Week 2 of Fantasia goes round the world, and culture-jams our own backyard
If the Fantasia festival ethos were a long-winded bar joke, then Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English would be its punch line. Pedro Carvajal’s intimate, decade-in-the-making portrait of English is wide-ranging and playful, and worthy of introducing the man who, it is said, slaughtered Joe Camel.
Readers of Adbusters throughout the ’90s will be familiar with English as one of the men who invented culture-jamming, and whose favourite art medium is a second-degree felony in the U.S.
English has, to date, hijacked over 1,000 commercial billboards. His victims have included the Joe Camel campaign, in which his hand-painted portraits of Mrs. Joe Camel "smoking for two," among other things, fed to his theory that if one billboard in thousands belonging to one ad campaign was altered, viewers would never be able to look at said campaign with an absence of cynicism. English’s artistic acumen and intellectual brilliance changed what could have been an amplified version of Hitler-moustaches-with-a-sharpie-marker vandalism into high art, accessible to all. (Though English did, it should be noted, add Hitler – along with Bill Gates – to the pantheon of 20th-century heroes and geniuses featured in Apple’s Think Different campaign.) It seems a bit as though Carvajal learns his craft in the process of making the documentary… production glitches slightly mar the footage of English’s early billboards, but by the time the doc blooms into English’s period as a "gallery" artist and designer of rock record jackets, all that matters is the breathtaking weirdness of English’s art. By the end, he is again engaged in jamming and hijacking billboards during the furor of last year’s presidential election… putting English’s imagination to good use.
Speaking of putting imaginations to use, week 2 of Fantasia has some wild and woolly weirdness not to be missed. In addition to a quartet of spectral Thai bloodbaths (see above) there are several cinematic events of note. The Devil’s Rejects, Rob Zombie’s latest slasher epic, will be shown in the presence of the director, as will The Dark Hours, a brand new Canadian thriller with good buzz by Paul Fox (the director and cast will also be in attendance). Both of these will be released in the near future (the former this summer, the latter in the fall), but there are also some one-time screenings in Fantasia’s garden of international delights.
El Lobo is a Serpico-esque period thriller about Basque terrorists that will have you on the edge of your seat. Breaking News, Johnnie To’s latest, is a half-Peckinpah, half-Marshall McLuhan-esque tale of cops, criminals and the news media set in Hong Kong. Silmido is a gritty and riveting Korean military drama based on a true story of betrayal and political loyalties. Neighbour No. 13 is a Takashi Miike-esque horror flick about kid bullies and the nerd’s revenge – an alternate-personality horror flick cut down the centre with pretty much the sickest animated sequence since Itchy & Scratchy.
Mark Lamothe of Fantasia admits that though the festival’s demographics are split 65/35 per cent in favour of the boys, he and the other programmers have been consciously making choices aimed at attracting the fairer ticket sales – movies like My Sassy Girl a few years back, as well as "pretty much anything anime works pretty well," in his words.
To wit, a few zany romantic comedies are on the program: Tetsuya Nakashima’s Kamikaze Girls is about as bubblegum as semi-automatic machine-gun fire, and Please Teach Me English is a zany Korean rom-com.
Last but not least, Harry Cleven’s Belgian Trouble (Duplicity) stars Benoît Magimel as a set of twins separated through family trauma when they were 6. Typically European, the movie concerns itself with the twins’ getting mixed up with each others’ wives and laying claim to children, and yet there’s something about the flick that sticks – and there’s no denying that the denouement contains something Polanski-esque that adds an art-house edge to week 2.
Fantasia
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For the record, Rob Zombie’s latest gory offering “The Devil’s Rejects” can take a huge dive into oblivion until such time as someone’s convinced me that he can actually direct a decent horror movie. His last oeuvre was a bloody bore and just because he has a bigger budget and actual stars here don’t expect me to gush for the sequel. A sequel to a dud by the same people that brought us the original? Not exactly inspiring me to get a ticket, ok?
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Now, “Popaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English” is exactly the kind of movie you want to pay good money to see. No, it’s not full of blood or gore or any of that cool stuff but it has what Fantasia needs: something with gravitas. Yeah, there’s a lot of little gems to pick from but this movie is particular in that it isn’t about the shock value but the shocking nature of the world we live in.
I usually have one person to watch movies with, and yes she is a girl, non-Asian, but loves Asian culture. She would be an oddity at this festival, but now I see a lot more women showing up. Some to accompany their boyfriends, but the majority is here to actually watch something they enjoy. Unlike American blockbusters that cater to men usually with stupid films filled with explosions, cars, pretty women and lots of fighting, Fant-Asia tends to choose action films that have a storyline. Comedies in which women will love like Please teach me English and Kamikaze girls. Sure there are a lot of horror movies like the Devil’s Rejects, and films like P will most likely appeal to men, but I’ve noticed a lot of women visiting them too. I was recently told in line that Zombie Honeymoon was very romantic by a girl, while waiting in line. The films require a certain level of intelligence that is needed for it to be enjoyed.
That can explain the increase of female attendants at the festival, who enjoy watching movies that makes them think. Or maybe they like watching women in roles of power as shown in Breaking News. Kelly Chen is a top level police agent who wields power justly; despite all the males thinking she’s just another pretty face. Now tell me where you saw an American movie where you had a pretty Police Chief who didn’t get naked or had to have the male lead save them?
Plus Fant-Asia is fun for everyone. The crowd is polite and loving. You might get something free in line (I got free ice cream waiting for R-Point). The experience in general is so different from watching a movie in a normal movie theater that the feeling of joy is just infectious.
So Movies that appeal to women, strong female character leads and a festival where everyone is accepted no matter who you are or what you look like. Sounds like a good reason for why I see more women in lines then before.
As always, the first week of Fantasia was just fantastic and the numbers were through the roof. Many more people are slowly finding out about this festival and looking at all the dazzling movies which are playing and have decided to finally check it out. A myriad of films from the first week sold out and it’s already guaranteed that Fantasia will be occuring once more next week. But for the many that still haven’t watched a film, there is still a second week of great films to check out and I can guarantee that the second week will quite possibly be even greater than the first.
Now of course, the big Canadian Premiere of Rob Zombie’s latest effort entitled ‘The Devil’s Rejects is occuring none other than this week. Many people have been looking forward to this film, including myself, and it has already sold out. Now, Rob Zombie’s first film, ‘House of a Thousand Corpses’ was a pure dedication to Tobe Hooper and all of the classic cult films of the 1970′s but this time around, Rob Zombie tried something different. He’s creating a nice revenge flick which will probably cause this film to have a lot more actual acting than the first part. This time around, the fathers of the people who were killed in part one are back and they are ready to avenge the killers. Seems simplistic and well it is, but I’m confident that Rob Zombie will do something good with this film. The other film which a lot of people are looking forward to is none other than the Japanese action flick entitled Ashura. The film was actually shown in the first week and was praised by all who attended therefore, the organizers decided to give it a little encore. Sadly, I missed it the first week therefore I will be surely checking it out.
At the end of it all, this second week will surely be off the top and many people will have a blast once more. All I can say is, “Show me an Encore!”
I saw the documentary Propaganda yesterday at the festival and it was worth my $6 for sure. The director was in the audience, he introduced the movie , explaining he had almost gotten arrested for taking pictures of billboard in Europe a couple days before so imagine filming this movie, it must of been quite something!!! Ron English is an amazing artist, an activist, but also a criminal since he’s got a passion for hijacking billboards. He’s done prison for it in the past, he’s wife brought him on some stupid show to get him to stop, but he’s obsessed and has been for almost 30 years now. He also sells paintings these days mostly representing TV icons but with a twist. I must urge you to see it on big screen, it’s worth it, full of vibrant colours and amazing arts. The message is intelligent and show us how advertising can be bad for us,bad for our kids, bad for our culture. Soundtrack is all about Ron English since he wanted to beat the world records of Sadam Hussein. (He had the most songs written about one person, that is until Ron English beat his ass!)
Tonight I’m gonna Enter the realm of one of the greatest living surrealists and take the opportunity to see Joe Coleman perform live and watch his documentary which should be a bit more extreme, but that’s what I like!
As an admirer of Ron English and Adbuster Magazine, I find it ironic that the very people who thoughtlessly desecrate beautiful landscapes with ugly billboards get their knickers in a twist when someone dares to retaliate by altering just a few of these monstrosities. However, I also believe that, in order to be effective, this has to be done right in order to keep the viewer’s eye focused on the point you are trying to make. Accordingly, it’s kind of a shame that English spelled “Republicans” wrong on the poster which illustrates the article. I’d love to chuckle at a perfect joke, but I find myself tsk-tsking and shaking my head at the missed opportunity.
Having seen several films as part of Fantasia Festival,I saw this excellent action drama movie”Breaking News” and definitely say–THis is a WINNER!!! There was never a dull moment and my attention was kept throughout right from the beginning with the many powerful suspenseful tense thrilling scenes, lots of violence, lots of action,blood scenes, gun-shooting scenes etc. This thriller is intelligently well-written,well directed,and has an interesting plot with an excellent cast. The plot is simply–Hong Kong police will do everything to keep FACE!!
A Winner–see the movie!!
Does anybody really care about a film made by Rob Zombie? We all watched his last film called “House of 1000 Corpses” and how bad it was and it was also considered on of the worst movies of 2003. I have seen the trailer for “The Devils Rejects” and it is so bad that I can’t picture why anyone would want to watch this crap and waste your time. I really don’t like the Fantasia film festival because they show these really cheesy B movies. The only good B movie that I have ever watched was “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”