Sneak Preview guide.)
Rubber (France/USA, 82 min.) Quentin Dupieux’s film concerns the adventures of an anthropomorphized rubber tire that comes to murderous life in the desert and, via telekinesis, begins to exact bloody retribution on humanity. One of the stranger films to emerge from Cannes this year…
GOREGIRL SAYS: MAYBE. This was shown at the After Dark Film Festival in Toronto and Will over at The Film Reel posted some excellent and extensive coverage of the full event. He wasn’t a huge fan of this one. While Will and I don’t always agree, he made a point about how the kill gags were repetitive and got old quick. I can certainly see how easily that could happen in a film with this premise. How much can a tire do really? The premise is definitely amusing though and could be a fun one to see with a crowd.
August 31, 2010 at 6:25 am
I keep hearing lots of buzz around Monsters so I’m interested to see what you think. Rubber is something that you just have to see. It’s so freaking weird that it just left me puzzled by the end. Did I like it or not? I’m still not sure I even know that but it’s one I’d like to watch again. There is some impressive head explosions though, I’ll give them that.
August 31, 2010 at 12:49 pm
Monsters kinda looks like what I had hoped D-9 was going to be
September 2, 2010 at 2:45 pm
I liked District 9 but I definitely had some issues with it. The trailer for Monsters is great, hopefully it delivers.
August 31, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I had my first foray into the “gay zombie porn” genre with Bruce LaBruce’s “Otto; or, up with dead people” and I’ve decided it enough for now, but I could not say I regret the experience. LaBruce is a talented filmaker not afrait to go off the beaten track, he is just too gay for my own taste. (not that I have nothing against gay, mind you, I just don’t have the exact same taste as they have about a couple of things)
I thing you should saw it, be it only to witness another take on the zombie genre.
I saw Rubber at the Montreal’s Fantasia Festival last month. It is not really “a fun one to see with a crowd”. The crowd was deadly silent for the whole movie (this rarely happen at Fantasia). It is more the arthouse kind and an intellectual reflexion on cinema itself than a gruesome horror movie about a killer tire.
I liked it myself, but most of the comments I heard outside the door where negative
Happy festival!
September 2, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Ghidorah – I actually have OTTO on my list to see, completely escaped my mind that it was Bruce LaBruce. Not sure I’m going to find someone to accompany me to L.A. Zombie, but I’m considering it anyway. Difficult to tell from Rubber’s trailer that this is an arthouse flick and an intellectual reflexion on cinema, it just looks like silly fun. Several friends are going to see Rubber and chances are I will end up seeing this one.
September 5, 2010 at 10:43 am
Dangit! Thank you for pointing out a new Jan Svankmejer movie for me. I feel like I should have known that was coming, but I’m happy to read about it here first!
September 9, 2010 at 11:15 am
The wonderful world of Jan Svankmejer is a relatively recent discovery for me. I was thrilled to see it on the Vancouver Film Festival list! I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve seen from the man thus far. In fact, I just picked up a collection of his short films last weekend but haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.