I Heart Fantasia

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My beloved Fantasia Film Festival out of Montreal has announced that 2020's edition, running from August 20th through September 2nd, will be, by necessity given you know the world and whatnot, going exclusively online for this year's edition. That comes with one big caveat for yours truly and I imagine a lot of you reading this, too -- it's only going to be available across Canada. So if you were thinking about heading Due North and becoming Mr. or Mrs. Justin Trudeau now's the time (actually 2016 was the time) for this fest will prove a sweet bonus to all that. (Swoon.) Anyway since MNPP does have some Canadian readers and I live for what Fantasia does every year I will share some of their first announcement of titles -- it's, per usual, kicking ass. Especially...

... since they're premiering the new flick from Neil Marshall! The director of The Descent has mostly been doing TV like Game of Thrones as of late, and since we are one hundred percent pretending last year's Hellboy movie, which I couldn't even finish, never happened, this one, called The Reckoning, marks his triumphant return to Cinema... or so we hope. Even better it's about The Plague! The Black Plague, to be specific. I posted about it back when it was announced last year -- it's about an accused witch (Charlotte Kirk) becoming a witch witch, and co-stars Joe Anderson, an actor I like very much and find severely under-used.

Other highlights -- the second film from Japanese director Shinichiro Ueda following up his wonderful worldwide zombie sensation One Cut of the Dead (reviewed here), called Special Actors; a horror movie about fracking (!!) called Unearth that stars Buffy's Marc Blucas and (drum-roll please) Adrienne Barbeau; a documentary about Tiny Tim (the terrifying ukulele-strumming singer, not the Dickens character); a haunted house flick from Germany called Sleep that stars Toni Erdmann's great Sandra Hüller; a junkie-nurse thriller called 12 Hour Shift that stars our beloved Angela Bettis... point being I recommend you check out the entire list here! This is only the first wave of titles and I already wanna see like a dozen things. I Heart Fantasia -- every year it feels beamed straight outta my brain. See all of our coverage from previous years at this link.

The Star Spangel Banner

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Tomorrow's the 18th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's premiere episode on the WB and so we're celebrating Buffy reaching legal age by picking between her two undead amours over at The Film Experience - this week's "Beauty vs Beast" is tackling Spike vs Angel, y'all. (Hence the shitty "Spangel" pun I started this post off with.) And no sorry you can't write in Riley.

10 Off My Head - Joss' Birthday Beefcake

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It should probably have been a national holiday - writer/director/puny-god Joss Whedon is turning 50 today! Don't feel bad for him that it wasn't a national holiday though, since he's off filming the second Avengers movie and Chris Hemsworth is probably popping out of a cake for him (speaking of beef cake - ha ha get it?) while Chris Evans and Aaron Johnson hold him down and tickle him... (yes my image of the Avengers set is akin to a teenage boy's fantasy of a girl's slumber party; what of it?). But seriously speaking of beefcake Joss has given us so much to appreciate over the years. It seems to have gone hand in hand with his feminist notions of turning a little blond girl nobody was taking seriously into an indestructible powerhouse - he's never had any trouble with turning the male gaze back upon itself, with sexy results. Here are ten of my favorite instances of it off the top of my head from just his television work! See all ten after the jump!

Brett Dalton experimenting on Agents of SHIELD

Good Morning, World

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Happy 40, Riley Finn!

The actor Marc Blucas, that is. I'm actually a little shocked he's forty, I didn't realize he was that much older than SMG - Six whole years! A lifetime! Two lifetimes! He wore the years well. He still wears the years quite well, gathering from these pics I posted of his perky bottom last year. I won't bother to wonder what Riley Finn is up to these days since the Buffy comics have kept us abreast of him just fine. Speaking of, there's a new issue of "Season 9" out on stands today! Has anyone been keeping up? I have the past two issues sitting on my nightstand but I still have to read them, so nobody spoil nothing, please.

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To All We Could Have Lost

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I apologize if I'm a little fixated on this morning's trauma, but I'm recovering still. But just imagine! Looking at these pictures of Marc Blucas' lovely bum (click to embiggen) I'm realizing what a delicate and fragile world we live in.
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I Am Link

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--- Riley In - So who did Marc Blucas (Buffy's Riley Finn) have to blow to get a job in Tom Cruise's new movie? Oh wait... I just answered my own question there, didn't I? Anyway, Blucas is set to play Cameron Diaz's fireman - I like the sound of that - ex-boyfriend in Wichita, the new James Mangold joint (betcha nobody's ever said that phrase before) about a spy going on a blind-date or some shit.

--- Gimme My Dolls - You can watch a clip from Dollhouse's second season over at iTunes; there are some screencaps from it here. Whiskey!

--- Death Is An Option - At least what sort of horror movie death you most wouldn't want is when you head over to Miss Stacie Ponder's query of that kind at Final Girl.

--- QT Talk - Over at The Film Experience everybody's talking about their favorite parts of Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.

--- Hippie Shake - Over at Low Resolution Joe's on Team Taking Woodstock along with me. I don't so much get the Jonathan Groff thing but whatever, the movie's good.

--- Meanwhile over at Slash the review-train from FrightFest in London continues - they've got write-up's of The Descent: Part 2 (another pan, jinkies), a surprising knock on The House of the Devil (surprising because I really had only heard good word of mouth before now), Clive Barker's Dread (not bad but not wholly successful), and a film they call the best of the fest called Heartless, which they describe as "Imagine a story about London teenagers getting in deep with street gangs and knife crime but written by Neil Gaiman," which sounds terrifically interesting to me. It stars constant also-ran Jim Sturgess.

--- And finally, also via Slash comes this 2:40 minute long featurette on Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox:

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Blucas Six Times

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Why do I never think of Marc Blucas, aka Riley? Shame on me. I wasn't the biggest fan of the character - for those who have no idea what I'm on about, I'm speaking of Buffy the Vampire Slayer right now - but I didn't especially dislike him either. I just felt bad for him really. Buffy could be a real stake-you-next-Tuesday sometimes, ya know? And Blucas is certainly an attractive, not to mention large, fellow.

I should go watch that episode where the two of them get trapped in a possessed dorm-room sex-loop; it'll accomplish the dual task of giving me plenty of Blucas without his clothes on as well as reminding me that the show really had no idea what to do with his character which is why, hello, I never think of him. Ta-dah! Problem solved.
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