Fantasia 2007: preview

It's once again this time of the year, that of Montreal's Fantasia film festival, starting on July 5th to 23rd, with more than 125 feature films instead of just a mere hundred last year, thanks to money from the provincial level. I definitely going to hit the East Asian films first, although I've also tried European horror flicks and American sci-fi movies in the past. Fantasia is also adding an extra venue, Théâtre DB Clarke, which is a 380-seat room (the one that we call the Hall is 700-seat), home of Concordia University's Department of Theatre, at the basement level of the Hall Building.

This year's installment will celebrate Russian cinema with seven films spanning the 30s and 80s, as well as five others exploring the theme of urban apocalypse (see special events).

From Hong Kong, you have the winner of like all HK movie awards of this year (three of them: Best Actor, Best New Actor, and Best Director), After This Our Exile, not to be confused with the excellent-looking 200g Johnnie To Exiled. The latter was also nominated in the best film category, and both Isabella and Dog Bite Dog each had a Best Actress/Actor nomination at HK's movie awards (nominees list - you have to guess the best ones, b/c they don't seem to consolidate them on one page). There is also an Oxide Pang movie called Diary.

Too many to parse through right now, but this year's lineup also includes a bunch of "oddities", like documentaries on animated film director Hayao Miyazaki or cinematographer Christopher Doyle. And as usual, the animes, the Japanese horror flicks, and a couple of Korean commercial films, like 200 Pounds Beauty.