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Montréal 2024
Testing has confirmed that my Fantasia press badge does not, in fact, open up my hotel room door.
8/1: “Lantern Blade”; Episodes 1-3
Stop-motion? Wuxia? Eldritch? Yes, yes, and, oh yes. Ziqi Zhu and his team at Tianjin Niceboat Animation tell a fast-paced story with action, comedy, and mystery. Powerful factions collide in pursuit of an ancient force and the power it holds. An undead Samurai protects a catalyst for peace or destruction, embodied by the Bride who somehow survived her wedding massacre. Also enter: the Hoof gang; a trio of specialized warriors under the command of an unlikely leader; and a mysterious stone carver, hiding in a ramshackle temple. Ziqi Zhu demonstrates a clear sense of action in the many fight-scenes-in-
miniature. Recommended for any lover of genres listed above.
Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
One of the more violence-filled of the many violence pictures I’ve enjoyed over the festival, Soi Cheang’s Twilight Warriors takes advantage of its locale for many compelling martial arts set-pieces. The action unfolds in Kowloon Walled City, a derelict cluster of city blocks ungoverned by the municipal authority. Instead, it is the turf of master fighter—and capable barber—Cyclone, who oversees this sanctuary of sorts after winning control during a gang war some decades prior. The uneasy peace between the Walled City and a rival gang (headed, of course, by “Mr. Big”) begins to rupture when an illegal migrant seeks refuge within its walls after a boxing match gone sour. There are so many breath-taking fights to witness, with an upward trajectory of epic intensity. That makes sense, though, as Twilight of the Warriors is not only a story of legends, but features a number of Hong Kong’s silver-screen legends of the genre.
8/2: Azrael
E.L. Katz, you very nearly lost me. Thank goodness Azrael ended on a cute & horrible reveal after an hour and a half of action that managed to be both interesting and a bit tedious. Azrael Continue reading 2024 FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL: AND THE REST, PART TWO & ONE-HALF
Sarangi (Tarun Thind, United Kingdom): Florescent eeriness, late-night study, and then an incongruous, but familiar sound. An unnamed student hears the tones of “God Save the Queen,” but performed on an instrument native to his ancestral land. When the witch appears, each run of the bow and turn of the wheel further traps the young man as the echoing pitch of his adopted home’s anthem severs him from his past.
Two Sides (Luo Mingyang, China): This animation was cryptic and circular, and prominently featured an ominous blade. Effectively silent, as well, as a troubled boy, the least-worthy member of a gang of toughs, is alternately challenged to rough up a victim, or petrified by a vision of a two-faced spirit. It doesn’t make much sense, but it has a “vibe”, a climax, and a post-credits coda that, for whatever reason, seared a deep impression in me.
English Tutor (Koo Jaho, South Korea): Comedy and horror from Korea! Few things are more of a delight. An (you guessed it) English tutor seeks work and is summoned by a mother desperate for her young daughter to write, one word, any word (!), in English. The tutor succeeds in her task after calming the weeping child. But, alas, something is very wrong: and things turn from sweet to creepy to violent with due haste.
Foreigners Only (
An ornately told tale from Iran about an enthusiastic child who ends up trading his ability to sing and shout for a spinning top. The animation is distinctly non-Western, and beautiful. The little boy in question travels within an ever-shifting frame of stylized flowers as he encounters the quilt man, pool man, and the salt man. The up tempo feel is brought down to earth when the salt man takes away the boy’s youthful vigor, leaving only the memories within the top.
This is the only foam-imation I’ve ever seen, and accompanying the weird look achieved by animating its weird narrative about a young man who is protected by his mother’s dreams with polystyrene. Four dreams in particular–“Fire,” “Insect,” “Pumpkin,” and “Corpse”–are highlighted, each heavily symbolic and lovingly rendered in Styrofoam. The short ends with the mother advising her son (grown, with wife and child) not to go out that day; the grateful lad thanks the heavens for the meticulous fence his mother has constructed around him.
By a whisker, this was the strangest short of the crop—both to listen to, and to look at. The sound is purposely muted, as if one is listening to the dialogue (actually, mostly monologues) through a telephone propped against an old tape recorder. The visual element, however, practically shouts from the screen. What is going on here? There are too many clues, too many things going on, to be certain; the final shot suggests a hospital. And the garbled vocal exposition suggests a mental one, at 
