Though festival screenings will continue for a couple more days last night marked the last film to premiere at the 2009 edition of PiFan and, along with that, the official awards selection and distribution of awards.  And it’s pretty safe to say that closing night belonged to Indonesia with both Indonesian films playing in competition picking up awards while the festival’s third and final film from Indonesia - Merantau - closed things off to a hugely positive audience response.  I’ll start with the short film winners, since that was the jury I was on.
Richard Gale’s The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon was the big winner in the shorts competition, taking both the Citizen’s Choice Award and the jury-awarded Best Short prize. And he accepted both wins with passably good Korean, too.  Taking home Best Korean Short was Jung Yu Mi’s stellar animated short film Dust Kid,
Todd Brown

Read the full article on twitchfilm.net

Canadian auteur Bruce McDonald has attracted a small but passionate following with movies like Hard Core Logo and The Tracey Fragments, experimental works with some fierce defenders. In a just world Pontypool, now playing in select theaters and on IFC On Demand, would exponentially increase the size of his fan base. That’s because it’s as smart and thought provoking a horror movie as any released in years. The screenplay by Tony Burgess, based on his novel “Pontypool Changes Everything,” imbues its zombie story with deep rooted philosophical underpinnings and McDonald brings it the meticulous technical expertise of a master filmmaker. Stephen McHattie stars as Grant Mazzy, a radio DJ working in the small Ontario town of Pontypool, forced to stay on the air one cold, blustery morning as mysterious foreboding events begin to happen outside the studio. In an exclusive interview, Film School Rejects spoke to the director. The
Robert Levin

Read the full article on filmschoolrejects.com

With the countless zombie epics that have hit in the wake of 28 Days Later, there's little reason to expect anything original in theaters for fans of the undead. Yet original is just what Pontypool delivers. The first in a proposed trilogy of films by director Bruce McDonald based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything, the movie examines how communication -- or more specifically the challenges in its path -- can be as fierce a terror as any walking corpse. Pontypool is deliberately limited in scale, with almost the entire film taking place at a Canadian radio station; at which DJ Grant Mazzy -- actor Stephen McHattie -- and his producer Sydney Briar --...

Read the full article on fearnet.com

Though it’s unfairly playing second fiddle to another, higher profile horror movie also hitting theaters this week, Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool offers a classic case study in the genre’s fullest potential. Drenched in atmospheric malaise, it functions on the base visceral level mandatory for any such effort. At the same time, the screenplay by Tony Burgess (based on his novel "Pontypool Changes Everything") unashamedly stabs at sweeping social relevance with a narrative that condemns the bastardization of the English language that’s a regular feature of our twittered, instant messaged lives and the media fed bombast that enables it. The great, criminally underappreciated Stephen McHattie stars as Grant Mazzy, a cowboy hat affixed shock jock who has tumbled from the heights of his profession to its dregs: hosting a morning show in a small, bleak Ontario town. Joining him at work are his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and a new assistant named Laurel Ann
Robert Levin

Read the full article on filmschoolrejects.com

Maybe it's that they're Canadian, or that they're promoting a very unusual zombie movie, or just that they're good people, but Bruce McDonald, Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle are a relaxed bunch of people to interview. I had seen the three of the them the night before at a Q&A after the screening of their film Pontypool, and was mostly hoping to be able to ask some questions they hadn't already heard the night before. Turns out director McDonald started the questioning, asking me about the Flip camera I held in my hand and seeming genuinely intrigued by the technology. I had come prepared to talk about the revolutionary Red camera he used to film Pontypool; he wanted to know about my HD cam the size of an iPod. McHattie and Houle are two of the three main stars of Pontypool, a film that documents a zombie infection ...

Read the full article on cinemablend.com

Release Date: May 29
Director: Bruce McDonald
Writer: Tony Burgess
Cinematographer: Miroslaw Baszak
Starring: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly
Studio/Run Time: IFC Films, 95 mins.


Talk-radio zombies from Canada
In the wee hours, in the snow-covered Canadian village of Pontypool, DJ Grant Mazzy begins his nightly radio show. The children are asleep, the insomniacs and third-shifters are tuned in, and, if the bizarre reports coming into the station are to be believed, zombies are gradually taking over the town. Mazzy is a deep-voiced, veteran shock jock, a cowboy-hat-wearing troublemaker whose radio show—by his own admission—works best when it pisses people off. As Mazzy explains, a pissed-off listener doesn’t switch stations, plus he might even call his friends and get them mad, too, and when this simple talk-radio strategy of viral anger finds its eerie parallel in a zombie epidemic, Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool begins to throb with horror-tinged social commentary.

Read the full article on pastemagazine.com

Is there really no escape from the living dead? Zombies have found their way to school curriculum (Max Brooks’ masterful novel World War Z can be found in the required reading section of your book store) and they have always been a part of mainstream cinema from The Night of the Living Dead right up to 28 Weeks Later. Pontypool is one of the more inspired takes on the zombie genre. The film is low budget and high concept. The zombie film, some will say, has become a tired piece of art. George Romero’s recent entries into the zombie canon (Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead) have been a far cry from his groundbreaking original visions in the late 1960’s through late 1970’s. The first 40 minutes of Pontypool marks a return to the roots of not only the zombie picture, but to horror in general. The things not seen are truly horrifying.
NickO

Read the full article on atomicpopcorn.net

Just added! Our staffer Adam Barnick just posted a First Look Review for the much talked about indie flick Pontypool. Directed by Bruce McDonald from a script by Tony Burgess, Pontypool stars Stephen McHattie (Watchmen, History Of Violence), Lisa Houle, Georgine Reilly, Hrant Alianak and Rick Roberts.
Synopsis: Pontypool tells the story of shock-jock radio D.J. Grant Mazzy. Mazzy has, once again, been kicked off the Big City airwaves and now the only job he can get is the early morning show at Clsy Radio in the small town of Pontypool which broadcasts from the basement of the small town's only church. What begins as another boring day of school bus cancellations due to yet another massive snow storm quickly becomes deadly. Bizarre reports start piling in of people developing strange speech patterns and committing horrendous acts of violence. But there's nothing coming in on the news wires. So.

Read the full article on iconsoffright.com

Warner Bros. has released a deleted scene from the director's cut of Zack Snyder's Watchmen, which as you know made a big splash with comic book fans when it hit theaters this March. It appears to be ready for another splash in a big way with an epic director's cut Blu-ray and DVD release on July 21st. In this scene, we see the end of days for the original Night Owl, Hollis Mason (played by Stephen McHattie), as a result of events seen in the film -- most notably, the Rorschach prison breakout sequence. A gang of thugs who have heard that a "Night Owl" busted the notorious Rorschach out of prison set their sights on the apartment above Mason's garage, where they intend to pay him back. There is no publicly specific reason -- at least to my knowledge -- why this scene was cut from the film. While
Neil Miller

Read the full article on filmschoolrejects.com

When you run a movie website you will undoubtedly come across people and commenters that say one of two things: "I can't believe you haven't seen that movie! "You need to watch more movies!" Depending on the site you run and the attitude you have I think these are two entirely legitimate comments. If you (in this case myself) intend to give an opinion on movies you should at least know a little something about what you are talking about, and not merely one single genre unless that is your site's target demographic. You can go back and look at reviews I wrote back in 2003 (when I started this site) and easily recognize how little I knew. I was overly congratulatory and simply inexperienced and tried making up for it with forced writing. I recognize it, but have only used my inexperience as a means to realize there is much,
Brad Brevet

Read the full article on ropeofsilicon.com