The Toronto After dark Film Festival is right around the corner. This event is going to be fantastic! Some of the films already on the schedule are:

- Shinobi
- Behind the Mask
- Re-Cycle
- Mad Cowgirl
- Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell

And a whole bunch more. The Movie Blog is proud to be an online sponsor of the festival (And by the way, Movie Blog Alumnus Todd Brown, who now runs the best foreign film site on the net Twitchfilm.Com, is the Program director for the festival. He and I spoke yesterday and I can tell you he is VERY excited.

Well... Friday I had the chance to chat with the festival director and founder Adam Lopez about the festival and some of the things you can expect from it:

make sure you see behind the mask....I haven't seen it yet but after i saw the trailer there is no film due to come out that I want to see more than this one.It looks amazing.

Official sponsor? I wonder what the makers of these films would think about your arguement that 95% of indie films are crap? ;)

Jay C.
www.filmjunk.com
www.thedocumentaryblog.com

Hey jay!

That's because 95% of them are crap. I'm just hoping that out of the hundreds he had to watch, Todd picked from the good 5%. :P

And yes... Prince of Peace is an Indy film. And yes... it will fall into the 95%. But it'll do it with STYLE!!! (moral victory)

Too be fair isn't 95% of the mainstream movies crap.

But ussualy big budget means uttlerly crap movie

Jay C,
I would not go as far as saying 95%, but I have to agree partially with John's assertion. A LOT of independently produced films that are sent to film festivals for consideration are of very poor quality. In our call for submissions this year, we looked at over 150 features and shorts that were submitted to Toronto After Dark. Budgets aren't the issue so much as what you do with them. In many cases the films just weren't captivating or innovative enough. With only 15 feature film slots, and the whole world in competition, a film had to have something innovative about it. Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell, Mad Cowgirl and Behind the Mask are all low budget indie films, with no a-list stars, that shone threw the pack for their innovation in storytelling. We are are proud to champion these films alongside more expensive and glamourous Asian films like Re-Cycle and Shinobi. And any support from the online community, including the admittedly more mainstream/blockbuster skewed Movieblog is welcome. If you would like Filmjunk to be an official online supporter of Toronto After Dark, please feel free to e-mail me at anytime. - Adam

Mr. Lopez, I don't know John personally, but if I were him, and I were promoting your festival and I saw you left a comment like that on my site using a negative connotation word like "skewed" to describe my site, I fuckin pull any support. Maybe I'm just an angry person, but you should choose your words carefully.

Hey Darth,
Had no idea the word 'skewed' was such a negative word when I typed it. Must be the exhaustion from attending the 3-day convention. I think a better word, and certainly the meaning I was looking for was 'focussed'. I used to work for a market research company. And they always used the word skew or skewed when they meant 'concentration' or 'focus' For example: "the readership of Cosmopolitan Magazine is skewed towards women". It's not a negative thing to say at all. It's a fact. John and I talked about it at the convention. The Movieblog's coverage of cinema tends to be focussed on wider released titles. I am thrilled that they are embracing our festival, who's focus will be on less widely released titles, but ones that are hopefully still of interest to Movieblog readers.

95% of all films released studio and indie are rubbish....generally you gotta swim through a river of a shit to reach the lake of goodness

I saw Behind The Mask at this years FrightFest in London and you have all got to go see it. It's a fantastic movie - one of the best I've seen in years. I can't praise this film highly enough - its well written, brilliant acting, funny as hell etc etc - so please check it out if you can.

Hey Darth,

Thanks for sticking up for me... but I really don't think Adam meant anything by that.

LOL

I generally find that people with poor vocabularies are easily offended....lmfao.

**DISCLAIMER**

This post was skewed towards literate people.

nord