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Film Friday: Santo y Nacho Libre Contra El Uwe Boll
Oh man! This week’s big news in films comes from a crazy place called Vancouver??? We know! Torontoist have never heard of it either, but apparently it’s in Canada! Wild! So anyway, it’s clearly going to be an exciting place to be come September, as the famous for being terrible German director Uwe Boll wants to have a fight with YOU. Yes, you! As long as in the year of 2005 you’ve written two articles insulting him (and you’re in-shape, male and weigh between 64 and 86 kilograms) you can, apparently, fight him in a boxing ring as an extra in his big screen remake of Postal, the rubbish and intentionally controversial shoot-em-up from Running with Scissors.
Of course, much like Postal’s idiotically extreme violence, this little press release is just to get Uwe Boll some cheap publicity, but we’ll give it to him anyway. After all, we can but hope someone really, really hurts him, right?
Speaking of videogames, though, this week’s new film releases includes The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which is being advertised with this kind of an incredulous, wide eyed amazement at the idea of drift racing. But, come on! Everyone who has ever played a driving game knows what it is. Dear lord, even Mario Kart uses drifting, which means the makers of this film think you’re less intelligent than an 8 year old with a Gamecube.
Ahem. Thank goodness Nacho Libre is out, eh? We haven’t seen it yet, and, yes, we loved Napoleon Dynamite, but then that’s probably only because we weren’t in college at the time it was released, so happened to entirely miss out on people endlessly screaming quotes from it in our face. And you know, we’re not in college now either, so we imagine we’ll like Jared Hess’s personal take on the truths behind the mask of the luchadore. Good or bad, it’s nice to see a return of the Mexican wrestler to our screens – ah, El Santo, how we’ve missed ye.
Plenty of other stuff out this week too, though – from crossword documentary Wordplay (yes, you read that correctly) architect documentary Sketches of Frank Gehry to Korean blockbuster Typhoon, but you shouldn’t forget that the Worldwide Short Film Festival is still running (until June 18th) and it’s remaining shows have been covered in fine form by Eye’s team here. To be honest we’re kicking ourselves for not getting our act together and getting accredited to cover it in greater detail for you, as there’s great stuff on, like the music video spotlight Scene Not Herd (9:15pm, June 16th, Isabel Bader) and Sci-Fi: Out There (June 18th, 9:30pm, Innis Town Hall) but what can you do, eh?
(Check out some short films anyway, that’s what.)
The town is still choking with festivals though, readers – there’s the Female Eye Film Festival which just started last night, before the Reelheart Film Festival starts on the 19th, followed by the Art of Love Film Festival on the 20th. The Art of Love fest looks pretty good, actually, opening with a screening of Wong Kar-Wai’s tremendous In the Mood For Love (9:30pm, June 20th), and also a showing of Belle Du Jour (9:00pm, June 23rd), all showing at the Bloor.
Crikey, and we can’t forget the Portuguese Film Festival starting on the 21st. Yikes.