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I wish more people understood this simple fact!
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The Americans
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Fantasia 2012: ‘The Human Race’ is Both Cruel and Inspiring
The Human Race
Written and Directed by Paul Hough
The Human Race is a grindhouse drive-in classic that happens to have been made years after the drive-in heyday; at least it follows the maxims of legendary drive-in critic Joe Bob Briggs, “the first rule of great drive-in movie-making: Anyone can die at any moment.”
The set-up of The Human Race is that everyone on one city block, 80 souls in total, are snatched from their lives by a white light, dropped into a strange obstacle course and told, “The school, the house and the prison are safe. Follow the arrows or you will die. Stay on the path or you will die. If you are lapped twice, you will die. Do not touch the grass or you will die. Race or die.”
And naturally, there can only be one winner. To paraphrase Glengarry Glen Ross, “Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. (To the chest) Third prize is you’re fired your head explodes.”
This sets up a bleak story of survival horror, with a unique set of characters that you usually don’t see in this sort of picture including a homeless woman, two deaf best friends, a WWII marine in a walker, a woman who is eight months pregnant, two Korean kids (brother and older sister) and a one-legged Iraq veteran, played by Eddie McGee.
Eddie is great in the film, showing charisma, acting skill and action-hero chops. He is faster and more agile on crutches than some people are on two feet. He does all his own stunts including a mind-boggling fight sequence. There is also a great moment when Eddie demonstrates just how agile he is on crutches, skittering sideways like a metal spider.
The Three Best Announcements from the Fantasia Press Conference
The Fantasia Film Festival held their press conference today to unveil their 2012 line-up and honestly we are still processing the information dump. Mitch Davis said during the press conference that the only way to properly describe the festival would be “to tie you to chairs, force feed you caffeine and sugar and talk to you for 17 days.” As usual, Mitch is simultaneously completely insane and completely accurate.
Last year, we published over 100 reviews/articles about/from Fantasia and recorded six podcasts. We intend to at least equal those numbers this year. Expect articles about our most anticipated films from several of us in the next few days, once we have time to study the 2012 Fantasia program book. (At 396 pages, you could use the damn thing to do wrist curls and I think that it has already been declared a Weapon of Mass Destruction by bugs everywhere.)
While you are waiting, the 2012 Fantasia web-site is online now for you to check out.
Most of the information given at the press conference came from excited festival programmers highlighting the films they are excited to show off. I am sure that some of that will influence our individual choices in the days to come, but there were also three fascinating, intriguing, awesome and borderline insane stories that emerged from the press conference that you won’t necessarily find in the official Fantasia press release or on the web-site.
