I was lucky enough to see Ong Bak Muay Thai Warrior at Midnight Madness and Tony Jaa kicking the hell out of people with his legs on fire at the Uptown Theatre on a screen tens of carol's high.  I'm looking forward to seeing Tony Jaa's return to Midnight Madness with Ong Bak 2: The Beginning at Ryerson tonight, which he directed, did the action choreography for and dances in. (Yay, Khon!) And I'm happy to close out the Gentlemen of Asskickery with Tony Jaa / Thatchakorn Yeerum (nee Panom Yeerum).

Tony Jaa is a student of Panna Rittikrai and started out on Panna's Muay Thai Stunt team.  He played a villainous supporting role in Spirited Killer and was a stunt double in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation before Prachya Pinkaew cast him for Ong Bak Muay Thai Warrior making him the most popular action star in Thailand, though some say Dan Chupong is the next big thing. Maybe we'll see in Ong Bak 3.

And Tony Jaa played Hanuman the Monkey King at the ceremonies for the 1st Asian Martial Arts Games in August, 2009.

Here's footage of Tony Jaa practicing for Ong Bak Muay Thai Warrior. There's some hopped up choral music, too.

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning ends TIFF tonight Saturday September 19 at 11:59pm - RYERSON

And my respect to all you people who got up to catch the 9:45am screening. You're hardcore.

Leading up to tonight's Midnight Madness screening of Ong Bak 2:  The Beginning, I've been posting profiles of some Gentlemen of Asskickery. But with Bitch Slap at Midnight Madness this year, it's time to return to the Ladies of Asskickery.  As my blog colleagues have mentioned. Zoë Bell did the fight choreography and was the stunt double for all three women in Bitch Slap.  Bell was the stunt double for Lucy Lawless in Xena: Warrior Princess and Uma Thurman's stunt double in the Kill Bill movies. Along with stunt woman/stunt coordinator Jeannie Epper (Wonder Woman), Bell was one of the subjects of the fantastic documentary, Double Dare.  And she starred in and performed her own stunts in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Ed Brubaker's Angel of Death web series.

Here's a little look at her in action:

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning screens tonight at TIFF: Saturday September 19, 11:59pm - RYERSON. 

Cineuropa devotes an entire Film Focus section to A Town Called Panic.  Cineuropa has posted the trailer, a photo gallery, film details and a review as well as corraling directors Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar for an interview at Cannes. The detail that stuck out for me:

"For the film, we made a total of 1,500 figurines. Horse is the character who required the most, for he had many different positions…we used perhaps 130 or 140 figurines. For Cowboy and Indian, we used around 100 each. On the other hand, Policeman has four or five different positions because he’s stiff and doesn’t move… he’s a policeman."

And if you'd like to get a sense of what they're writing about, here's half of the episode, "Cake." (Atom.com has more with an entire A Town Called Panic channel with many, many episodes).

A Town Called Panic screens at TIFF on:  Friday September 18th, 11:59PM - Ryerson Theatre / Saturday September 19th, 3:45PM - AMC 3.

One of the resons I'm looking forward to Hitoshi Matsumoto's Symbol tonight is that respectable art cinema and I have a long history. It might not seem like it now, but I've done my time with scenes of people smoking and broken televisions and heavy eyeliner and blue filters, repetitive gestures and symbolic colors and abstract animation and the rain. Lonely wheeling seagulls and the failure of communication.

So Symbol's teaser alone makes me laugh. I mean, if your past is riddled with respectable and artsy film, cherubs emerging penis first from the walls of an empty white room should at least seem familiar.

Symbol screens at TIFF on: Thursday September 17, 11:59 pm - RYERSON / Saturday September 19, 12:00 pm - CUMBERLAND 1.

Ken'ichi Matsuyama's back at the festival starring in another live-action manga adaption. Last year, Matsuyama starred in one of my favorite MM movies ever, Detroit Metal City based on the eponymous manga.  And he's also starred as L in the live action adaptation of Death Note.  And this year he stars in an adaption of Sanpei Shirato's  Kamui Gaiden, in which he plays a ninja fleeing his ninja clan--and it's screening in the daytime (in fact, today and Saturday morning.

How crazy is that the madness has infected the festival to the point that not only is a viking film playing the non-Madness program, a ninja film is? At this rate, I look forward to Sonny Chiba's presenting some of his favorite films in Dialogues program.  After all, he's not only a ninjitsu master, he's a guest professor in film studies at Kyoto University of Art and Design.

Let's have a little Gentleman of Asskickery moment with Sonny Chiba:

Kamui Gaiden's final screening at TIFF is on: Saturday September 19, 09:45AM - AMC 3

"Already a winged fiend was at his throat and there was no time to draw and fire his other pistol.  Kane saw, in a maze of thrashing wings, a devilish, semi-human face--he felt those wings battering at him--he felt cruel talons sink deep into his breast; then he was dragged off his feet and felt empty space beneath him.

The winged man had wrapped his limbs about the Englishman's legs, and the talons he had driven into Kane's breast muscles held like fanged vises.  The wolf-like fangs drove at Kane's throat but the Puritan gripped the bony throat and thrust back the grisly head, while with his right hand he strove to draw his dirk.  The bird-man was mounting slowly and a fleeting glance showed Kane that they were already high above the trees.  The Englishman did not hope to survive this battle in the sky, for even if he slew his foe, he would be dashed to death in the fall.  But with the innate ferocity of the fighting Anglo-Saxon he set himself grimly to take his captor with him."

(Robert E. Howard. The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane. New York: Ballantine, 1998: 291)

(image via The Pulp Reader)

Solomon Kane screens at TIFF on: Wednesday, Sept. 16 11:59PM - RYERSON / Thursday Sept. 17 3:15 PM - SCOTIABANK 1

I could watch Bitch Slap's opening title slaps all day long--actresses from the silent era to weepy era Joan Crawford to glorious technicolor slapping away.

But Bitch Slap isn't silent or weepy. It's shot in the lurid color of exploitation cinema. The red's a little too red, but not quite out of control.  The whole movie has that under control feel, but really, I don't mind. It's a well-made, well-structured film and I was thoroughly entertained. If it were pure shake that moneymaker id, I'm not sure it would be as fun because for every Russ Meyer there's a thousand crappy filmmakers hoping cleavage is enough. And I appreciate writer Eric Gruendemann and writer/director Rick Jacobson's approach to cleavage.  Somehow they and the actors manage to make the sexy ladyness simultaneously hot for those looking for hot and hilarious for those who are looking for hilarious. We can all sit happily together in the theater. I doubt that's easy. 

And I really appreciate America Olivo's tweakin' insanity as Camero, the thief and underground fighter. She was transcendentally over the top.  It kinda reminded me of Bruce Campbell at his most manic. 

Last chance to see Bitch Slap at TIFF on: Wednesday September 16, 3:15 SCOTIABANK THEATRE 3

How about getting ready for Solomon Kane with some pulpy, pulpy dialog like, “A strong man is needed to combat Satan here! Therefore I go, who have defied him many a time!” 

Hell, how about a whole section from "The Castle of Devil":

Kane sighed. "It has fallen upon me, now and again in my sojourns through the world, to ease various evil men of their lives.  I have a feeling that it will prove thus with the Baron."

"Name of two devils!" swore Silent in amazement.  "You speak as if you were a judge on a bench and Baron Von Staler bound helpless before you, instead of being as it is--you but one blade and the Baron surrounded by men-at-arms."

"The right is on my side," said Kane somberly.  "And right is mightier than a thousand men-at-arms.  But why all this talk?  I have not yet seen the Baron, and who am I to pass judgment unseen.  Mayhap the Baron is a righteous man." More...

Johnnie To and Wai Ka-Fai have another film at the festival this year. Vengeance, starring Johnny Hallyday and Anthony Wong Chau-Sang as hitmen seeking revenge for the death of Hallyday's family. But Hallyday and Wong have something more in common outside the movie.  They're both musicians.

Hallyday is a rock star in France who became famous in the 1960s.  Anthony Wong is a little more punk rock.  They might not throw down in the film, but I can arrange a musical throwdown right here.

Ladies and gentleman, click the links for Johnny Hallyday in a 1960s scopitone and Anthony Wong, with maybe a little Xavier Jamaux influence.

Vengeance screens at TIFF on:  Tuesday September 15 09:15PM - RYERSON / Thursday September 17, 3:30PM - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 3.

I never went to my high school prom and I've never felt bad about it either, despite all the sit coms and YA romantic comedies making them seem like the best night in a girl's life. Even in my tender years, I knew what happened at proms.  Bad things--not just pictures of a dress I'd regret or peach schnapps or awkwardness.

No, bad things like pigs' blood, hellhounds and murderous revenge. And if you hadn't done something like taunted a girl to her apparent death so that later you watch your friends die in inventive ways till finally you are killed yourself, then it's the pig's blood crowning for you. A choice between murderous vengeance or pig's blood followed by murderous vengeance isn't much of a choice at all.

Or if it's neither, there's always hellhounds hurtling up from the hellmouth your high school is built on. And, by the looks of it, things won't go much better for the prom king in The Loved Ones, though I wish him well.  There's just no escape from an angry and/or wronged prom queen, not even one from 1957. 

Jamie Lee Curtis is subtly warning you.

 It's just not going to go well. Really. 

Hellhounds are a constant danger!

The Loved Ones screens at TIFF on: Sunday September 11, 11:59PM - RYERSON / Tuesday September 15, 3:30PM - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2 / Thursday September 17, 6:30PM - VARSITY 4

With George Romero's Survival of the Dead screening tonight, all the undead want to look their best. There are several sites to help you (like here and here), but here's a few basic tips for zombies and vampires alike.

Want the ghastly pallor of death? Avoid clown white. Unless you are a vampire or zombie clown, which are admittedly the most frightening of the undead. If you aren't, try a foundation or base 2 shades lighter than your own skin.

Try other colors for shading than black. Use a red or brown eyeliner or eyeshadow to enhance pallor, sunken eyes and cheeks. Try a blue lipstick for bruising and cyanotic chic. Yellow's good for sick and ready to blow a viral load. Go easy on the theatrical grease paint.

Go Green! Yes, from EC comics to Zombie Lake to Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy, green zombies are a classy and classic look! Use all the black and red you want. Huge black raccoon eyes emphasizing your orbits are where it's at. Consider stopping all color at the jawline and bringing raspberry or strawberry jam for spitting.

 And unless, you're looking for the Zombie Lake look, avoid water based pigments, especially tempera or watercolor paints. Stick with the theatrical oil based paints and put them over a base of facial cleanser or tiny amount of cold cream.

Paul Stanley says, “Powder it, baby!” and “Don't Touch!” no matter how itchy it gets and you shouldn't doubt Paul Stanley's cosmetic advice. Well, unless, Alice Cooper, Marilyn Manson or Rob Zombie disagree.

 Rob Zombie is ready to evaluate your look.

The Toronto Zombie Walk terrorizes TIFF on Saturday September 12 starting at 3pm in Alexandra Park and ending at 6pm at Yonge/Dundas Square with a free screening of Night of the Living Dead. (And starts up again in the Midnight Madness line).

George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead screens at TIFF on:  Saturday September 12, 11:59PM - RYERSON / Monday September 14, 12:30PM - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2

The press just can't get enough of Colin with his fancy new beard and his winsomely unbuttoned work shirts. He's the programmer equivalent of Megan Fox (Jennifer's Body) or Xavier Samuel (The Loved Ones) and The Toronto Star is clearly smitten.

"I've been with the film festival for 23 years. I was an audience member for nine years. I know what works and what doesn't at midnight," says Geddes. "If you're a diehard film festivalgoer, there's a possibility that you've already seen three or four films. This could be your fifth film. You're tired. It's my job to wake you up."

 Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter is "succumbing to the madness":

Filmmakers love the midnight showings partly because the crowds lining up to get in are zealous moviegoers who are not afraid to show how they feel about a film. And fest organizers are eager to court their enthusiasm, even if it means deviating a bit from Toronto's reputation as a prestige fest. "We're not trying to be the six o'clock film and we don't have the chi-chi parties," said "Body" producer Dan Dubiecki, who is also in Toronto with "Up In the Air" and "Chloe." "Midnight Madness is the party. It's the party for the die-hard fans."

But best of all, The National Post has "Tales from TIFF!" a two-page comic spread with Colin in graphic form telling the story of the infamous 2006 Borat screening!

Click it! Click it! Click it!

Before Kull and Bran Mak Morn and Conan, there was Solomon Kane, Howard's first adventuring swordsman. Swordsman and puritan. I love that Howard would even think of something like that. While other puritans are busy writing sermons like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” or persecuting and being persecuted, Solomon Kane is out buckling his swash or blowing the smoke off his flintlocks in a suspiciously papist sash. Faced with dying and violated white girls, the arrow of Kane's wrath trembles on the string, but he's not interested in the carnal world.

It's just God's will, ma'am.

In the stories, his wandering and killing are simply extensions of God's will and there isn't much of Kane's inner life. He is constant. And so, more than once, Solomon Kane travels to an Africa with the racialized portrayals and patois typical of the time, but with an almost Lovecraftian twist in The Black God and a secret vampire kingdom. I expect in the movie there will be less racial sketchiness.  I also expect there will be a more complex and explicit motivation for Kane's wandering and more self-examination, which is good for a movie.

But I'm awful fond of the stolid, single-minded Solomon Kane in Weird Tales.

(Solomon Kane drawing by Joel Priddy, creator of The Preposterous Voyages of Ironhide Tom and "The Amazing Life of Onion Jack").

Solomon Kane screens at TIFF on:  Wednesday, Sept. 16 11:59PM - RYERSON / Thursday Sept. 17 3:15 PM - SCOTIABANK 1

Dan Chupong / Deaw Chupong Changprung is uncredited in Ong Bak 2: The Beginning but he's the guy on the elephant in that poster with Tony Jaa.  And in 6 years, he's gone from his first screen credit as "bodyguard #4" in Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior to co-starring in Ong Bak 3.  (Yes, Ong Bak 2 has already opened and Ong Bak 3 is in production in Thailand).  Like Tony Jaa, he started out a member of Panna Rittikrai's Muay Thai Stunt team taking extra parts and after his bit part in Ong Bak has been the lead in Dynamite Warrior (Khon Fai Bin / Konfaibin / Tabunfire) and the 2004 remake of Panna Rittikrai's Born to Fight as well as being featured in Sahamongkol's gargantuan 2008 costume epic/fantasy, Queens of Langkasuka.

His style isn't necessarily as graceful as Tony Jaa's but he's powerful, fast and entertaining to watch while he breaks bad guys' bones and  keeps ramming his knees into their organs.

Here he is in the fight that opens Dynamite Warrior:

 I fear his deadly knees!

Just to get in the mood for historicall asskickery, here's a still from the same film and a poster of his character from Queens of Langkasuka.

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning screens at TIFF on: Saturday September 19, 9:45am -SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2 / Saturday September 19, 11:59pm - RYERSON.

MSN pays special attention to TIFF and all the programs and films this year.  But on page 2, there's some extra special love for the Midnight Madness program and Colin Geddes, who talks about a movie he's excited about:

"I'm really excited to show an Australian film called 'The Loved Ones,' that's a directorial debut by a young man named Sean Byrne. And that's one of the joys of being a film festival programmer: being able to showcase and champion a filmmaker that no one knows anything about. I mean, that's basically what happened with Eli Roth when we showed 'Cabin Fever' [in 2002], and I would describe 'The Loved Ones' as 'Misery' meets 'Carrie' meets 'Pretty in Pink' from Australia."

And there's some sound advice:

"Geddes advises you to talk to your fellow line members as you wait for films to get a sense of what they've loved, and maybe get a surprise. "I remember back in the day, 1990 or 1991, there was this one guy I kept seeing all the time who just looked like this hung-over reporter, and I saw him line up all the time," Geddes says. "And then, lo and behold, [writer-director Quentin Tarantino] got up onstage and introduced 'Reservoir Dogs.' You never know who you're gonna be beside. When you're in an audience for a film, you could be sitting beside the director, the director's mother, the producer or just some wonderful person who loves the same films as you do."

The Loved Ones screens at TIFF on: Sunday September 11, 11:59PM - RYERSON / Tuesday September 15, 3:30PM - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2 / Thursday September 17, 6:30PM - VARSITY 4

Ioncinema! profiles The Loved Ones director Sean Byrne. He talks about filmmaking, his favorite films and a little more about The Loved Ones.

"[I] woke up one morning thinking what if I fused Carrie and Evil Dead, bringing the Prom to the cabin and making its very traditions – the decorations, the dress up, the dancing and, of course, the crowning of the King and Queen – the instruments of torture. I got this image of a bloodied teenager in a tuxedo tied to a chair in the middle of a balloon littered floor. So then I started asking, who is this kid, why is he here and how’s he going to get out?"

He also talks a little bit about the film's eclectic influences from the fighting spirit of Rocky to the dreamy surrealism of David Lynch's films.

"In The Loved Ones, our damaged hero is dragged from the literal world into something vividly surreal. In a way it mixes the slick Bruckheimer/Simpson hero’s journey model with the surreal and subconscious elements you might expect from a Lynch film."

So last year with Chocolate star Jija Yannin making her debut at Midnight Madness, I did a little series, "Ladies of Asskickery," posting clips of Cheng Pei-Pei, Sue Shiomi / Shihomi Etsuko and Angela Mao Ying. With Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning set to kick all ass at TIFF, it's time to look at some Gentlemen of Asskickery.

Panna Rittikrai is probably best known to most Madness fans as Tony Jaa's guru and the martial arts choreographer for  Ong-Bak:  Muay Thai Warrior, Tom Yum Goong (aka The Protector) and the co-director of Ong Bak 2: The Beginning, but he's also made over 50 movies in the 1980s and 1990s with his Muay Thai Stunt Team. And he didn't do it in Bangkok. Influenced by Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, he moved back to Khon Kaen making zero budget movies built around what the human body can do. Well, what Panna Rittikrai, Tony Jaa and Dan Chupong can do.

 "You've probably never heard of my movies....They are popular among taxi drivers and som tam vendors and security guards and Isaan coolies. My loyalest fans are folk people in the far-out tambons, where they lay out mattresses on the ground and drink moonshine whisky while watching my outdoor movies."

So here's Panna Rittikrai training in Muay Thai Stunt's first film Kerd Ma Lui/ Born to Fight (1982). (Also written, directed by and starrying Panna Rittikrai and recently remade with Muay Thai Stunt member, Dan Chupong). Recognize any influences? 

Ong Bak 2: The Beginning screens at TIFF on: Saturday September 19, 9:45am -SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2 / Saturday September 19, 11:59pm - RYERSON.

Ah, the Toronto International Film Festival. If there’s a better festival, I haven’t been able to gain access to it yet. The eponymous Midnight Madness program, which hosts some of the festival’s most esoteric, bloody and gloriously genre filmmaking have announced their lineup this year, and It’s A Doozie.

The line up is worthy of all those capitals, but Midnight Madness isn't only an opportunity to see glorious genre films on the big screen. As Will at Dork Shelf says, it's a refuge for the geeky, freaky and creepy:

Midnight Madness has always been a favourite refuge for dorks like me at the Toronto International Film Festival.  Free of the stuffy attitude that plagues the rest of the festival, Midnight Madness is just about movies.  Awesome movies.  Midnight Madness is a showcase for the best in sci-fi, action, horror, animation and dark comedy from around the world.

See all you fans, geeks, freaks, creeps and dorks outside Ryerson!

(picture via The Cash Railway Website)

The audience was pretty sparse, almost entirely guys spacing themselves singly apart in the dark, not even contending for the acoustic sweet spot. We sat in a pack in the theater's center. There was a little rustling in the audience around us and I had my first inkling that we were making those lone guys uncomfortable. More...

FEARnet has an interview up with Daybreakers directors (and twin brothers), Peter and Michael Spierig, who previously brought Undead to Midnight Madness in 2002. They talk about vampire movies, their fears and how Daybreakers isn't influenced by I am Legend, the book or the movie at all.

"[T]he fact that we're doing a vampire movie is daunting, because there's so many of them out there. How do you do something that's different? And how do you make it more than just another b-movie, which the genre is? That's the big dilemma. We worked to try and do something different, which hopefully it is."

 Daybreakers screens at TIFF on:  Friday September 11, 11:59pm - RYERSON / Sunday September 13, 12:30pm SCOTIABANKTHEATER 2.

I don't know. I am doing my best to be spoiler free, though, I have to say my best hasn't been that good.

I do know that Ong Bak is the name of the Buddha stolen in the first movie and I suspect that the statue of a certain enlightened being will return in the second.  More...

Daybreakers, the Spierig Brothers' new film, imagines a vampire dystopia with bloodsucking captains of industry. Science fiction writer Peter Watts has a similar vision, albeit reversed with a pharmaceutical company engineering vampires for their untapped market potential. What could go wrong?

"Peter Watts narrates his brilliant slideshow that explains vampires from an evolutionary perspective, and then explains how humans can profit by harnessing their predators. Watts brings his experience as a scientist and his talent as a science-fiction writer to bear in creating this biting satire." (via  Jim Munroe at the Cultural Gutter).

Daybreakers screens at TIFF on: Friday September 11, 11:59 - RYERSON / Sunday September 13, 11:59 - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2. 

Jennifer's Body star Megan Fox has some wise words for kids experiencing the pain of peer pressure in high school.

But the pressure to conform doesn't stop at high school. If, like most women, you find yourself in the thrall of what some ritual specialist calls, "demonic possession," do what feels right to you, whether that's killing and eating all the boys in your school, swallowing guys' souls

or even having sex with Rick Moranis.

It's all about being true to yourself and facing yourself in the mirror, assuming you still have a reflection.

That's right, girlfriend, walk your own way!

 

Jennifer's Body screens at TIFF on: Thursday, September 10th, 11:59 - RYERSON / Saturday, September 12, 12:00pm - Ryerson / Thursday, September 17th, 8:30pm - VARSITY.

Seems like the Survival of the Dead promo character interview, "Survival of the Dead:  Sarge" is back infecting the internets, along with our brains.

George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead screens at TIFF on: Saturday September 12, 11:59PM - RYERSON & Monday September 14, 12:30PM - SCOTIABANK THEATRE 2