News: Fantasia 2006

Fantasia, the North American premier genre film festival, will be offering quite an eclectic lineup for its tenth edition. Over the course of 18 days it will present more than 90 features and 125 short films from over 15 countries. Fantasia will be held in Montreal from July 6th to July 24th, at the Concordia Hall Theatre (1455 Maisonneuve W.) and J.A. de Sève Cinema (1400 Maisonneuve W.).

On the Asian landscape we first note that the festival is showing 26 movies from Japan! Unfortunately it includes only one anime: Fullmetal Alchemist The Movie: Conqueror of Shambala.

The Japanese live-action movies of notable interest include Arthouse Ultraman, Shusuke Kaneko's Azumi 2: Love Or Death, Funky Forest: The First Contact, Takeshi Miike's Great Yokai War, Samurai Commando Mission 1549, Shinobi, Negadon: The Monster From Mars (short), and Train Man.

Also showing from Japan: The All-Out Nine: Field Of Nightmares, Black Kiss, Death Trance, Executive Koala, The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai, Shusuke Kaneko's God's Left Hand, Devil's Right Hand, The iDol (short), Meatball Machine, Mirror man (short), Mirror Man Reflex, Norabbits Minutes (short), Reincarnation, Strange Circus, Sukeban Boy, Synesthesia, Tokyo Zombie, and Zombie Self-Defense Force.

Also three Japanese guests will attend the festival: Toro Matsuura (Synesthesia), Sion Sono (Strange Circus), and Takeshi Yagi (Arthouse Ultraman).

The festival will show 5 movies from Hong-Kong. We recommand Jeff Lau's A Chinese Tall Story and Tsui Hark's Seven Swords, but there's also Dirty Ho, The Five Venoms, and Re-Cycle.

The festival will show 10 movies from Korea: The Art Of Fighting, A Bittersweet Life, Blood Rain, Murder, Take One, My Scary Girl, Princess Aurora, The Red Shoes, Sunday Seoul, Typhoon, and Vampire Cop Ricky.

Finally, we've noted one potentially interesting film from Philipines, Exodus, and one from Russia Aziris Nuna. For details on the other movies, check the festival web page.

Bon festival!