
Day 2 at the Fantasia International Film Festival had me attending a sold out showing of the Australian film Killing Ground [2017] –Damien Power, which as its title suggests, has a whole bunch of death. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Day 2 at the Fantasia International Film Festival had me attending a sold out showing of the Australian film Killing Ground [2017] –Damien Power, which as its title suggests, has a whole bunch of death. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…


together
A Ghost Story [2017] – David Lowery is a patient film-lover’s absurd and hopeful tragedy just shown at the Fantasia International Film Festival. Rooney Mara plays Casey Affleck‘s widow, sitting on the kitchen floor mournfully eating a pie as his specter watches on. She eats the pie over five long minutes in a single static shot, and he motionlessly observes from under a Casper the Ghost-style sheet with eye holes cut out. This is like an entry bar at a reverse roller coaster: you must be this patient to watch. Do!
The excruciating pace of the opening sequences (pie eating being just one) grants the viewer the freedom to cycle through emotions. First you laugh because the Casper sheet is ridiculous. And then you feel her pain. And then, despite the faceless, featureless sheet and his robotic, motionless presence you somehow feel his. It must be projection, but somehow (as I heard during the Q&A afterwards) most of the audience projected the same thing. This is a kind of genius.
After almost a third of the film she moves out, taking her healing process with her, and he is left behind. We are rewarded then for our patience with a lasting connection which will carry us through the rest of the film. As other people come to inhabit the home in which his ghost is now trapped, his identity seems to unhook from time. The cycles which we felt in the drawn out opening scenes are revealed to be a sort of foreshadowing: his path through the film is to cycle through the stages of grief as a lost and trapped observer. The climax is all of heartwarming, haunting and just a touch of friendly cliche.
This isn’t a scary ghost story. It’s a meditation on the prison of grief. It’s daring in a thoughtful and unexpected way, and I want to show it to the people I care about because sitting here two hours after it ended I just want them to experience the catharsis.
I couldn’t find any release date information aside from some showings in Europe, but keep an eye open for news on this one. It’d be a desperate shame if it didn’t get some wider release than the festival circuit.

It’s the start of yet another edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival! That’s exciting! We’re hype! We are so hype that we recorded a whole episode just to talk about the movies that we hope are good. CULT MTL’s Alex Rose joins our new Fantasia correspondent Sam and I to talk about the movies that are part of this year’s edition of Fantasia that have managed to catch our eye already. Stay tuned for more Fantasia coverage as the festival rolls on! Thanks for listening!
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Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Yesterday was the very first day of the Fantasia International Film Festival, and I decided to pop in on opening film The Villainess [2017], being screened with director Jeong Byeong-Gil in attendance. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…

We do it every year. This year is no different. If you haven’t seen all of the nominees you should probably check them out here and if you have, well, what are you waiting for? Listen to the freaking show already! Where else can you see awards for stupidity, fake mustaches and testicular fortitude for the festival? Nowhere. Listen up. Lots of these categories have spoilers in them, so be forewarned.
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One more time for good measure, here are the nominees:
Be warned, there are spoilers aplenty in this list, so if you care about that, go watch some movies instead! Behold:
Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Monumental Stupidity (3rd annual)
Greatest Affront To A Kind And Loving God
The Nathan Explosion Award For Oh My God That Was So Fucking Metal
Least Sexual Moment Involving Full Frontal Nudity
This Is Not Why I Got Into Acting
Most Convoluted Way to Get Killed by a G-g-g-ghost
note: In previous years we’ve had the category “best moment where your jaw hits the floor because what the fuck.” Well, we realized that sometimes that happens in a good way, and sometimes that happens in a bad way, and so we’ve divided up that category into two:
Best Actual WTF Is Going On Here in A Good Way Moment
Worst Wannabe WTF Is Going On Here In a Bad Way Moment
Outstanding Achievement in Artificial Mustaches
Testicular Fortitude (note: 3 female nominees this year!)
The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

The 9to5 Goes to Fantasia podcast series comes to a close today, the only thing that’s left is to award the 9to5sies. Closing things off is the official closing film of the Fantasia International Film Festival Welcome to New York and the 7th (technically) installment of the Ju-On series “Beginning of the End.” Listen now for our thoughts.
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The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The sound clip for the spoilers clip is OHC3 by Kris Keyser is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

3 movies for the price of one! Lucky for you that price is still always free! A movie about a girl who gets really into heavy metal, another about 3 folks lost in the woods and another about serial killers… I’ll let you try to figure out which is which. It’s not that hard, I believe in you.
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The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The sound clip for the spoilers clip is OHC3 by Kris Keyser is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

It’s that time of the year again! With Fantasia over, it’s time to announce both the categories and the nominees for our attempts at an award ceremony. With the event long withdrawn from everyone’s mind, it’s time for us to double down on our commitment! Be warned, there are spoilers aplenty in this list, so if you care about that, go watch some movies instead! Behold:
Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Monumental Stupidity (3rd annual)
Greatest Affront To A Kind And Loving God
The Nathan Explosion Award For Oh My God That Was So Fucking Metal
Least Sexual Moment Involving Full Frontal Nudity
This Is Not Why I Got Into Acting
Most Convoluted Way to Get Killed by a G-g-g-ghost
note: In previous years we’ve had the category “best moment where your jaw hits the floor because what the fuck.” Well, we realized that sometimes that happens in a good way, and sometimes that happens in a bad way, and so we’ve divided up that category into two:
Best Actual WTF Is Going On Here in A Good Way Moment
Worst Wannabe WTF Is Going On Here In a Bad Way Moment
Outstanding Achievement in Artificial Mustaches
Testicular Fortitude (note: 3 female nominees this year!)
The winners will be announced via live ceremony (totally live I swear but available in podcast form) on Tuesday!

These are two movies about ladies, one who is super gross and obsessed with bodily fluid and the other who is slowly becoming a werewolf. Today is lady day. This is a podcast. Listen!
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The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The sound clip for the spoilers clip is OHC3 by Kris Keyser is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.

A movie about a very small man who parodies James Bond and a movie about a man in a great big cardboard head. Yep, this sounds like Fantasia doesn’t it? Enjoy the show.
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The song we use in the intro is “Spooky Loop” by the 8bit bEtty. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The sound clip for the spoilers clip is OHC3 by Kris Keyser is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) License.