Final Screenings! THE MISSING GIRL, LACE CRATER, MEN & CHICKEN

Don't be a Sad Mads. Catch an afternoon screening of a Vanguard film!

Welp, it's the last day of the Festival and you still want to see some films.

Might we suggest the following Vanguard titles as good choices? Any of these would be a great way to spend your Sunday afternoon.

WE HAVE TWO TICKETS TO THE MISSING GIRL! Praise The Maker!

THE MISSING GIRL Final Screening:
Sun. Sept 20, 2:30PM SCOTIABANK 4

"Hello, can you tell me if the Official Vanguard Blog Mascot for 2015 has been announced yet?"

LACE CRATER Final Screening:
Sun. Sept 20, 3:15PM SCOTIABANK 9

Run like the wind! It's the final screening of Men & Chicken!

MEN & CHICKEN Final Screening:
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN: Anders Thomas Jensen Director Profile

Did you know that Anders Thomas Jensen is one of the filmmaking community's most prolific screenwriters? It's true!

Go check out his IMDB profile. We'll wait.

See what we mean? Since 1996 he's written 50 screenplays. That's like, a LOT of screenplays.

Some of these scripts have been for hugely successful and/or critically acclaimed films: Mifune's Last Song, In China They Eat Dogs, Open Hearts, Stealing Rembrandt, and Brothers. Several of these films have been directed by Danish dynamo Susanne Bier. More recently Jensen wrote A Second Chance (with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Kristian Levring's epic Western The Salvation (with Mads Mikkelsen, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Eva Green).

Although Jensen has only directed four of his own screenplays, that doesn't mean that those four movies are any less wonderful.

All right boys, we're gonna swim the HELL out of this lake!

Flickering Lights sets the stage for Jensen's ability to elicit empathy towards the most screwed up, unlikable characters you can imagine. It's also terrifically funny and touching, but not maudlin or cliché.

Mads Mikkelsen's very bald forehead just needs a few minutes to collect itself.

The Green Butchers was Jensen's next directorial effort and like Flickering Lights, itincludes Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Ole Thestrup, and Nicolas Bro. And nothing on the menu is vegetarian.

Hannibal Lecter is amused by your cannibal references.

Did you eat the last cookie?

Adam's Apples, again starring Mikkelsen, Thestrup, Bro, and Kaas, is another movie about severely dysfunctional people led by a dysfunctional pastor whose dysfunction is literally the only thing keeping them all from complete mental breakdowns. It's a whole lot funnier than it probably sounds and again, is surprisingly poignant.

The cheese will never stand alone if these three have anything to say about it.

Men & Chicken takes the same Jensen trademarks and amps them up to become even crazier and more hilarious and perhaps most shocking of all, genuinely heartwarming.

Don't miss Men & Chicken's final screening. It's a movie you won't soon forget. Trust us. We know these things.

MEN & CHICKEN Final Screening!
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN: More Madstache Movies

I brought you some cheese. And a sparkler. And my moustache.

Fearless Vanguarder and Midnight Madness Maven Carol Borden has taken you on a trip through the cinematic context of what we now refer to as "The Madstache." Now, we will guide your journey down Madstache Memory Lane.

Flickering Lights, 2000: You talkin' to me? Or you talkin' to my moustache?

King Arthur, 2004: Bonus Beard & Falcon! Which is the falcon & which is Mads? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Adam's Apples, 2005: It's OK. My moustache will protect you. Failing that, you have a gun.

Flame & Citroen, 2008: It still counts as a moustache, Sam Elliott. IT STILL COUNTS.

Coco & Igor , 2009: Why yes, this is a dapper moustache. Did you know I composed The Rites of Spring?

Valhalla Rising, 2009: I may only have one functioning eye and no dialogue, but my moustache game is strong.

Clash of the TItans, 2010: Release the Kraken? My moustache, beard & bonus braid are aghast at the thought.

The Three Musketeers, 2011: I am a proud Spanish peacock. What is haggis?

Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas, 2013: That's a mouthful. Just look at the moustache, OK?

The Salvation, 2014: Whatevs. At least I didn't lose an eye this time.

MEN & CHICKEN Final Screening!
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN's Madstache in Cinematic Context

My Madstache is not a Sadstache.

There's just something about Mads Mikkelsen's mustache in Men & Chicken that inspires me. It's a little bit of 1970s mustache history sitting there on Mads Mikkelsen's face. And that is enough inspiration for me to make a gallery of Mustaches in Film History!

Because I'm providing serious context, you know. Serious. Context. 

C'mon in, the context is fine...

Remember when Christopher Lee was a Dracula? I mean, remember when Christopher Lee was the Dracula? No, not that one. This one with the sweet, sweet 'stache.

That fox back there sure likes it. No, not a lady, a *fox*.

And did you know Klytus from Flash Gordon, was not only a noted singing sensation, but his whole Jason King tv series was his mustache's idea?

Peter Wyngarde's mustache was his manager throughout the 1970s.

And then there's... Well. Sean Connery in Zardoz (1974)

There is so much going on here, yet the 'stache comes through loud and clear.

 And in Neo-Retro Seventies 'Staches, Luke Evans in Vanguard Alumnus Ben Wheatley's High Rise.

(Don't make eye-contact with the mustache. I think it's angry)

And the wonder of Mad Men's Roger Sterling.

"I'm a Dracula, you know. Really."

See the Madstache and even more mustaches at the final screening of MEN & CHICKEN:
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN: The MEN of Men & Chicken

HURRY! We have to submit our applications to the Official Vanguard Blog Mascot Contest!

With all the chickens (goats, pigs, sheep, and other farm animals) running around in Men & Chicken, you might be wondering about the "Men" part of the title. Here's a look at a few of the actors in the film.

David Dencik (as Gabriel)
Dencik might look familiar to you. Besides being in the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Janne Dahlman, he was also in the David Fincher remake in 2011 as an entirely different character, the young version of Gustav Morell. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he played Toby Esterhase. Then, in 2012, he was in A Royal Affair, starring none other than...

Mads Mikkelsen (as Elias)
Mikkelsen is now best known as the titular character of NBC's Hannibal (now on hiatus; Fannibals never give up), but he also portrayed the real-life character Johann Friedrich Struensee in A Royal Affair. Mikkelsen was Le Chiffre in Casino Royale  as well as starring as "One Eye" in Nicolas Winding Refn's Valhalla Rising (in both movies his character only had one eye). One of his early acting roles was as Arne in Thomas Anders Jensen's Flickering Lights, which also features...

Nikolaj Lie Kaas (as Gregor)
In Flickering Lights, Kaas portrayed Stefan, one of the members of Torkild's crew, specifically the one who spends most of the movie eating. It's not the only time he appears in a film directed by Thomas Anders Jensen: to date, he's been in all four of the features that Jensen has written and directed. He was also the "Assassin" in Ron Howard's Angels & Demons. In 2012, he played Mathias Borch in The Killing, a TV series (which also included David Dencik as VVS Mand), alongside...

Søren Malling (as Franz)
In The Killing, Malling was Jan Meyer, but he was ALSO in A Royal Affair with both Mikkelsen and Dencik (as Hartmann). He's been in several Danish TV shows, including The Fat and Angry, Borgen, Europamestrene, and The Left Wing Gang, but those outside of Europe might recognize him most as Karlis Liepa from Wallander. In 2012, he also appeared in A Hijacking. Another TV series in which Malling acted in is 1864, which also includes...

Nicolas Bro (as Josef)
Bro portrayed Monrad in 1864, but if you haven't seen that, you will most likely remember him as F from Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1. He was also Thomas Buch in The Killing (along with Kaas and Dencik) as well as TV series Deroute (with Malling). And, like Mads Mikkelsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, he has appeared in two films directed by Thomas Anders Jensen: Green Butchers and Adam's Apples.

MEN & CHICKEN Screening Times:
Wed. Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN: Review

In Men & Chicken, Elias and Gabriel are brothers whose father has just passed away. He's left them a videocassette revealing that not only is he not their biological father, but the woman they knew as their mother wasn't their biological mother. He also reveals that the name of their father is Evelio Thanatos.

The half-siblings venture to the tiny island of Ork to confront Thanatos with this news but they are literally chased off by Evelio's other sons, Franz, Josef, and Gregor. Yet, Gabriel and Elias are determined to reunite with their bad-tempered brethren. Men & Chicken is about that struggle.

It's easy to make your audience fall in love with flawed, yet appealing characters and film history is full of them. Even anti-heroes have their charms. What takes genuine skill is making your audience become emotionally invested in characters that they would never dream of even acknowledging in real life, much less caring about. That's Thomas Anders Jensen's genius and what makes Men & Chicken so incredible.

Horror films have their own anti-heroes and flawed characters. The heightened stakes of the genre engender fanaticism of a different sort. When fear, murder, and death are at stake, the intensity of emotion often gives way to intense devotion, hence the heroic stature of villains like Frankenstein or Freddy Krueger.

Men & Chicken, however, doesn't traffic in Grand Guignol, but petty annoyances and genuinely irritating people. You may spend the first half-hour of the film wondering why you are even watching it in the first place. The characters are by turns self-centered, impetuous, ignorant, violent, and frequently repugnant. Men & Chicken straddles a fine line between off-putting and engaging, between exploitative and empathetic.

There are probably critics who will write this film off as being contrived, self-consciously zany, or even pretentious. And it may be all of those things, but to dismiss Men & Chicken for those reasons would do the film a great disservice. It's both a hilarious comedy and a heartbreaking tragedy and the way it fuses the two makes it one of the most unique and unforgettable films you'll ever see.

MEN & CHICKEN Screening Times:
Wed. Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

MEN & CHICKEN Premieres Tonight!

Fans of Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen and Mads Mikkelsen and chickens rejoice! Men & Chicken premieres tonight!

You've seen Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter cooking and eating people on Hannibal, and you might have even seen a poultrygeist version of Jack Nicholson doing strange things in a theme park in The Chickening, but Men & Chicken is a wholly other animal. Possibly a chicken. We can't be sure.

Knowing the unique personas that Mikkelsen has created for Jensen on film, there will be dark, twisted comedy. There will also be at least one giant block of cheese, there will be moustaches, there will be tennis whites, and there will be chickens.

MEN & CHICKEN Screening Times:
Mon. Sept 14, 9:00 PM SCOTIABANK 1
Wed. Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun. Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 1

Mads Mikkelsen in Danish Cinema

Although many audiences know Mikkelsen as the titular character on NBC's Hannibal, or the brooding Bond villain Le Chiffre in 2006's Casino Royale, his work in his home country of Denmark is extensive and impressive, with several movies as well as a television series under his belt. 

Coming to Vanguard in the next coming days--Mikkelsen will star as Elias in the Anders Thomas Jensen-directed dark comedy Men & Chicken, a story of two brothers who seek out their father (who is known among elders as "The Wiener of Death.")

Looking for a little more Mikkelsen in your life? (But really, aren't we all?) Then check out some of his other work in Danish cinema: 

Pusher - 1996 

One of the first big roles that Mikkelsen has on his resume is as Tonny the drug dealer in 1996's Pusher. There are three movies in the Pusher series, all depicting the dark under-belly of Copenhagen. Tonny is a low-level criminal, who is deeply affected by drugs and his relationship with his cynical father.

Open Hearts (Elsker dig for evigt) - 2002

Open Hearts follows two couples who are tangled in a web of unfortunate circumstances, immediately following a car crash. Joachim is wounded by the other driver Marie in the crash, making him hospital-bound indefinitely. Marie's husband Niels (Mikkelsen) is a doctor treating Joachim, but in the process falls in love with Joachim's fiancee, and they have an affair. Open Hearts is also a TIFF alumni! 

The Hunt (Jagten) - 2012 

Mikkelsen stars as the lonely teacher Lucas, who is trying to get his life together during a lengthy custody battle for his son. When things are starting to look up finally, his life crumbles when a little girl tells a seriously damaging lie about Lucas, saying that he was sexually inappropriate to her. This film is definitely not for those who are adverse to sad cinema, but it is a captivating story with some of Mikkelsen's best work (especially during the Christmas church scene). 

MEN & CHICKEN screens: 

Mon, Sept 14, 9:00 PM SCOTIABANK

Wed, Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA

Sun, Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK 

MEN & CHICKEN First Look: Poster and Trailer

Writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen returns with his dark comedy Men & Chicken, which is coming to Vanguard this September. The film follows two brothers who discover unsettling secrets about their family by seeking out their father, who is known among elders as "The Wiener of Death."

Do we have your attention yet?

Check out the trailer, complete with chickens, laugh-out-loud quick dialogue and Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen.

MEN & CHICKEN screens:
Mon, Sept 14, 9:00 PM SCOTIABANK
Wed, Sept 16, 10:00 PM BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun, Sept 20, 3:30 PM SCOTIABANK

EVOLUTION and MEN & CHICKEN Among Indiewire's "Hidden Gems"

Indiewire plumbs Vanguard's depths

Indiewire's Eric Kohn includes TWO Vanguard films in his "7 Hidden Gems from the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival."  He recommends Evolution, directed by Lucile Hadžihalilović, writer/director of Innocence (2004) and screenwriter of Enter the Void (2009):

Evolution...focuses on the experiences of a 10-year-old boy trapped in a remote village where a hospital subjects him and others to cryptic experiments. The mystery behind his situation sits at the center of the film, but Bailey suggested viewers won't get any easy answers. "It's a really odd, creepy, weird, Lynchian thing," he said, comparing aspects of the production to Under the Skin.

And Kohn, like the rest of us, is unable to resist the lure of Mads Mikkelsen's Madstache in Anders Thomas Jensen's Men & Chicken.

The delightfully-titled Men & Chicken finds him re-teaming with Mads Mikkelsen as one half of a sibling duo who come together for their father's funeral only to learn that he wasn't their father at all. The ensuing comedy follows the troubled men on a journey to an abandoned island in the hopes of meeting their true parent. It's there that their family problems get a whole lot weirder.

Who can resist the fascination of the Madstache? No one. No one can.

EVOLUTION Screening Times:
Mon., Sept. 14, 9:30pm at RYERSON
Wed., Sept. 16, 4:30pm at BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun., Sept. 20,  8:30pm at TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX

MEN & CHICKEN Screening Times:
Mon., Sept. 14, 9:00pm at SCOTIABANK THEATRE
Wed., Sept. 16, 10:00pm at BLOOR HOT DOCS CINEMA
Sun., Sept. 20, 3:30pm at SCOTIABANK THEATRE