"At the dawn of the millennium, the nation collapsed. At fifteen percent unemployment, ten million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted school. The adults lost confidence and, fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act, a.k.a. the BR Act…"

In real time, Fantasia 2011 is almost over. It’s quite the bittersweet feeling. With only five days left—two of which I think I might skip entirely in order to catch up with this blog and life itself—I’m grateful to be at the end of this amazing journey, yet anticipate the feeling of loss that will ensue.

Let’s talk about culture for a moment. While I could’ve figured this one out by myself, someone once told me that film doesn’t exist in a vacuum. True: like any art, film is an amalgamation of cultural and personal influences, social conventions and the personal talent of any given craftsman or filmmaker able to turn that into his own piece of work. Every film is a cultural construct that speaks volumes about the society it hails from—which is exactly why film is worth looking at in the first place! But what happens when the culture at hand is so inward-looking and void that it cannibalizes itself into oblivion? Well…you get something like Joseph Kahn’s DETENTION.

Fantasia is about discovery. It’s about being adventurous enough to go into a Japanese film with a running time of four hours and 45 minutes, knowing nothing about it. I’m generally attracted to long films, because usually they have reasons for their excessive lengths. Sadly, HEAVEN’S STORY didn’t. Let’s not even talk about it. Or should we? I’ll be brief.

Before SUPER (review here), I caught up with iconoclast Takashi Miike’s latest off-the-wall family film, NINJA KIDS!!!, which I had initially missed in favor of THE WICKER MAN.

As I’m writing this, on Day 15, I have to admit I am in the midst of a truly terrible case of writer’s block and movie daze that’s quite hard to shake. The past few days have been truly insane, between hanging out and staying up all night with the Fantasia crew and the John Landis hour-long Q&A last night, I’m hoping I can bring you these tales in rough chronological order before they all merge and make my synapses collapse. I’ve also found myself sleeping way more than I would allow me to, but I’m guessing it’s better than to drive this exhaustion further. Truth is, this tiny write-up took me 3 days to write, which I’m sure gives you an idea of (my incompetence) the madness of this ongoing Fantasia 2011. I guess what I’m getting at is: excuse me if disjointedness has become the shtick to which I stick.

I’m back! Not that I ever left, but as I’m writing these lines, it’s already Day 11 and by the time they’re posted, it’ll probably be Day 13 already. My day-to-day existence has been so packed with films, I’ve barely had time to sleep and eat properly—you should see me abuse those pints of ice cream, you would probably puke at my recklessness.

Please allow me to break my usual format in order to bring you a comparative review of two of the most interesting films of this year’s Fantasia festival. Whoever programmed SUPERHEROES to play the week before SUPER knew exactly what they were doing: genius programming.

Getting up after a fourth night, following the THEATRE BIZARRE after-party, was ridiculously painful, but writing and screenings beckoned. After a rough morning of coffee and decongestant pill abuse—which, aside from keeping my sensitive nose unclogged, conveniently act as a mild stimulant—I finally got to the Hall Theatre in time for Mike Cahill’s Sundance winner ANOTHER EARTH, which opened the day to varied, yet consistently solid works of fantastical cinematic entertainment. After catching a tiny bit of the Bloody Breasts Presents: Women in Horror panel—moderated by Kier-la Janisse and featuring speakers such as Jovanka Vuckovic and Izabel Grondin—I made my way to the theater, beating myself over the head for not getting out of the house earlier to attend what looked like a great conference.

One of the most anticipated horror films of the year, Ti West’s haunted-hotel chiller THE INNKEEPERS has just been added to the Fantasia program—a surprise move that recalls the similar last-minute addition of THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL back in 2009.