Fantasia 2009

The Fantasia International Film Festival is ripe off the vine and ready for picking. The festival is in Montreal, last three weeks starting this Thursday July 9, 2009 and boast a line up of genre delights from horror, sci-fi, martial arts, documentaries and more. Let's have a look, shall we?

Vampires
Highly anticipated and straight from Cannes comes Thirst, directed by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) taking a new spin on the vampire genre throwing in medical experimentation and religion to the mix, as well as playing it from a sensual angle (see the trailer here). Sounds like a perfect combination to me! We also have Lesbian Vampire Killers which debuted at #4 on the UK box office in March 2009, and I keep hoping this is lesbians who kill vampires, but alas is is vampire hunters killing lesbian vampires. Well, there will always be more vampires films in the future! Crossing the vampire and monster world we have the Japanese film Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, based on a manga by Shungiku Uchida.

Zombies
Kicking up red snow everywhere, Dead Snow the Norwegian film with Nazi zombies as been buzzing all over the online world. A twist and taste of real, Reel Zombies has a quote in the trailer that sums up the idea quite well: "You are making a zombie movie, during the zombie apocalypse?". Why not make zombies work for you for a change? That sounds pretty awesome to me.

Hong Kong Cinema: 100 Years
As a celebration of 100 years since the release of the first narrative film in the former British colony of Hong Kong, the festival has included a Spotlight on Hong Kong and amongst the titles at this years festival are The Warlords directed by Peter Chan, starring Jet Li and Andy Lau and Ip Man directed by Wilson Yip (Flash Point / Dao huo xian), starring Donnie Yen and Simon Yam. What a treat festival goers are in for with this program!

Monsters, Aliens, Oh My!
Nothing says funny like a spoofing sci fi which is the funnest of Alien Trespass, not only spoofing but taking it classic with 1950's style. Keeping it period we also have the horror comedy I Sell the Dead from director Glenn McQuaid and starring Dominic Monaghan, Ron Perlman, Larry Fressenden and Brenda Cooney. If you are looking for pure classic they are showing a 35m print of the 1961 Japanese monster classic Mothra.

Horror
This is the perfect festival to celebrate Halloween films on any day and you can with Trick 'r Treat starring Anna Paquin and Dylan Baker. Want to be too creeped out sleep? Then you might want to try Nightmare Detective 2, sequel to Shinya Tsukamoto's Nightmare Detective / Akumu Tantei. In the kids-can-be-so-creepy department, get a sneak peek at the upcoming Orphan.

Double the Fun
A double bill of fantastic proportions will head to the festival on Saturday July 25, 2009 with Best Worst Movie, a hilarious documentary on the phenomenah of the cult-classic/worst movie ever: Troll 2. The second part of the double bill? Troll 2, of course! Also doubling up, but not on the same night are two Clive Barker books to film adapatations. Book of Blood, directed by John Harrison is an adaptation of two Clive Barker short stories "On Jerusalem Street" and "The Book of Blood". The second is Dread, directed by Anthony DiBlasi and stars Shaun Evans, Hanne Steen and Jackson Rathbone (Twilight)

On a final note, I'd love to hear how the sweet looking romantic comedy Fine, Totally Fine got into the mix? It looks completely charming from the trailer.

This is just a mere sampling of the over 100 feature films at the festival during its three week run. Tickets go on sale today, July 7th 2009. For more information check the website for Films and Schedule, Guests, Jury, Venue and Ticket Information. Above links are to English version of the site, and are all also available under the French Site.

The Fantasia International Film Festival runs from July 9 - 29, 2009 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.