Visit our sister site:
Follow us on
Headline, Industry News
Toronto After Dark Film Festival Award winners announced
Monday August 30th 2010By TO411 staff writer Daisy Maclean
Another year of record breaking votes has been tallied and the winners have been announced for the wrap of the 2010 Toronto After Dark Film Festival. At only five years old, the festival is already ranked among the top six festivals in the world for its genre and dedicates itself to championing independent films from the horror, sci-fi, action and cult films to thousands of fans.
Taking home the Gold Audience Award for Best Feature and Fan Choice Award for Best Horror Film was Eli Roth’s The Last Exorcism; the Gold Vision Award for Best Independent Feature went to Heartless; and the Gold Audience Award for Best Canadian Short went to Junko’s Shamisen. Below are just two of the delightfully bizarre films that were recognised by the Fans’ Choice Awards, which polled over 100 all-access pass holders in the week after the festival to select the winners in a range of different film categories.
Doghouse: Winner of Best Ensemble Cast and Best Make-Up, this outrageous new English zombie comedy from Jake West takes the war of the sexes to a whole new level. When one of their friends ends up in the middle of an ugly divorce, this group of British men plan an uplifting lad’s weekend to the small English village of Moodley, where the women outnumber the men 3-1. Unfortunately by the time they get there the women are indeed ravenous for flesh, but in an entirely different way! The women have been turned into man-eating-zombies by a government experiment appropriately named, “Operation Cathouse.” This film is sexist, but consciously so. Capturing the stereotypical British lad with an eye akin to Ken Loach’s Tickets, the film urges you to both support and condemn the characters. With lines like “Now is not the time to stop objectifying women,” this film pushes past the boundaries of political correctness so far and with such hilarious results, it’s impossible to take offense.
High School: Winner of Best Comedy, Best Soundtrack and tied with Doghouse for Best Ensemble Cast, this film is destined to be the next Ridgemont-High-type cult sensation. When Henry is only days away from graduating with a perfect GPA and being declared Valedictorian, he takes a risk and smokes a joint only to find out the school has just implemented a no-tolerance policy to drugs and will be testing everyone’s urine the next day. In order to evade expulsion he makes a plan with his long time pal Travis to get the entire school high and thus negate the test. Hijinx ensue. High School is insane, ridiculous and intensely funny. It has a level of sophistication in the production that makes it hard to believe this was not a studio film. Even harder to believe is that this film, a fan favourite at Sundance, was still on the market to distributors when it screened in Toronto. The audience response at the end of the film alone should be enough to convince any discerning distributor that in the right hands this film can be as generational and long lasting as The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
For a full list of the 2010 festival winners, please go to the Toronto After Dark website.
Headline, Industry News
Toronto After Dark Film Festival Award winners announced
Monday August 30th 2010By TO411 staff writer Daisy Maclean
Another year of record breaking votes has been tallied and the winners have been announced for the wrap of the 2010 Toronto After Dark Film Festival. At only five years old, the festival is already ranked among the top six festivals in the world for its genre and dedicates itself to championing independent films from the horror, sci-fi, action and cult films to thousands of fans.
Taking home the Gold Audience Award for Best Feature and Fan Choice Award for Best Horror Film was Eli Roth’s The Last Exorcism; the Gold Vision Award for Best Independent Feature went to Heartless; and the Gold Audience Award for Best Canadian Short went to Junko’s Shamisen. Below are just two of the delightfully bizarre films that were recognised by the Fans’ Choice Awards, which polled over 100 all-access pass holders in the week after the festival to select the winners in a range of different film categories.
Doghouse: Winner of Best Ensemble Cast and Best Make-Up, this outrageous new English zombie comedy from Jake West takes the war of the sexes to a whole new level. When one of their friends ends up in the middle of an ugly divorce, this group of British men plan an uplifting lad’s weekend to the small English village of Moodley, where the women outnumber the men 3-1. Unfortunately by the time they get there the women are indeed ravenous for flesh, but in an entirely different way! The women have been turned into man-eating-zombies by a government experiment appropriately named, “Operation Cathouse.” This film is sexist, but consciously so. Capturing the stereotypical British lad with an eye akin to Ken Loach’s Tickets, the film urges you to both support and condemn the characters. With lines like “Now is not the time to stop objectifying women,” this film pushes past the boundaries of political correctness so far and with such hilarious results, it’s impossible to take offense.
High School: Winner of Best Comedy, Best Soundtrack and tied with Doghouse for Best Ensemble Cast, this film is destined to be the next Ridgemont-High-type cult sensation. When Henry is only days away from graduating with a perfect GPA and being declared Valedictorian, he takes a risk and smokes a joint only to find out the school has just implemented a no-tolerance policy to drugs and will be testing everyone’s urine the next day. In order to evade expulsion he makes a plan with his long time pal Travis to get the entire school high and thus negate the test. Hijinx ensue. High School is insane, ridiculous and intensely funny. It has a level of sophistication in the production that makes it hard to believe this was not a studio film. Even harder to believe is that this film, a fan favourite at Sundance, was still on the market to distributors when it screened in Toronto. The audience response at the end of the film alone should be enough to convince any discerning distributor that in the right hands this film can be as generational and long lasting as The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
For a full list of the 2010 festival winners, please go to the Toronto After Dark website.
Leave a Reply
Headline, Industry News
Toronto After Dark Film Festival Award winners announced
Monday August 30th 2010By TO411 staff writer Daisy Maclean
Another year of record breaking votes has been tallied and the winners have been announced for the wrap of the 2010 Toronto After Dark Film Festival. At only five years old, the festival is already ranked among the top six festivals in the world for its genre and dedicates itself to championing independent films from the horror, sci-fi, action and cult films to thousands of fans.
Taking home the Gold Audience Award for Best Feature and Fan Choice Award for Best Horror Film was Eli Roth’s The Last Exorcism; the Gold Vision Award for Best Independent Feature went to Heartless; and the Gold Audience Award for Best Canadian Short went to Junko’s Shamisen. Below are just two of the delightfully bizarre films that were recognised by the Fans’ Choice Awards, which polled over 100 all-access pass holders in the week after the festival to select the winners in a range of different film categories.
Doghouse: Winner of Best Ensemble Cast and Best Make-Up, this outrageous new English zombie comedy from Jake West takes the war of the sexes to a whole new level. When one of their friends ends up in the middle of an ugly divorce, this group of British men plan an uplifting lad’s weekend to the small English village of Moodley, where the women outnumber the men 3-1. Unfortunately by the time they get there the women are indeed ravenous for flesh, but in an entirely different way! The women have been turned into man-eating-zombies by a government experiment appropriately named, “Operation Cathouse.” This film is sexist, but consciously so. Capturing the stereotypical British lad with an eye akin to Ken Loach’s Tickets, the film urges you to both support and condemn the characters. With lines like “Now is not the time to stop objectifying women,” this film pushes past the boundaries of political correctness so far and with such hilarious results, it’s impossible to take offense.
High School: Winner of Best Comedy, Best Soundtrack and tied with Doghouse for Best Ensemble Cast, this film is destined to be the next Ridgemont-High-type cult sensation. When Henry is only days away from graduating with a perfect GPA and being declared Valedictorian, he takes a risk and smokes a joint only to find out the school has just implemented a no-tolerance policy to drugs and will be testing everyone’s urine the next day. In order to evade expulsion he makes a plan with his long time pal Travis to get the entire school high and thus negate the test. Hijinx ensue. High School is insane, ridiculous and intensely funny. It has a level of sophistication in the production that makes it hard to believe this was not a studio film. Even harder to believe is that this film, a fan favourite at Sundance, was still on the market to distributors when it screened in Toronto. The audience response at the end of the film alone should be enough to convince any discerning distributor that in the right hands this film can be as generational and long lasting as The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
For a full list of the 2010 festival winners, please go to the Toronto After Dark website.
Leave a Reply
Advertisements
