Since he’s been up there making it for months, it makes sense that George A Romero’s Diary Of The Dead (that’s the full title, folks) will premiere as part of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program. That’s the part of the festival where movies like Ichi The Killer, Hostel and High Tension have bowed in the past; hopefully Diary will be better than all of them. Loads better. Please.
Romero is in good company. Stuart Gordon’s Stuck (based on the news story where a woman hit a guy with her car, then drove home and garaged it with his body in the windshield) is in the program, as is Hitman director Xavier Gens’ Frontière(s) and Wilson Yip’s SPL follow-up Flash Point. (SPL: another Midnight Madness premiere.)
The other films sound fun, too. The Devil’s Chair and À l’intérieur promise serious gore, and the Japanese Dainipponjin parodies superheroes and Ultraman, much like Takashi Miike’s previous festival entry Zebraman. The only program entry that fails to around interest is the anime Vexille, but maybe it’ll be fun as well.
In all, this is a more serious program than in the past couple of years, where the proceedings have been lightened with films like Borat and Jesus Is Magic. You can get extended info on each film at TIFF’s site by clicking here.
The 2007 festival starts on September 6 and runs through the 15th. Once again, I’ll be there for the duration, tired and elated.