Tag Archives: Documentary

[Fantasia 2021] Who’s the Master with Dreams & Monsters? Mad Gods?

19 Aug

Mad God (2021) - IMDbFantasia Film Festival 2021
Available to Stream on Aug 22 & 24
Tickets purchases available here.

Mad Dreams & Monsters is available in The Monster Collection (Amazon USA Link)

Anyone who saw Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters before going to see Mad God at Fantasia Film Festival is ahead of the game when getting to know how this film came to be. No prior knowledge is necessary, but this documentary by Gilles Penso and Alexandre Ponce will help. It’s a love letter to the man, and every film he made movie magic in. It includes his contributions to television (The Pillsbury Dough Boy) too. 

The transition to filmmaking took place when he met Dennis Muren who was looking for talents to staff Industrial Light & Magic. He is the creative mind behind realizing Dejarik, a weird chess-like game that Chewie and R2D2 played in episode IV and since then, his cinematic legacy was set in stone. The fact he had to recreate it for the new trilogy meant looking for those original molds and casts. 

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[Fantasia 2021] A History on Folk Horror in Woodlands Documentary Review

13 Aug

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Fantasia Film Festival 2021
Available to view on demand

For screenings near you, please visit the official webpage

Clocking in at over three hours, woodland is a very detailed examination of what defines folk horror and on what the seminal films are. Kier-La Janisse certainly knows the cinematic realm to the tee, and I’d have to rewatch this work to catalogue all the movies referenced. I’d take breaks just because there’s a lot of terrific information to soak in.

The Unholy Trinity of “Witchfinder General,” “Blood on Satan’s Claw,” and “The Wicker Man” are referenced and rightly so. They helped define this new genre of cinematic folk horror. And thankfully, instead of focusing on the output from one country, many other worlds are looked at. Not every film is examined, and neither is every movie noted. The runtime doesn’t do the look at world cinema justice. Continue reading →

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[Fantasia 2021] Alien on Stage is Freakishly Funny!

11 Aug

ALIEN ON STAGE THE DOCUMENTARY by Danielle Kummer — Kickstarter

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Fantasia Film Festival 2021
Available to Scream, er Stream On Demand
Tickets can be purchased here

Not everyone will have visited West End in London to see Alien on Stage when it first premiered. This theatrical take of the movie by Ridley Scott is not meant to be a high budget performance, but a comedic Fringe Festival like to take. Their parody performance is one for the ages. The documentary makers Lucy Harvey and Danielle Kummer deserve a standing ovation for being involved in following the theatre troupe from its inception to its inaugural performance.

Half the crew are bus drivers from Dorset, England and the other are simply close family and friends with a varying range of acting ability. They are an amateur group of community theatre performers, and I was amazed at how they got their act together. This team did their research and props to them when considering they didn’t have too high of a budget! The stage uses curtains and lighting to alter where the crew of the USCSS Nostromo are throughout the ship.

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CNN’s The Movies Canadian Debut on Hollywood Suite, A Review

7 Aug

The Movies (miniseries) - WikipediaBy Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Canadian Debut
Now available on Hollywood Suite Network’s On Demand (please check provider) & beginning Aug 10.

The six-part CNN Original docu-series The Movies explores the movies that specifically came out of Hollywood. Although this focus drifts in later parts, each 90 minute segment (sans commercials) explores the influential films from each decade and there’s a lot! This work was released in 2019 to select markets and is making its Canadian debut on the Hollywood Suite Network next week.

Starting with the 70s (Instead of the Golden Age) as its first episode, we learn why going to the movies is important. The world has been enjoying cinema since the late 1890s with the silent film era–a time I thought was strangely not explored. Some info is offered when the film medium took off circa 1913. However, by the start of the talkies, those previous works aren’t always remembered. To explore the films from 1914 to 1969 is a vast range, and this series doesn’t explain why it’s all lumped together. The half-hour introduction explains why the people of the Depression era flocked to theatres. They wanted their daily news and escapism. Not immediately revealed was how World War II would influence the shorts offered; a lot of that material was propaganda.

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A ‘Monster’ Talk with The Frankenstein Complex Filmmakers & Its Release, and Interview

3 Aug

Gilles Penso – Movies, Bio and Lists on MUBI

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Since the early days of Hollywood becoming the hub of movie-making to now, the approaches to making monsters come alive often required experimenting. The first creature creations were Dracula and Frankenstein. However, historians know Georges Méliès The Haunted Castle (1897) had skeletons dancing about. It wasn’t until Thomas Edison‘s 1910 short film, Frankenstein’s Monster, that gave Americans a taste of what cinematics can offer! Lon Chaney‘s contributions in how to achieve the horrific only furthered the horror film genre in its infancy. He took extremes in his makeup design to become the Man of a Thousand Faces.

Much of this history is quickly explored in directors Gilles Penso and Alexandre Poncet documentary Creature Designers: The Frankenstein Complex, but it hurries to get to the masters from the 60s and onwards. Their passion is certainly very evident. But it should be noted It’s tough to pack a complete look of creation of monsters in cinema with a 107 min runtime. A lot of details like the why isn’t always delved into–that’s all saved for the blu-ray package which consists of two documentaries, many extended interviews and an interactive video, which is now available to purchase online (like Amazon USA).

Alexandre Poncet - UniFrance

The standalone documentary scratches the surface to what makes a monster appear magical on screen. The latest documentary on Phil Tippett shows why he’s so deserving of those Oscars he earned over the years. He’s also being honoured at Fantasia Fest 2021 as his stop-motion pièce de résistance film, Mad Gods, debuts!

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