Vanguard, Sketched!

Jodorowsky's Dune

At his Tumblr page, Sketchy Musings, Francis Foster sketched images from films he saw at TIFF this year, including these four from the Vanguard Programme. Click through images from (and reviews of) all the films he saw at TIFF, as well as daily sketches.

Soul

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears

The Fake

SOUL: Profile of Actor Jimmy Wang Yu

Jimmy Wang Yu (aka, Jimmy Wong in TIFF's programme notes) won a Best Actor award at the 2013  Taipei Film Awards for his role in Chung Mong-Hong's Soul, a film about a young man who might be possessed, might have lost his soul or might be mentally ill and what his father, played by Wang, will do to protect him. In a way, the highly aestheticized violence hearkens back to Wang's early career.


Wang got his start in the stylized swordsman cinema (wuxia pien) of The Shaw Bros. Studio.  He became a superstar in Chang Cheh's The One-Armed Swordsman (1967). And followed it up with other Shaw Bros. films such as Chang Cheh's The Golden Swallow (1968) with Cheng Pei-Pei, the Queen of Wuxia Pien.


Wang also helped bring kung fu, aka, "open fist," cinema to the world with The Chinese Boxer (1969), ushering in the films of Bruce Lee, David Chiang and Ti Lung while revealing which martial art is the supreme. (It's kung fu. It's always kung fu).


The popularity of The One-Armed Swordsman led to innumerable One-Armed Wang Yu movies, but I have a particular fondness for his show-down with Shintaro Katsu in, Zatoichi Meets The One Armed Swordsman (1971), co-produced by Taiwan's Golden Harvest and Katsu.


He also co-starred with George Lazenby in the Australian/Hong Kong co-production, The Man From Hong Kong (1975) directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, director and Trailers From Hell commentator. This co-production didn't go so smoothly, and various members of the production reminisce not so fondly about Wang in the documentary about Australian genre film, Not Quite Hollywood (2008).



While he's made, directed, produced and/or written over eighty films, most of them were in the years between1960 and 1980. But he played the folk hero Wong Fei-Hung in Sammo Hung's Lunar New Year extravaganza, Millionaire's Express (1986) and had a role with Jackie Chan in the "ghost action nonsense comedy," aka, batshit amazing, Fantasy Mission Force (1983).  Most recently, Wang appeared in Wuxia/Dragon (2011) with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Kara Hui (Rigor Mortis) and Let's Go! (2011) with Juno Mak (Rigor Mortis).

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SOUL: Press Round-Up!

The Wall Street Journal's "China Real Time Report" blog profiles director Chung Mong-Hong.

Taiwanese director Chung Mong-hong sees himself as a non-conformist.
In an era of Chinese-language romantic comedies, tear-jerkers, police dramas and lavish historical dramas, Mr. Chung says he doesn’t want to follow the crowd by making films with themes that are seen everywhere. 

The director, sitting in his studio in Taipei with a cigarette in one hand, says he draws inspiration from the works of American filmmaker David Lynch, director of Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), and the late Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi, who thrived on dissecting sensitive and controversial subjects. 

“If you liken the movie to a house when you watch a Kobayashi movie,” Mr. Chung says, “you feel like you are inside a very serious and solemn home, and you automatically want to sit up straight at the edge of your chair.”

Exclaim.ca's Scott A. Gray reviews his film, Soul.

A uniquely moving and disturbing picture, Soul uses surreal cinematic poetry to postulate schizophrenia as a disassociation of the spirit. Taiwan's Chung Mong-Hong (The Fourth Portrait) is an accomplished visionary capable of balancing a calculated use of technical ability with instinctual artistry, as demonstrated throughout this emotionally gripping and consistently stimulating film.

SOUL Final Screening:

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SOUL Premieres Tonight!

Chung Mong-Hong's Soul premieres tonight at the Scotiabank Theatre at 6:15 PM. Head over to our previous post to see the trailer!

Tickets can be purchased:

• ONLINE: TIFF.net/thefestival
• BY PHONE: 416.599.TIFF or 1.888.599.8433 (Toll-free) 
• IN PERSON
• Festival Box Office; 225 King St. West
• Scotiabank Theatre Box Office; 259 Richmond Street West

Further information about Chung Mong-Hong's Soul can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Soul IMDB page.

SOUL screening times:

• Mon., Sept. 9, Scotiabank 11 6:15 PM
• Tues., Sept. 10, Scotiabank 3 6:15 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 10 12:00 PM

SOUL: Profile of Director Chung Mong-Hong

Chung Mong-Hong (aka, Chung Mang-Wang) has written and directed five films: Doctor (2006), Parking (2008), The Fourth Portrait (2010), and the segment, "Reverberation" in the anthology celebrating Taiwan's Centenary, 10 + 10 (2011), and now Soul.

Born in Pingtung, Taiwan, Chung studied information technology engineering at National Chiao Tung University and film as a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago. In an interview with Ho Yi at The Taipei Times, Chung shares what inspired him to become a filmmaker:

 I had lived in the countryside in Pingtung until high school. Going to a movie was the ultimate form of entertainment. We saw lots of Bruce Lee (李小龍) and Michael Hui (許冠文) films. I was particularly fond of the James Bond movies because they were like pornography for us kids. [He laughs.]

In high school I had a chance to see Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. There is one scene where David Bowie kisses Ryuichi Sakamoto. It got me to start thinking, “Wow, movies can show so many special things, things I don’t understand.”

He has directed over one hundred commercials, but in an interview with Ryuichi Sugiyama at the Tokyo International Film Festival's blog, he indicated a desire to move away from commercial film-making.

When shooting Parking, I had tried not to fall into the habit of making commercial films, which ended up in vain. So with that in mind, in making The Fourth Portrait, I took the utmost care in simple film making, but I don't think I am thoroughly successful in that sense. My assignment is to get rid of the habit of making commercial films....I think my experience in TV commercial making is an obstacle when making movies. The fact that most of the directors with TV commercial career are not making a big success in Taiwan might be the proof.

He told The Taipei Times that he decided to start his feature career with a documentary, Doctor, "Documentary filmmaking is the opposite of commercial filmmaking." And elaborated:

You must divide the two. Have you seen any movies made by television commercial directors? Basically they all fail. It hurts me to see my colleagues fail. The problem is if you look at a 100-minute project with an eye trained for a 30-second ad, you are bound to be crushed.

Styles and forms are not sins in and of themselves. But the most important thing is to return to the basic question: what do you want your audience to see? It would be wrong if a director plays with a [visual] style thinking, “Wow, it’s cool!” and repeats it for 100 minutes. As a commercial director, you have to give up what you excel in — images and combinations of images.

Doctor follows a Taiwanese-American doctor who loses his son to suicide and a patient to cancer.



Parking starts with a parking dispute and escalates into much more. It stars Chapman To, Chang Chen, Jack Kao and Kwai Lun-Mei and frequent Chung collaborator, Leon Dai, who also appears in Soul.



And where Parking was influenced by the paintings of Edward Hooper, The Fourth Portrait features art made by Felix, the boy who committed suicide in Doctor.



However, as Chung tells Ryuichi Sugiyama at the Tokyo International Film Festival's blog:

Doctor is a documentary, but I have a special feeling for it because it is my first feature film. It is very true that the picture drawn by Felix had a great influence in making the The Fourth Portrait, but I am thinking of saying goodbye to Felix after this film. I’ve made up my mind to get over his past and go on to a completely new direction for the next film....It is going to be a very scary horror film featuring schizophrenia.

 Make sure to read both interviews and then see what new direction Chung has taken with Soul.

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

SAPI and SOUL: Seven More Movies About Possession

At this year's Festival, there are two movies screening in the Vanguard Programme about possession. What are the chances? It's like there's some global cultural zeitgeist centering around the idea that people are not acting like themselves or have been taken over by an alternate consciousness. But there's been talk that those movies are played out.

Enter the theme of possession! Sapi, directed by Brillante Ma Mendoza, is a satirical assault on the media that also happens to focus on a case of demonic possession, while Soul is another look at demonic possession from Chung Mong-Hong.

In honor of these two films that take a differing approach to a similar theme, we thought we'd share our list of seven other movies about possession.

1. Burnt Offerings, 1976

The Rolf family, played by Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Bette Davis, and Lee Montgomery, is hoping to have a nice, relaxing summer vacation in an old mansion from the 1890s. In exchange for their incredibly low rent, they must not bother the elderly woman who lives on the top floor. What could possibly go wrong? For one thing, the house really really likes Karen Black. A lot. Maybe a little too much, actually.

2. Demons, 1985

Written by Dario Argento and directed by Lamberto Bava, it's obvious right away that Demons is going to deal with some crazy shenanigans. A movie about demonic zombie vampires comes frighteningly true when one of the audience members gets scratched by a creepy mask that's featured in the movie and becomes infected, turning into a demonic zombie demon, who then attacks everyone in the theater. Who then turn into demonic zombie demons. Being trapped in the theater only makes things worse. Talk about self-reflexivity!

3. Ghostbusters, 1984

Although Ghostbusters deals primarily with well, ghosts, there's also that important part of the movie in which Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis become possessed by Zuul and Vinz Clortho, respectively. The subtext of "The Keymaster" and "The Gatekeeper" might have been lost on you if you saw this movie for the first time when you were ten years old. Sigourney Weaver's post-possession outfit is definitely what all the hip demons will be wearing this season.

4. The Hidden, 1997

Director Jack Sholder had previously delivered two more good movies to us: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge and Alone in the Dark. In 1987, just a couple of years before Kyle McLachlan portrayed Special Agent Dale Cooper, he played another FBI agent in Sholder's science fiction film about an alien who gets its kicks by causing people to do outlandish, illegal, and usually (self-)destructive things. You can see nods to this movie in Men In Black (gross cockroach aliens wearing human suits) and District 9 (weird alien weaponry that can only be used by aliens).

5. Insidious, 2011

Insidious premiered at Midnight Madness in 2010 and scared the crap out of everyone who saw it. A lot of what makes Insidious so effective is that it doesn't rely on the typical possession/exorcism tropes and builds up suspense throughout. It's also not afraid to be funny in order to disarm you. (True confession: after I saw it I remained scared for six months.)

6. REC, 2007

While filming a documentary series on fire fighters, reporter ÁngelaVidal and her crew encounter something terrifying in an apartment building when the firemen are attacked by an old woman who was supposedly trapped in her apartment. The found footage conceit works in REC's favor because it feels organic and unforced. REC also has a cool twist on the zombie genre. Jaume Balagueró's 2007 film went on to spawn two sequels and there's a fourth installment on the way. REC 2 screened at Midnight Madness in 2009!

7. Session 9, 2001

An abandoned mental institution. An asbestos removal crew. A person who is plagued by nyctophobia, or an extreme fear of the dark. These are all important elements in Session 9 and along with the not-completely-explained personal problems of the crew, they synthesize into a seriously scary psychological horror. Trust me, the voice of "Simon" is going to stay with you for a long time.

Now that you know that there can be good movies about possession that aren't The Exorcist, you'll be well prepared for both Sapi and Soul, both screening at this year's Festival.

SAPI Screening Times:

Sunday, Sept 15th, 3:00 PM SCOTIABANK 14

SOUL Screening Times:

Monday, Sept 9th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 11

Tuesday, Sept 10th, 6:15 PM SCOTIABANK 3

Saturday, Sept 14th, 12:00 PM SCOTIABANK 10

Trailer for SOUL: A Stylish, Unflinching Look at Demonic Possession

While working as a chef at a Japanese restaurant, the quiet, unassuming A-Chuan (Joseph Chang) abruptly, and without apparent reason, collapses unconscious. When he wakes up, A-Chuan isn't quite the same. The 2013 Festival selection Soul is an stylish, unflinching look at demonic possession by acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Chung Mong-Hong (The Fourth Portrait).

Below is the trailer for Soul, which plays this year's Toronto International Film Festival within the Vanguard programme.

Further information about Chung Mong-Hong's Soul can be found on the Festival website, as well as on the Soul IMDB page.

SOUL screening times:

• Mon., Sept. 9, Scotiabank 11 6:15 PM
• Tues., Sept. 10, Scotiabank 3 6:15 PM
• Sat., Sept. 14, Scotiabank 10 12:00 PM