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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 6th Jul 08
Format: Festival
Mood: Epic
WHAT
MIFF AUTEUR PICKS
WHERE
CHECK THE PROGRAM FROM JULY 11
WHEN
UH. CHECK THE PROGRAM
HOW MUCH
TICKETS HERE FROM JULY 11
Sure, it's a whole city away. But if you're headed down south in the next couple of weeks you really should book a ticket or two to MIFF.
Let's start with some of the festival regulars who show up each year with a new film. You're already familiar with their work, so they make comforting first choices if the program's heft is freaking you out.
The new MIFF program 'Free Radicals' has the strangely sweet Guy Maddin front and centre. In MY WINNIPEG, he takes the least compelling premise in film history - "Hey, let me explain my childhood in Winnipeg! It'll be awesome!" - and uses his impressionistic fireworks to transform it into the unmissable.
We've called the mad Takashi Miike "synopsis-proof" before. Does he think that making his first English-language film will help? That's SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO, a Japanese concoction of Leone-inspired madness. It features a cameo by Quentin Tarantino, but please, don't hold that against it.
Remember trying to find every digit buried, Where's Wally-style, in DROWNING BY NUMBERS? Peter Greenaway combines his interests in film and fine art for the period piece NIGHTWATCHING. Even his numerous failures are intriguing - but are audiences ready to see Rembrandt played by Martin Freeman from THE OFFICE?