Greg Klymkiw and CFC Media Lab's Ana Serrano flap jaws on VR in Montreal - Virtual Reality at Fantasia 2016 - Includes Magic LINK to Interview by Greg Klymkiw at CFC website

Montreal = FANTASIA, MEAT & VR

CFC MEDIA LAB - VR @ Fantasia 2016

By Greg Klymkiw
With the assistance, sponsorship and programming expertise of the CFC Media Lab at Uncle Norman (In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck) Jewison's Canadian Film Centre, the 2016 edition of the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal hosted The Samsung Fantasia Virtual Reality Experience.

Several of the films in the series proved to be first-rate stand-alone pieces: Remember by Australia’s George Kacevski was a chilling experiential piece involving a woman’s conversation with a computer that is erasing all her memories; Anthony C. Ferrante, famed director of Sharknado 1, 2, 3 and 4 delivered the best of the VR pieces - Killer Deal, a grimly hilarious bloodbath set in a hotel room during a machete salesman convention; and Australia’s Nathan Anderson gave us the wholly immersive and interactive reinvention of the great genre of the 40s and 50s with the post-modern VR NOIR. The Samsung Fantasia Virtual Reality Experience also featured two terrific new productions from the CFC Media Lab: Body Mind Change Redux Teaser and The Closet (both produced by CFC Media Lab Topper Ana Serrano).

As cool as VR is, the technology to deliver the product to its viewers, still needs some modification. The Samsung headsets are comfortable enough, but they are not especially conducive to people who wear glasses, nor are they ideal for those (like me) who sweat like pigs. To the former, I chucked my eyeglasses and used the headset focus to bring the picture into view. This seemed to work fine, only I was seeing a strange mesh-like backdrop which I assume was there because I couldn’t focus to my ideal vision.

To the latter, I was often sweating under the headset and this caused fogging.

Needless to say, this was a tad annoying, especially when immersive interaction was required. The fogging issue is not the end of the world, though. I suggest Samsung build in a de-fogger/defrost system within the viewers. Gentle cold air pumping in would not only clear the screen, but provide a sensual experience for the viewer. This would also add a fetishistic element for those so inclined. After all, who doesn’t enjoy having their eyelids caressed by someone gently blowing upon them?

Ah, but this is mere technology and I suspect the bugs will be worked out (if they haven’t already been). VR is the future and then some. To say the experience was inspirational, wildly entertaining and at times, almost heart stopping, would be an understatement. Participation in the films was to participate on the ground floor of the future and I was mega excited to discuss VR in all its glory with Serrano.

My interview with her can be found on the CFC website HERE.

SHARKNADO 2: THE SECOND ONE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A Masterpiece of shark poop

YOU WILL
BELIEVE
A SHARK
CAN FLY
AND IF
YOU
BELIEVE
THAT
I'VE GOT A
BROOKLYN
BRIDGE
I CAN SELL
CHEAP!

Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)
Dir. Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Vivica A. Fox, Judd Hirsch, Robert Kline, Robert Hays, Billy Ray Cyrus, Perez Hilton, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, Kari Wuhrer, Wil Wheaton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Inclement weather hits the New York-bound flight from L.A. Never fear, though. Robert Hays (Airplane!) is the pilot. But, wait! What's that we see out the window?

Oh, Jesus! No!

SHARKS!

This is more than mere inclement weather. This is that meteorological phenomenon which hit L.A. last year. It's a sharknado - a tornado so fierce it rips thousands of sharks out of the ocean and has them whipping around within the funnels of H2O, allowing for extra propulsion to dive at their targets, jaws agape, lusting to ingest whatever their tummies desire.

Within the first ten-or-so minutes of Anthony C. Ferrante's Sharknado 2: The Second One. a passenger is decapitated by a shark (in the plane), our leading lady (Tara Reid) has her hand bitten off by a shark (in the plane) and the pilot is swallowed whole when a shark crashes into the cockpit (uh, you guessed it, in the plane), until our stalwart hero from the first Sharknado (Ian Ziering) commandeers the controls, dodging hundreds of hungry airborne sharks until he can safely crash-land the airplane.

Alas, New York is about to be hit with a shit-storm of sharks because frankly, there's not one, but two - count 'em - TWO sharknados headed for the Big Apple from opposite directions like mega, funnel-shaped Twin Towers threatening to collide with each other in the heart of Times Square. And as we watch, mouths agape, we realize we're about to participate in what might be one of the most gloriously ludicrous monster movies of all time.

The first Sharknado was happily stupid. Sharknado 2 grabs a nursing sow by the teats and begins pulling maniacally like Quasimodo the Notre Dame bell ringer. Whereas the first titty twister of a Sharknado was so awful it was good, our followup picture is so good, it's hard to believe how awful it truly is - but in all the right ways - and possibly in ways that might actually be good. At a certain point, surrealism overtakes the whole affair and your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not the picture is endowed with considerable merit (or not, or whatever, it doesn't matter). Director Ferrante and screenwriter Thunder (Surely Not His Real Name) Levin have us soiling ourselves from beginning to end, not out of fright, but because the movie is genuinely funny.

Where writer Not His Real Name excels beyond the preposterous genius and variety of tornado-propelled shark attacks are some of the finest lines of dialogue ever scribed in an awful movie. My favourite, by far is when our bland leading man visits our bland leading lady in the hospital where she's recovering from a shark biting off her hand (yes, she's the one, the lassie who gets chomped by a shark in the plane in the first ten minutes), he attempts some levity meant to cheer her up, points to her bloodied, bandaged stump and remarks:

"The next time you offer to lend a hand don’t be so literal about it."

I'm still slapping my knee over that one, good golly gee. My other knee is also sissy-boy-slapped all to hell from laughter over seeing the head of the Statue of Liberty crash into downtown Manhattan and take out an unsuspecting bystander. Will wonders never cease? No, they don't. Witness, if you dare, our dreadful leading lady retrieve her hand from the jaws of a shark to get her wedding ring back.

This, I believe, is truly worthy of a full-on sissy-boy slap-party of guffaws.

With an atrocious leading man and equally abominable leading lady, a handful of fun supporting turns (notably Judd Hirsch as a cab driver) and the most ridiculous number of cameos by American pop culture icons (Billy Ray Cyrus, Kelly Ripa, Al Roker, etc.), there's no way anyone but some high-falutin' egg head is going to not love this tasty mound of fresh, steaming shark poop. The special visual effects are undeniably atrocious, but they're so unsparing in their sheer volume, that you occasionally convince yourself how great they are. Which, of course, they are most certainly not.

That, ladies and gentlemen, takes some doing and Sharknado 2: The Second One does it real good.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Sharknado 2: The Second One is available on an outlandishly rich Blu-Ray edition from VSC that includes 2 commentary tracks - TWO!!! - tons of behind the scenes featurettes, a genuinely fun and informative short on casting the cameos, a gag reel, extended and deleted scenes and gorgeously moronic cover art and menus. Feel free to order the movie directly via the appropriate Amazon links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.

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SHARKNADO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - ALL HAIL "SHARKNADO" FOR MERELY EXISTING

Sharknado (2013) 1 PUBIC HAIR
Dir. Anthony C. Ferrante
Starring: John Heard, Tara Reid and a bunch of other people who appear to have acted in movies and television that nobody in their right mind will have even heard of, much less seen.

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A huge humdinger of a Hurricane-Katrina-like whirlwind is no common-variety tempest in a teapot. It results in mega tornados capturing every shark on the Pacific Coast and depositing thousands of the munchie-crazed-bastards in Lotus Land. A handful of non-characters become the film's prime focus as they battle the CGI threat of a lifetime. We watch, open-mouthed. as the most horrendous computer-generated sharks shoot out of the raging twisters to fill Sunset Boulevard - and they sure a shootin' are not looking to eat at Taco Bell. Nothing less than the human species will do for the main course.

That's it. No more. No less. Nothing else.

This utterly horrendous made-for-SYFY movie (which aired in Canada on SPACE) doesn't even have the distinction of being laughably awful. What it has in its favour is that it exists. The other thing in its favour is that, as stupid as the idea is, it's actually a pretty fun idea for what might have been a watchable, borderline surreal B-movie. I wish it were so, but the writing is abysmal, there's nothing remotely funny about it and the only thing that keeps you watching is to see how long your jaw will stay dropped at just how horrendous it actually is.

One of the more depressing elements of the movie is seeing the offbeat 70s/80s actor John Heard embarrass himself in the role of a drunk (a la Walter Matthau's similar cameo in Earthquake). Heard was never going to be anyone's idea of a big star and his bland qualities suggested he'd never be, uh, heard from, ever again. Still, he made a reasonable impression in movies like Paul Schrader's The Cat People, Ivan Passer's Cutter's Way, as Jack Kerouac in the kind of strange, kind of cool John Byrum-directed Beat Generation biopic Heart Beat and Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter. Watching him humiliate himself here for a paycheque can't even inspire me to crack a good joke or two at his expense.

Watching the movie, I just kept wondering why SYFY doesn't even try to make good movies. They don't have to be anything other than crap, but there's no reason why they can't be good crap?

The movie looks as good as it's ever going to look on Blu-Ray and the technology is so indelible in its image quality that it serves to make the special effects actually look worse than they are.

Still, I have to admit that I not only looked forward to watching it, but as I screened the picture, I could not take my eyes off it. I was never bored and managed to make it all the way through rather painlessly. This is hardly a ringing endorsement, but even from a dyed-in-the-wool genre freak like me, that's about the biggest endorsement I'll be able to bestow upon it.

Here's a nice quote I'm happy to offer for some future home entertainment release box art:

"I sat all the way through Sharknado and I'm embarrassed to admit it didn't bore me."

"Sharknado" is available on Blu-Ray and DVD from VSC - Video Service Corp.