The Oak Room proves that a great and solid script can absolutely make the movie on it’s own. On top of that, that we also need a lot more play adaptations.
Category Archive: Festivals
I don’t remember the last time I actively found a documentary be so exhilarating and electrifying as much as I did with You Cannot Kill David Arquette.
Sometimes, finding the right opening film for a film festival helps set the entire mood for the whole festival. So, yes, the opening night film helps do that because it’s a statement on the tone of the festival – but not everyone always startsx with that opening film. So while I will be seeing The Reckoning, The first film I got to see was Detention, and it was phenomonal. It makes for a perfect opener. At least for me.
Also, I recently wrote about how Scott Pilgrim was one of my favourite Video Game adaptations, and how it’s not actually accurate, I’m going to start mentioning Detention in its place instead.
I had the incredible pleasure of being able to talk to the director of one of my favourite film’s coming out of Fantasia. John Hsu directed the absolute hell out of Detention. Detention was the first film that I saw out of the festival, and it set the exact mood and feel that I wanted for the rest of the festival.
It’s only playing once during the festival, and that is tonight (August 24th) at 7 pm. So read my interview, buy a ticket (it’s only 8 bucks, cheaper than Cineplex – and safer than Cineplex) and enjoy a truly great film.
To say that I loved this feels strange and wrong but the film is absoltutely wild in the best way possible. Which again, revenge films always make it hard for you to admit that you loved it, but this is a genre festival we’re talking about, they know the demographic. I’m also positive I couldn’t be the only one.
Modern day addictions are an interesting topic of a film. If someone had a gambling or sex addiction, that person would have to get dressed and go to a casino, or a back-room poker game. Or find other variations of it. And they’d have to find an escort. All these things where sometimes to make those decisions aren’t as easy as clicking a button. In PVT Chat, we’re reminded how far we’ve come. With online poker hands, and private sex chat rooms (and even OnlyFans), it’s easy for someone to input their credit card number and just click subscribe from the comfort of their own bedroom.
If you’re at Fantasia, and you feel the need to watch a loveletter to punk, I hope someone has told you that the film for that, is Dinner in America.
If you missed it last fall, we covered the Toronto After Dark Film Festival. It’s a great, quick and short festival that unfortunately got postponed this year. One of the programmers for the festival is Justin McConnell. In 2018, he had a film that premiered at Toronto After Dark, as well as Fantasia called Lifechanger. He’s back again for the Fantasia, and this time with a really great documentary.
In a few days, I’ll be covering Fantasia Festival. This year is a bit different as most festivals have either been cancelled, postponed or adapted to fully digital (or drive-in’s). Fantasia Festival is another that tackled changing their festival to entirely digital. Now that all three waves have announced, I’m excited to talk about some of the films I’m looking forward to seeing the most.
Fantasy films are some of my favourites but too often they focus on characters that I can’t connect to or even identify with. Too often the characters feel the same and never feel like I could be one of them. It’s not to say that I can’t enjoy fantasy or film of that genre but it’s not the same. That is why Alice Waddington’s Paradise Hills is such a breath of fresh air, a film that creates such a universe that you can forgive the flaws and story problem. In her directorial debut, Waddington creates a universe that feels complete, bringing a breath of fresh air in this genre that is too often dominated by men and their stories.
