Black Gate

On the morning of Sunday, August 1, I was in no particular hurry to get to the Hall Theatre. I planned to see the Korean zombie movie Train to Busan, but knowing it had already played the large room of the Hall once I didn’t anticipate I’d have difficulty finding a seat. I intended after that to go across the street to the De Sève Theatre, where I’d watch Operation: Avalanche, a found-footage fiction about filmmakers who’d faked the moon landing in 1969. Then I’d go have a bite to eat and come back for two more movies. It sounded like a nice well-spaced day, but when I got to the Hall ten minutes before Train to Busan was scheduled to start I found I’d radically underestimated the film’s popularity. As the doors opened to let the ticket-holders in, the line stretched around the corner, up to the next street, and then around the corner there. Luckily enough, I was able to find a good seat in the back of the Hall, where I watched the auditorium fill up with an enthusiastic crowd.

Train to Busan was directed and written by Yeon Sang-ho, whose animated zombie film Seoul Station I’d already seen at this year’s festival (some sources claim the two movies take place during the same zombie outbreak, but there’s no necessary connection between them — though it is interesting they both revolve around very different father-daughter relationships). The live-action film begins with a brief prologue mentioning a “leak at the biotech district.” Then we get to our main characters, Seok-woo (Yoo Gong), a callous divorced stockbroker taking his daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) to Busan by train to spend her birthday with her mother. But something’s going on around them as the train starts on its way, and that something has made its way onto the train as well. This introductory section’s relatively slow, setting up characters and sub-plots on the train; and then the violence begins.

One zombie begets another. Characters begin to die. Slowly the survivors begin to understand what they’re dealing with, begin to work out the rules by which these creatures operate. Faced with horror, everyone does what they think they have to in order to ensure their own survival — and since this a Yeon Sang-ho movie, “pulling together for the common good” is off the table as an option. Some characters do learn to work as a team. Others use a knack for betrayal. Whatever it takes to live.

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Saturday, July 30, I had hopes of seeing four shows at Fantasia. In the event, I saw three — and ended up with an interesting chat after the last one. First came an animated teen dystopia from Martinique, Battledream Chronicle, in which a young woman fights to free her homeland from digital colonialism. After that came a collection of short films, the International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase 2016 (one of the shorts being an adaptation of Ken Liu’s short story “Memories of My Mother“). Then I’d see The Dwarvenaut, a fascinating documentary about gamer and miniature-maker Stefan Pokorny that incidentally takes an interesting angle on gaming in general and Dungeons & Dragons in particular.

(Bad health has slowed my posting these Fantasia reviews, so as I type these words The Dwarvenaut has already debuted on Netflix. I go into more detail about the film below, but in brief: it’s a fine documentary, entertaining for a general audience and a must-watch for anyone interested in gaming and especially in the Old School Renaissance. Also, I would think, of particular relevance for anyone with an interest in fantasy. Or, for that matter, in New York City.)

Battledream Chronicle, like Nova Seed, is a nearly one-man creation. Alain Bidard wrote, directed, and produced much of the art for the nearly two-hour film. Computer graphics make for detailed backgrounds and fluid action scenes in a science-fictional action story about young people fighting to defeat a corrupt global superpower. It’s a richly-imagined and deeply satisfying story marked by an incredible visual imagination, if also by some unusual plot choices.

In the future, countries settle disputes with gladiatorial contests in a virtual-reality game world, the Battledream, established by a mysterious force called Isfet. One country, Mortemonde, has developed a weapon that gives it unquestioned supremacy in the Battledream. Mortemonde soon conquers the rest of the planet, except for the floating city of Sablerêve, and puts the gamers now under its power to work grinding for experience points in the Battledream — a post-modern computer-gaming colonialism. Syanna Meridian and her friend Alytha Mercuri (Steffy Glissant; I can’t find a voice credit for Syanna) are two of those gamers, a team called the Syrenes de Feu, struggling to keep their heads above water. Then, after a routine combat, they stumble upon a mysterious weapon that might change the balance of power, topple Mortemonde, and bring freedom to the world. Will they survive long enough to reach Sablerêve and turn the tables on Mortemonde?

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