Tag: fantasia
Friday One Sheet: THE SECOND
This beautiful watercolour poster for Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos's The Second is hiding a subtle secret in plain sight. The short film centres around a pistols-at-dawn kind of duel, and the underlying complexity of motivations across two generations. The lead...
Fantasia 2024: SINCOPAT, Short Film Short Review
During the opening credits of short film, Sincopat, many festival laurels are initially displayed onscreen. Then, following a loud ‘bang’ on the soundtrack, several dozen more appear. This is a first for me, but it is in sync with the...
Fantasia 2024 Review: TATSUMI, A Gritty Yakuza Street Drama With A Broken Heart
I am happy that these kinds of gritty, but emotionally tragic crime films are still being made. Hiroshi Shôji’s Tatsumi is one of those skuzzy neighborhood dramas, the kind soaked in poverty, spit, blood, and tears. Where the crime feels...
Fantasia 2024: THE SECOND, Short Film Short Review
Editor Tony Zhou and Illustrator Taylor Ramos are perhaps best known for their YouTube channel Every Frame A Painting, their video essay side-hustle away from their day jobs in the TV animation industry. Early pioneers in this space nearly...
Friday One Sheet: TATSUMI
I remain ever a fan of taking a compelling still frame form the film itself, and composing it into key art. Below is the poster for Yakuza drama, Tatsumi, in which leads Yûya Endô and Kokoro Morita offer each other...
Fantasia 2024: Let Us Raise the Curtain on North America's Largest Genre Festival
The 28th Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 18 to August 4 in a hot hot hot Montreal. For those of us located in North America, it is one of our favourite times of the year. Due to its...
Friday One Sheet: INFINITE SUMMER
Pink and Grey is the new Orange and Teal. The new film from the strange brain of Miguel Llansó, Infinite Summer, will premiere at Montreal's Fantasia film festival later this summer, however in advance of this, we have this love...
SATAN WANTS YOU Interview: Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams Talk Moral Panics
Moral panics have been with us as a species since time immemorial. From the persecution of European pagans at the end of the Roman empire in the Fourth Century, to the Salem witch trials in New England in the 17th...
Fantasia 2023 Review: THE TASTER, Harbinger of a Bold New Voice
Some time in the near future, the climate crisis, and the resulting extreme water and food shortages, have put Europe into a state of war. What little healthy land that remains lies along Danube Delta in Romania which is hotly...
Fantasia 2023 Review: APORIA Is Not Your Typical Time Traveller
Jared Moshé’s latest film, Aporia, is a fascinating paradox: A time travel story where the characters do not time travel. It is a sober, and quite emotional ‘what if’ and ‘if then’ take on parenting. The psychological cause and effect...
Friday One Sheet: LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL
With its chunky font, matted border, and boxed head-shots, the Australian poster for Late Night With The Devil, has retro notes of period accuracy. This carries right down to the slightly larger type-setting of the actors' names hovering above the...
Fantasia 2023: Raising the Curtain on North America's Largest Genre Festival
The Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 20 to August 9 this year in Montreal. It's epic length is lovingly referred to by long time attendees as a 'summer camp for genre nerds.' Given that it runs for weeks...
Friday One Sheet: DEEP SEA 深海
Summer Cottages. Summer Dreams. Tian Xiaopeng's animated film has already played in its domestic Chinese market. It is currently touring on the global festival circuit, from Berlin to Tribeca to Neuchâtel, and soon, Fantasia. The international and festival poster is an...
Friday One Sheet: CHOROKBAM
Is the man smoking a cigarette while his ride waits, or is he about to be hit by a moving vehicle? This festival poster, designed by the director of the film, Yoon Seo-jin, for the Busan International Film Festival, captures...
Fantasia 2022 Review: EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, A Pointed Workplace Comedy
Inès deserves a raise. She is the poster girl for EcoClean products. Literally. When she started at the company as a bright young thing, she was the model in the catalogue, the booth babe. It seems mostly men make the...
Friday One Sheet: LYNCH/OZ
Ladies & Gentlemen, put your hands together for this theatrical and smoky poster for Alexandre O. Phillipe's film theory documentary Lynch/Oz. Ostensibly, the film about David Lynch's obsession with the Wizard of Oz, and it certainly is that. Really though,...
Fantasia 2022 Review: CHOROKBAM, Green is the Loneliest Colour
I grew up what can charitably be descried as lower middle class. Like the central family Chorokbam essays, conversations almost always revolved around what things cost, going to and from work, and what we (or other people) are spending money...
Fantasia 2022 Review: WE MIGHT AS WELL BE DEAD, With Neighbors Like These
In the not too distant future, the outside world is a profoundly unsafe place. It is more broken, more threatening that it is today. Note that things can always be worse. A family tensely walks through the woods, with frightened...
Fantasia 2022 Review: MY SMALL LAND, Empathy and Omotenashi
I have been told that Japan is a challenging country if you are not born there. But what if you grew up in Japan without being born there? We first meet high-school senior Sarya at a traditional Kurdish wedding...
Fantasia 2022 Review: POLARIS, A Gritty Bit of Original Myth-Making
There is magic at play in Kirsten Carthew's Polaris. It is set the year 2144. Earth has been ravaged and sent back to another ice age, one where the fish bleed green blood. Pockets of survivors eke out a violent...
