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By: Patrick Gratton

Canadian history remembers William Lyon Mackenzie King as one of our most defining statesmen. King was the longest running Prime Minister to hold office in Ottawa, and a central ally to both Winston Churchill and Fdr, in mobilizing Canada in World War II. Historians commend Mackenzie King as a central rallying cry for a divided country, whose skill set helped him reach across the aisle, mending multiple differences and helping grow Canada’s Independence even as it remained a British colony.

In his feature film debut The Twentieth Century, Winnipeg-born Matthew Rankin subverts this story. Set in 1899 and told in ten chapters, the film omits all of the soon-to-be Prime Minister’s triumphs, focusing instead on Mackenzie King’s (Dan Bierne) candidacy to be the country’s leader. Rankins shows a steady hand, confidently orchestrating a film that’s equal parts German expressionism, 1920s melodrama and absurdist satire.

Chicago – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com features an audio review of the newly released “The Twentieth Century,” the debut of Canadian filmmaker Matthew Rankin. The film is a surreal retelling of Canadian history, specifically regarding former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

Rating: 4.0/5.0

Dan Beirne is the real-life Canadian Pm, recognized as one of the greatest prime ministers in Canadian history, having served 27 years non-consecutively in the role during the first half of the 20th Century – the most time in that office ever – including guiding Canada through the World War II years. In the film, he is shown at the beginning of his career in 1899, vying for first time political office against his rival Arthur Meighen (an icy Brent Skagford).

“The Twentieth Century” is available now through Music Box at Home through MusicBoxTheatre.com. Check local listings for additional theaters and show times. For more information, click here. Featuring Dan Beirne,...

"A colorized acid trip through historic hell." Oscilloscope Labs has unveiled the US trailer for Twentieth Century, a very strange and absurdly weird biopic of sorts. This premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, and also played at the Berlin, Cartagena, Bucheon, and L'Étrange Film Festivals this year. Renowned for his mesmerizing, gonzo biographical short films Mynarski Death Plummet and The Tesla World Light, filmmaker Matthew Rankin doubles down on his signature blend of historical and aesthetic abstraction with his debut feature, a bizarre biopic that re-imagines the formative years of the former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as a series of abject humiliations. This uber wacky, expressionism adventure stars Dan Beirne as Mackenzie, plus Sarianne Cormier, Catherine St-Laurent, Mikhaïl Ahooja, Brent Skagford, Seán Cullen, and Louis Negin. It's almost impossible to describe this film - some will hate it, some will go nuts for it. But at least it exists,...

With his perverse (and some might say perverted) look at the early life of Canada’s longest-serving Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King, Winnipeg-born, Montreal-based multi-hyphenate Matthew Rankin proves himself far more than simply the artistic heir to fellow Canuck Guy Maddin. His low-budget, high-concept recounting of political life in the Dominion of Canada circa the turn of the 20th century is both satiric and scurrilous; the more familiar one is with Canadian history, the funnier it is. But even without prior knowledge of our neighbor to the north, it can be enjoyed for its combination of supreme creativity, jaw-dropping audacity and amusing tongue-in-cheek dialogue. Following its world premiere at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival, it was named best Canadian first feature and acquired by U.S. distributor Oscilloscope, which will release it in May.

Like Maddin, Rankin ransacks film, theater and art history for his visual style. Here, he creates...

Submarines, snow and brain surgery collide in these dazzling but bewildering tales within tales

Guy Maddin’s typically bewildering latest has its creative roots in the 2010 film-loop installation Hauntings, which grew into the internet Seances project; a series of short films nominally inspired by lost titles of the 20s and 30s. Created in conjunction with Evan Johnson (who gets a co-director credit), The Forbidden Room is a cinematic Russian doll of tales within tales – tales of the snow and the cave; of submarines laden with Wages of Fear-style unstable blasting jelly; of doppelgängers, demons and two-faced gods; of volcanic sacrifices and monstrous couplings; of brain surgery, memory and madness. The heavily post-produced images jump from faux-scratchy black and white to the damaged hues of two-strip Technicolor, silent movie intertitles overlapping with sound-era dialogue in a postmodern meringue of pulp cliche as the screen pulsates like infernal internal organs, or...

The American Film Institute announced today the films that will screen in the World Cinema, Breakthrough, Midnight, Shorts and Cinema’s Legacy programs at AFI Fest 2015 presented by Audi.

AFI Fest will take place November 5 – 12, 2015, in the heart of Hollywood. Screenings, Galas and events will be held at the historic Tcl Chinese Theatre, the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres, Dolby Theatre, the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at the Egyptian, the El Capitan Theatre and The Hollywood Roosevelt.

World Cinema showcases the most acclaimed international films of the year; Breakthrough highlights true discoveries of the programming process; Midnight selections will grip audiences with terror; and Cinema’s Legacy highlights classic movies and films about cinema. World Cinema and Breakthrough selections are among the films eligible for Audience Awards. Shorts selections are eligible for the Grand Jury Prize, which qualifies the winner for Academy Award®consideration. This year’s Shorts jury features filmmaker Janicza Bravo,...

Dreams! Visions! Madness!: Maddin & Johnson’s Extravagant Symphony of Silent Cinema Fantasia

Those familiar with the works of auteur Guy Maddin, sometimes referred to as the Canadian David Lynch, know to expect strange hybrids of silence film techniques mixed with zany weirdness that often reflect delightfully perverse and sometimes queer dynamics mixed in with its dashes of visual inventiveness and extreme narrative playfulness. While he still creates a healthy amount of short film projects and is involved with other installations in-between feature films, including several notable unions with actress Isabella Rossellini, who has starred in The Saddest Music in the World (2003), Keyhole (2011) and as narrator of the brilliant Brand Upon the Brain! (2006), his latest has been in gestation over a period of several years, at one point known as Seances and Spiritismes, and it was uncertain whether this would ever be a theatrical release. Known finally as The Forbidden Room,...

Imagine this. As you sit down in a full theater, the lights dim, curtain opens, and the projector strategically placed in the back of the room begins playing what you assume will be a relatively standard narrative feature film akin to the rest of the fall film slate. Oscar bait is on your mind, as all of a sudden, a prologue begins instructing the viewer on how to properly take a bath. Surreal, experimental, absurdest and delightfully childish, this is not the opening of the latest awards hopeful. Instead, this is how one of today’s greatest surreal auteurs has begun his latest masterpiece, one of 2015’s most dream-like, breathlessly original motion pictures.

Guy Maddin is at it once again with The Forbidden Room, a film beyond description. Opening with the aforementioned ode to proper hygiene, the film then shifts to what one could possibly describe as its central narrative,...

Guy Maddin in Yves Montmayeur's The 1000 Eyes Of Dr Maddin

Yves Montmayeur, director of the penetrating documentary Michael H - Profession: Director on the career of Michael Haneke has won the Venezia Classici Award for Best Documentary on Cinema this evening at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival for his latest exploration looking into the man and the myth of another mysterious filmmaker, Guy Maddin, in The 1000 Eyes Of Dr Maddin.

Maddin's The Forbidden Room, co-directed with Evan Johnson, is one of the highlights of the 53rd New York Film Festival. With an all-star cast that includes Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Maria de Medeiros, Louis Negin, Udo Kier, André Wilms, Clara Furey, Roy Dupuis, Noel Burton with a contribution by John Ashbery, the stories told here may very well resemble one side of the Janus bust, auctioned off and desired by a man and his double.

The Blue Room director Mathieu Amalric stars in The Forbidden Room and Arnaud Desplechin's The Golden Days Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Michael Almereyda's Experimenter stars Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder with Jim Gaffigan, John Leguizamo, Lori Singer, Taryn Manning, Kellan Lutz, Anton Yelchin, Josh Hamilton, Dennis Haysbert and Ned Eisenberg supporting the research. Margherita Buy, Giulia Lazzarini, Beatrice Mancini and John Turturro in Nanni Moretti's Mia Madre (My Mother) explore private emotions and public movie work. Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's The Forbidden Room will haunt your dreams and submarines with Louis Negin, Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier, Roy Dupuis, André Wilms, Geraldine Chaplin, Adèle Haenel, Maria de Medeiros and Mathieu Amalric. Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (Nie Yin Niang) engages blow by blow with Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Sheu Fang-yi and Hsieh Hsin-ying.

Here are four early highlights of the 53rd New York Film Festival that dazzle with their superb ensemble casts.

One of the most distinctive 2015 Sundance premieres was Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson's "The Forbidden Room," which Kino Lorber is opening in New York on October 7 after screenings at Tiff and Nyff. The film has already had a healthy festival run. Co-directed by Johnson, Maddin's 11th feature-film foray into avant-weirdness stars a top-drawer cast including Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar & Elina Löwensohn as a clown car of misfits, thieves and lovers. Read More: Kino Lorber Grabs Guy Maddin's Delightfully Demented 'Forbidden Room' Inspired in part by American modernist poet John Ashbery (who gets a writing credit) and structured like a Russian nesting doll, "Forbidden Room" is the highwire cinematic equivalent to LSD, giddily juggling multiple film stocks and kooky set pieces involving cavemen, wolf-hunters,...

Get a load of this! What a funky teaser trailer. The first official teaser trailer for Guy Maddin's new film The Forbidden Room has debuted online, and it's a quite a doozy. This wacky, experimental film premiered at Sundance in the New Frontier section. If you're familiar with Maddin's past work, you may know his style already. But if not, this fun teaser will give you a brief glimpse. The introduction of the cast is a bit tiresome, but at least it looks nice. Directed by Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson, The Forbidden Room stars Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Udo Kier, Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Victor Andres Turgeon-Trelles. If abstract stories that dive six layers deep are your thing, then give this a whirl. Here's the teaser trailer for Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room, on YouTube (via The Film Stage): You can see even...

Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, starring Tom Hanks, will make its World Premiere at the 53rd New York International Film Festival, running from September 25 to October 11. The film was one of 26 announced as part of the festival’s main slate, along with one of four World Premieres.

Some of the main slate highlights include Todd Haynes’s Carol, featuring Cannes Best Actress Winner Rooney Mara alongside Cate Blanchett, Miguel Gomes’s three part saga Arabian Nights, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin, the Us premiere of Michael Moore’s latest Where to Invade Next, Michel Gondry’s French film Microbe et Gasoil, and the World Premiere of the documentary Don’t Blink: Robert Frank, about the life of the fames photographer and filmmaker.

Previously announced films include the World Premiere of The Walk, Robert Zemeckis’s Philippe Petit biopic serving as the opening night film, the World Premiere of...

The Toronto International Film Festival, whose 40th edition will run from September 10 through 20, has announced a round of Canadian titles strewn across several programs. Highlights include Robert Budreau's Born to Be Blue with Ethan Hawke, Patricia Rozema's Into the Forest with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, a new short by Denis Côté, Bruce McDonald's Hellions and Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin's spectacular The Forbidden Room with Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Löwensohn. » - David Hudson...

The Toronto International Film Festival, whose 40th edition will run from September 10 through 20, has announced a round of Canadian titles strewn across several programs. Highlights include Robert Budreau's Born to Be Blue with Ethan Hawke, Patricia Rozema's Into the Forest with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood, a new short by Denis Côté, Bruce McDonald's Hellions and Evan Johnson and Guy Maddin's spectacular The Forbidden Room with Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar and Elina Löwensohn. » - David Hudson...

Neil Armfield.s Holding the Man, Simon Stone.s The Daughter, Jeremy Sims. Last Cab to Darwin and Jen Peedom.s feature doc Sherpa will have their world premieres at the Sydney Film Festival.

The festival program unveiled today includes 33 world premieres (including 22 shorts) and 135 Australian premieres (with 18 shorts) among 251 titles from 68 countries.

Among the other premieres will be Daina Reid.s The Secret River, Ruby Entertainment's. ABC-tv miniseries starring Oliver Jackson Cohen and Sarah Snook, and three Oz docs, Marc Eberle.s The Cambodian Space Project — Not Easy Rock .n. Roll, Steve Thomas. Freedom Stories and Lisa Nicol.s Wide Open Sky.

Festival director Nashen Moodley boasted. this year.s event will be far larger than 2014's when 183 films from 47 countries were screened, including 15 world premieres. The expansion is possible in part due to the addition of two new screening venues in Newtown and Liverpool.

As previously announced, Brendan Cowell...

The Forbidden Room debuted at Sundance Film Festival, and a significant portion of the audience left the screening within the first 15 minutes of the opening credits. This polarizing film is a symphonic cacophony of visual and aural stimulation, with interludes of absurd humor to relieve the pressure. Co-directors/writers Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson along with co-writers Robert Kotyk, John Ashbery and Kim Morgan crafted the story like a traditional Russian nesting doll, with tales within tales -- and sometimes within inanimate objects such as a urine stain within which a battle rages. Lovers, murderers, chanteuses, vampire bananas, motorcycle girls and skeletons are just a few of the macabre players in this delightfully demented and disturbing tale.

The challenge of The Forbidden Room is to follow the threads of each of the stories that are interwoven in a crudely but lovingly handcrafted tapestry. After a brief introduction on "How to Take A Bath,...

Kino Lorber has announced the acquisition of all Us rights to Guy Maddin’s (My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World) The Forbidden Room (2015), following the film’s world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.

The Forbidden Room was produced by Phi Films, Buffalo Gal Pictures and the National Film Board of Canada (Nfb), with the participation of Telefilm Canada and with the financial investment of Manitoba Film & Music and Sodec.

“I feel fantastic about Richard Lorber and his team handling The Forbidden Room,” wrote director Guy Maddin. “When we first met, before he saw the movie, I felt that rare pleasure of tastes synching up every second moment, but immediately after the screening we connected with wondrous electrified crackles! It was like we were giddily letting this film finish each other’s sentences for us! Our movie instantly galvanized a shared experience. It’s only right, and extremely thrilling,...

Kino Lorber has acquired all Us rights to Guy Maddin's "The Forbidden Room," planning a Fall theatrical release for the Sundance premiere, which heads to Berlin this week and more fests throughout 2015. Co-directed by Evan Johnson, Maddin's 11th feature-film foray into avant-weirdness stars a top-drawer cast including Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar & Elina Löwensohn as a clown car of misfits, thieves and lovers. Inspired in part by American modernist poet John Ashbery and structured like a Russian nesting doll, "Forbidden Room" is the highwire cinematic equivalent to LSD, giddily juggling multiple film stocks and kooky set pieces involving cavemen, wolf-hunters, skeletons, bloodsucking bananas, damsels in distress and the memories of a dead man's mustache. To name a few. The film was produced by Phi Films, Buffalo...

One of our most anticipated Sundance 2015 titles is Guy Maddin's latest foray into avant-weirdness, a cinematic hybrid project the Canadian auteur's been cooking up since his docu-fantasia "My Winnipeg" bowed in 2007. The director's 11th film, "The Forbidden Room" stars a top-drawer Euro cast including Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar & Elina Löwensohn as "a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience," per the press release of this elusive new movie. Made with the help of American poet John Ashbery, who aided in defining modern poetry in the mid-20th century, "Forbidden Room" premieres at Sundance next week before heading to Berlin in February. Below, check out the "living poster" for the film, which apparently...

Mongrel International has come on board to sell international rights to Guy Maddin’s Sundance-bound film.

Evan Johnson co-directed The Forbidden Room, a New Frontiers selection about a submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon and a battalion of child soldiers.

Cast members include Mathieu Amalric, Louis Negin, Geraldine Chaplin, Udo Kier, Sophie Desmarais, Roy Dupuis, Maria De Madeiros, Charlotte Rampling, Karine Vanasse, Jacques Nolot, Caroline Dhavernas and Clara Furey.

Phi Films, Buffalo Gal Pictures and the Nfb produced The Forbidden Room.

”The Forbidden Room is lush, fast, funny, and heady,” said head of Mongrel International Charlotte Mickie.

“Simply put it is The True History of Film in all its dream-like and phantasmagoric splendour – evoking a fantastic rep cinema 70s vibe.

“Hedy Lamarr gave us Ecstasy – how we miss her. But Guy and Evan are giving us ecstasy again and climaxes (so many climaxes!), just when our souls are crying out for exactly...

The Sweeney (15)

(Nick Love, 2012, UK) Ray Winstone, Ben Drew, Hayley Atwell, Damian Lewis, 112 mins

The original TV cop show has been so updated here, it barely registers as the same product. But for all the steely modern cityscapes and pulsating action, this a 21st century cop thriller with 1970s values, both in terms of its shouty, louty, rule-bending lawmen (Winstone is a parody of himself) and its "hand in your badge" cop-movie cliches. And as for political correctness – leave it aaaaht!

Premium Rush (12A)

(David Koepp, 2012, Us) Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dania Ramirez, Michael Shannon. 91 mins

This zippy-chase thriller puts you in the saddle of an ace New York cycle courier, seeking to deliver a mystery package that everyone's after. It's a carbon-neutral Speed.

To Rome With Love (12A)

(Woody Allen, 2012, Us/Ita/Spa) Jesse Eisenberg, Penélope Cruz, 112 mins

After the blip of Midnight In Paris, it's back to the usual late-period...

Title: Keyhole Director: Guy Maddin Starring: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Louis Negin, Brooke Palsson, Udo Kier Canadian auteur Guy Maddin — he of the black-and-white art film — attempts to give genre a bit of a nominal spin in much the same way that Lars von Trier did last year with “Melancholia.” His stab at the cops-and-robbers template arrives in the form of ”Keyhole,” a kind of quarter-hearted siege/stand-off film cross-pollinated with psychological melodrama, and a heavy side of metaphorical import. The result, while characteristically full of some beautiful and evocative images, seems doggedly intent on achieving art status through obfuscation. Jason Patric stars as Ulysses, an on-the-lam criminal holed up with his gang inside [ Read More ]...

Trailer and Poster for Keyhole, starring Jason Patric. Monterey Media's thriller/drama which was seen at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, finds theaters today. Guy Maddin helms from a script he wrote alongside George Toles. Also starring are Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Brooke Palsson, David Wontner, Louis Negin, Kevin McDonald, Daniel Enright, Olivia Rameau, Tattiawna Jones, Johnny Chang and Darcy Fehr. In a house haunted with memories, gangster and father Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) arrives home after a long absence tow-ing the body of a teenaged girl and a bound and gagged young man. His gang waits inside his house, having shot their way past police. There is friction in the ranks. Ulysses, however, is focused on one thing: journey-ing through the house, room by room, and reaching his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) in her bedroom upstairs. The equilibrium of the house has been disturbed and his odyssey eventually becomes an emotional tour,...

Trailer and Poster for Keyhole, starring Jason Patric. Monterey Media's thriller/drama which was seen at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, finds theaters today. Guy Maddin helms from a script he wrote alongside George Toles. Also starring are Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Brooke Palsson, David Wontner, Louis Negin, Kevin McDonald, Daniel Enright, Olivia Rameau, Tattiawna Jones, Johnny Chang and Darcy Fehr. In a house haunted with memories, gangster and father Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) arrives home after a long absence tow-ing the body of a teenaged girl and a bound and gagged young man. His gang waits inside his house, having shot their way past police. There is friction in the ranks. Ulysses, however, is focused on one thing: journey-ing through the house, room by room, and reaching his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) in her bedroom upstairs. The equilibrium of the house has been disturbed and his odyssey eventually becomes an emotional tour,...

Trailer and Poster for Keyhole, starring Jason Patric. Monterey Media's thriller/drama which was seen at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, finds theaters today. Guy Maddin helms from a script he wrote alongside George Toles. Also starring are Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Brooke Palsson, David Wontner, Louis Negin, Kevin McDonald, Daniel Enright, Olivia Rameau, Tattiawna Jones, Johnny Chang and Darcy Fehr. In a house haunted with memories, gangster and father Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric) arrives home after a long absence tow-ing the body of a teenaged girl and a bound and gagged young man. His gang waits inside his house, having shot their way past police. There is friction in the ranks. Ulysses, however, is focused on one thing: journey-ing through the house, room by room, and reaching his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini) in her bedroom upstairs. The equilibrium of the house has been disturbed and his odyssey eventually becomes an emotional tour,...

This is a reprint of our review from Tiff.

Let us pause, then, to contemplate the fate and fortunes of the director who does not have his or her eye set on the five-picture deal, the glossy franchise, the production wing in the bungalow offices of some major studio; what becomes of the director who only wants to make art and make it well? Canada's Guy Maddin clearly has no eye on commercial success -- rumor has it that his next feature might actually be in color -- and instead prefers to stand at the edge and peer into the abyss to look for what's next. This is a unique vantage point, to be sure, but it's also perilous if one should fall; "Keyhole" is both too much and too little, a crowded smorgasbord of genre picture tropes and haunted house tricks that leaves your eyes and brain distended with...

The Six Best and One Worst Movies I Saw at SXSW 2012 Scary cabins, time-travel comedy, and a respectful tribute to a beloved indie classic. by Andrew Osborne If I had to identify a prevailing trend at SXSW this year, it'd probably be semi-nude and even stark-naked fat men (see: Matt Lucas' underwear-clad oddball in Small Apartments, Louis Negin's cackling/free-balling narrator in Keyhole, Steve Zizzis' saggy-chested suburbanite in The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, etcetera). But the other big theme running through this year's films was the consequences of bad choices. So in that spirit, here are my cautious choices for the best and worst movies of SXSW 2012. 1. The Cabin in the Woods Thanks to the 2010 bankruptcy of MGM, director Drew Goddard's inventive horror picture has been locked in a scary basement of legal maneuvering for years, fueling rabid speculation in the online geek community. Yet despite Lionsgate's [...]...

This is a reprint of our review from Tiff.

Let us pause, then, to contemplate the fate and fortunes of the director who does not have his or her eye set on the five-picture deal, the glossy franchise, the production wing in the bungalow offices of some major studio; what becomes of the director who only wants to make art and make it well? Canada's Guy Maddin clearly has no eye on commercial success -- rumor has it that his next feature might actually be in color -- and instead prefers to stand at the edge and peer into the abyss to look for what's next. This is a unique vantage point, to be sure, but it's also perilous if one should fall; "Keyhole" is both too much and too little, a crowded smorgasbord of genre picture tropes and haunted house tricks that leaves your eyes and brain distended with...

[I have been informed that I initially misidentified the penis in question in this clip and apologize to all involved.]Are you ready for your daily dose of strange, presented to you in a package that includes Louis Negin's package? Then you just may be ready to take a look at the first publicly released clip from Guy Maddin's Keyhole.A gangster and deadbeat father, Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric), returns home after a long absence. He is toting two teenagers: a drowned girl, Denny, who has mysteriously returned to life; and a bound-and-gagged hostage, who is actually his own teenage son, Manners. Confused Ulysses doesn't recognize his own son, but he feels with increasing conviction he must make an indoor odyssey from the back door of...

"Whispers that the latest from Winnipeg's favourite son had been rebuffed at European festivals before landing on Toronto's doorstep engender a suspicion towards it, as if it's typically Maddinesque gestures were just that: typical, tired, by the numbers." John Semley in Cinema Scope: "Granted, Maddin is once again working through his favorite hang-ups here: memory, family, and odes to forgotten film genres so consigned to oblivion that they never existed at all (in this case the Joycean gangster-haunted house picture). But Maddin finds new footing here, and his best leading man since Careful's Kyle McCulloch in Jason Patric, whose classic, rock-jawed good looks and tendency to play the silliness and surrealism totally straight, as if he's just happy for the job, make Keyhole feel like considerably more than another exercise in Maddinalia."

James Rocchi for the Playlist: "Maddin's usual fondness for the (soap) operatic and the melodramatic are both in play here,...

#13. Keyhole Director: Guy Maddin Cast: Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier, Louis Negin, Brooke Palsson Distributor: Rights Available Buzz: Canada's most idiosyncratic auteur, nobody love schlocky expressionism and silent film bombastics than Guy Maddin. His free-wheeling 5-minute short The Heart of the World informed the cinema world with all they needed to know about the skills that he is capable of, and his hilarious and super-personal My Winnipeg brought him a giant new legion of fans. Fluctuating between camp, hyperbolic autobiographies, and the avant-garde, there is really nothing quite like this Canadian original. The Gist: A gangster named Ulysses weaves his way through an old, ghost-infested house in vintage, Bowery-bros. fashion. A talkie (this is a necessary trait to point out when it comes to Maddin) with enough visual flair to fill a hundred time-lapse montages, it's a singular haunted house movie as only this Canuck can make them. Tiff...

Yesterday, the Toronto International Film Festival, which will take place between September 8 and 18, unveiled the list of Canadian films that will be screened.

Galas

A Dangerous Method Director: David Cronenberg Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Sarah Gadon

Starbuck

Director: Ken Scott

Cast: Patrick Huard, Antoine Bertrand and Patrick Labbé

Take This Waltz Director: Sarah Polley Cast: Seth Rogen, Michelle Williams and Sarah Silverman

Canada First

Marécages Director: Guy Édoin Cast: Pascale Bussières, Luc Picard, Gabriel Maillé and François Papineau

Amy George Directors: Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas Cast: Gabriel del Castillo Mullally, Claudia Dey, Don Kerr and Natasha Allan

Nuit #1 Director: Anne Émond Cast: Catherine de Léan and Dimitri Storoge

The Odds Directors: Simon Davidson Cast: Tyler Johnston, Calum Worthy and Julia Maxwell

The Patron Saints Directors: Melanie Shatzky and Brian M. Cassidy

Roméo Onze Director: Ivan Grbovic Cast: Ali Ammar, Joseph Bou Nassar, Eleonore Millier, May Hilal...

There are a lot of Canadian films screening at the Toronto International Film Festival to be excited about, including works from our favourite filmmakers Guy Maddin, Bruce McDonald,Vincenzo Natali and Jean Marc Vallee. Below is the list of films in the Canada First selections as well as other CanCon movies scattered through the main programs.

Toronto – The Toronto International Film Festival® boasts a strong lineup of Canadian features including new works by acclaimed Canadian filmmakers Carl Bessai, Mike Clattenburg, Michael Dowse, Philippe Falardeau, Guy Maddin, Bruce McDonald, Léa Pool, Jean-Marc Vallée and Ingrid Veninger, and onscreen appearances by Jay Baruchel, Camilla Belle, Anupam Kher, Akshay Kumar, Mia Kirshner, Rob Lowe, Vanessa Paradis, Jason Patric, Alison Pill, Russell Peters, Isabella Rossellini, Liev Schreiber, Sean William Scott, Scott Speedman and Nick Stahl.

“This year saw many Canadian filmmakers address a wide range of pressing social issues including the dangers of progress...

TORONTO -- Winnepeg filmmaker Guy Maddin isn't known for run-of-the-mill movies, but the feature he debuted at the Toronto Fest was outrageous even for him. A silent film taking the form of a twelve-chapter Feuillade-flavored serial and designed to have live accompaniment, the movie itself is a match for any of his features to date, and could outstrip earlier efforts in the arthouse arena.

Guy Maddin is the hero here in a (we dare to assume) fictionalized version of himself -- a young boy whose family runs an orphanage housed in the sole structure (a phallic lighthouse) on a remote island.

Little Guy's family is a hotbed of psychosexual turmoil, and Maddin the filmmaker has as much fun as he's ever had mocking the sublimations and malfunctions of this sick family unit. "Always to please!" the title cards scream, as Guy tries to fill the needs of a perverse mother who tracks his movements around the island and communicates via an always-on Aerophone. Mother worries even more about the blossoming sexuality of Guy's sister, a naughty Goldilocks with a face made for silent cinema.

Ma and Pa Maddin's sins extend beyond Freudian oppression, though. They're conducting nasty mad-scientist experiments on the tots in their care, and a brother-sister team of kid detectives is determined to learn their secret (and, eventually, to seduce the Maddin youths). Dusty genres collide in a way that maximizes their cringe-inducing potential, saving the nastiest barbs for the sexually confused Guy and his Mother, who will do anything to beat the aging process.

To his familiar (which is not to say tired) bag of faux-vintage tricks -- the iris shots, manufactured decay, and hyper-artificial acting -- Maddin adds some newer techniques. He finds a way of integrating the flaws of digital imagemaking into an aesthetic that usually avoids any hint of the modern era, for instance: alongside his usual flash frames and jarring edits, Maddin adds the hiccupy freeze frames associated with digital playback errors.

In the Toronto performance, where a narrator, live foley artists, and a castrato supplied aural elements that will have to be turned into a soundtrack when the film is distributed (another live staging will take place, with different performers, at the New York Film Fest), a trio of lab coat-wearing sound effects specialists clambered on stepladders and sploshed in tubs of water to add texture to the onscreen action; in the box seats above them, semi-regular Maddin company actor Louis Negin provided an often sarcastic commentary. Twice toward the film's end, a rotund middle-aged man in a short cape and fur cap stood into a spotlight, opened his mouth, and sang in an impossibly pure soprano.

That sight is the only major sacrifice that will have to be made when this weird and very funny movie makes the jump from live event to distribution prints: On a soundtrack, the incongruity of that voice and its owner will be lost to moviegoers. That's hardly something to worry about, as Guy Maddin's stories and images already boast more eccentric jolts than audiences can digest at one sitting.

BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!

U.S. Distributor (if there is one)

The Film Company

Credits:

Director: Guy Maddin

Writer: Guy Maddin, George Toles

Producer: Amy E. Jacobson, Gregg Lachow

Executive producer: Jody Shapiro, Philip Wohlstetter, AJ Epstein

Director of photography: Benjamin Kasulke

Production designer: Tania Kupczak

Costumes: Nina Moser

Music: Jason Staczek

Editor: John Gurdebeke.

Cast:

Grown-Up Guy Maddin: Erik Steffen Maahs

Mother: Gretchen Krich

Young Guy Maddin: Sullivan Brown

Sis: Maya Lawson

Chance Hale / Wendy Hale: Katherine E. Scharhon

No MPAA rating

Running time -- 97 minutes...