Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time of year and I’m broke. I’m not kidding, if you want to help send a starving artist to the Film Festival, now is your bleeding chance. As it stands, I will be serving the grumpy public various forms of food while I watch my entire dream come to town and do something else without me.
If you are buying tickets, or already have tickets for these events, I want to go with you. And if you don’t have tickets yet, you need to see these:
1) Elephant by Gus Van Sant – A total risk by Mr. Good Will Hunting. He takes a bunch of kids from Portland, Oregon who have little or no film experience and films a regular day at school as it basically turns into ‘Columbine Part 2’.
2) Juon (The Grudge) – I WANT TO SEE THIS DESPERATELY. Please take me to see it. An elusive and chillingly scary Japanese horror flick. I’ve been looking everywhere for this. Doubles as a cure for removing bowel movements from your colon.
3) Bright Future (Akarui Mirai) – From Kiyoshi Kurosawa, he made a very sharp serial-killer flick a few years back called “The Cure”. Very Good stuff. You probably didn’t see it.
4) The Tesseract – Directed by Oxide Pang, half of the Brains behind “The Eye” – which was the best spooky movie you never saw in 2002. I know Nothing about this film except it apparently stars ONE guy. That’s it.
5) Dogville – Directed by Lars Von Trier, who directed one whacked out piece of work with the danish works “Kingdom” and “Kingdom 2” hospital “ending-makes-you-drop-a-load-in-your-pants” series. You may know him as the guy who did “Dancer in the Dark”. This time around he’s using Nicole Kidman. This was about 95% pure Dogma film, but they did have mics in their hair at one point. If you don’t know what a Dogma film is, don’t worry about it. The Trailer.
6) My Life Without Me – This simply looks really solid. A girl (Sarah Polley – who rules by the way) has a sucky life and it gets even suckier when she finds out she’s going to die. Time to make a list. The Trailer.
7) Veronica Guerin – Okay, I want to see this because it’s a serious, True Story Drama directed by Mr. Batman And Robin. Whoa. Cate Blanchett is great though. Check out the trailer and see what you think.
Matchstick Men, Underworld and Wonderland I’d also like to check out as well, but they’ll be coming out in theatres real soon anyway, but I really like seeing them early. Write to “hadbyhp (at) sympatico.ca” if you want to take me to the Film Fest. — And if you think I’m kidding, I’ll show you my bank statements.
