Image from: Gravity of Center, from the Official Selection Creative Control program at 2012 Worldwide Short Film Festival
Hey Everyone!
I hope everyone survived the crazy hot weekend that was just here in Toronto. I swear, we get the craziest weather. I stayed out of it and continued along some marathons I'm working on although heading to the theatre might have been a smart retreat! Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
Most recently I headed out the The Worldwide Short Film Festival last week and enjoy oodles of short films. The opening night was packed and had an awesome selection of award-winning short films from around the world and it was quite an impressive selection. I was particularly fond of the inventiveness of Luminaris (dir: Juan Pablo Zaramella), the haunting nostalgia of The Fisherman / El pescador (dir: Samantha Pineda Sierra from Mexico , and of course the ode to monster movies in The Elaborate End of Robert Ebb / La mysterieuse disparition de Robert Ebb (dirs: Fx Goby, Matthieu Landour and Clément Bolla).
I also headed out to the festival on Day 2 to enjoy the Official Selection Programs of The Family Compact and Creative Control. I also really enjoyed Official Selection Creative Control, in particular the fabulous movement piece Gravity of Center (Dir: Thibaut Duverneix) with the RUBBERDance troupe, the heartfelt tragic comedy Lifetripper (dir: Graeme Joyce) starring Rob Benedict and the absolutely extraordinary Withering Love / Les amours perdues (dir: Samanou Sahlstrøm) starring Emmanuelle Béart and Denis Lavant which touched my heart with it's haunting, tragic romance. The Official Selection Family Compact had several films that caught me including the clever short Long Distance Information (dir: Douglas Hart) starring Peter Mullan and Alan Tripney as well as the touching documentary Me Without You / Mig uden dig (dir: Aage Rais-Nordentoft) from Denmark.
Images from: A Shadow of a Doubt / Skyggen af tvivl; Morten Holst and Nikolaj Dencker Schmidt in To All My Friends / Til alle mine venner
Speaking of Denmark, Day 3 held the treat of Film School Spotlight: Super 16 Anarkino program full of Danish film to love, and love it I did! The Film School Spotlight: Super 16 Anarkino program was my favourite of the festival even though I had already seen the film Dennis back in 2008 and it only had 5 films, but they were all gems. I adored the sensitive romance/personal journey film A Shadow of a Doubt / Skyggen af tvivl (dir: Esben Tønnesen) starring Nicolei Faber & Anders Hove that followed the beautiful forming of a new relationship with also showing the doubts and memories of the past. I was also blown away by the film To All My Friends / Til alle mine venner (dir: Behrouz Bigdeli) starring Morten Holst and Nikolaj Dencker Schmidt as two friends against the world, against the odds, and the complexity when that starts to put them against each other. It's not an easy watch with the enormous amount of tension and the obviously limited resource they live in, but the formidable performance will blow you away.
Overall, it was another great year at the festival and I was so happy to be able to get out and see so many films. See all of my Worldwide Short Film Festival Coverage here.
Fairy Tale Femme-tastic: Snow White and the Huntsman
Although I didn't see it last week, my most recent venture to the theatre was to see Snow White and the Huntsman (dir: Rupert Sanders, USA/2012) starring Kristen Stewart (Twilight) as Snow White, Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen and Chris Hemsworth (Thor) as the Hunstman. This film ranks high on the #7 spot of my My Most Anticipated Films of the Year for 2012 as the story looks compelling, it has fabulous women in it (and men...), and the art direction looked divine. And divine it was, the world they created was on that you feel like you could step right into and marvel at it's beauty, as well as the bizarre dangers that also lurked there. I was so happy with Snow White and the Huntsman as it honours the original story yet really aligns and makes accessible the theme of beauty and power, without it feeling superficial or silly. It's a tale of deep hurt as well as the challenge to face the fear and striking odds, but also offers a positive and inspiring perspective. I loved how it's also very much about the women in the film, not only Snow White and Ravenna (The Evil Queen), but other women as well. It makes me curious about the choice in the title, and although I enjoyed the character of The Huntsman and Chris Hemsworth's performance, it wasn't overly played up in the film. I loved that, because the story is really about the women. It's so rare to see and it really worked here. I can't go without saying that the costumes were gorgeous, especially for Ravenna, Coleen Atwood does it again! I loved the film, I highly recommend it to fantasy film fans and especially for people who enjoy female protagonist films. I can't wait to see it again. If you want to hear even more about Snow White and The Huntsman, hear my review with co-host Marina Antunes over at the Before the Dawn Podcast.
Tuning into SciFi TV: American Warships!
I had the pleasure of guest hosting on a recent episode of The Saturday B-Movie Reel to chat about American Warships with host Kevin Bachelder and fellow co-host Gary Mitchel from the RevolutionSF.com. We had a blast chatting about the film which was previously titled American Battleship and came hot off the heels of Battleship. There was so much fun to enjoy, and the discussion continued on and on as director Thunder Levin and wardrobe designed Ashley Crist listened and responded to the podcast! They bring up some good points that I definitely will make note of and I am really impressed that they chimed in. Check out the podcast over here at Tuning into SciFi TV.
Exploring YouTube
You may have noticed that there is a lot of vlogs popping up over here at Movie Moxie recently, and I'm hosting them somewhere new for me but not new to most. That's right folks, I've actually created my own YouTube Channel, aptly named: http://www.youtube.com/user/ShannontheMovieMoxie . It's quite a culture shift, but I'm starting to get the hang of it and am very curious to see what other people post about, and what people watch. I'm not totally big on the transparency that how many views you have is so 'out there', but wow, that's just the way it is. If you are a fellow YouTuber, feel free to subscribe and swing by. Almost all the content will be uploaded here at Movie Moxie and the DVD Releases, Marathon Vlogs and Recent Release vlogs are compiled and included in audio form in the weekly Movie Moxie Podcast. More ways to enjoy content is a good thing, right? I hope so! As a sampling, I've included the review of Film School Spotlight: Super 16 Anarkino below:
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