Hey folks, Harry here... Anton Sirius is back for the 32nd consecutive year of AICN Toronto Film Coverage. That's right - it all started back in 1958 when he sent his first report from the Toronto Film Fest when Charles Chaplin debuted a print of THE GOLD RUSH that apparently was missing it's soundtrack. Well, this year Anton is back, like every year since that historic mess up... and nothing has changed. Comedian's still can't put their films together. Here he is...

Greetings starkinder! It is I, Anton Sirius, back for another kick at the Canadian can. I didn't have time to do up any kind of proper preview for the fest this year but trust me, the program is sick - top-heavy with comedies (Chris Guest's For Your Consideration, Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show, Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles' Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Emilio Estevez's Bobby), heavyweight directors (Werner Herzog, Kim Ki-Duk, Guy Maddin, Darren Aranofsky, Pedro Almodovar, Paul Verhoeven, THREE Johnnie To films, Guillermo del Toro, etc etc) and what could be one of the best Midnight Madness programs since the legendary 1992 slate (aside from Borat we get the Host, Nacho Cerda's much-delayed feature debut the Abandoned, Danish animated revenge film Princess, WETA'ed-up killer lambs from New Zealand in Black Sheep, and throwback anthology horror Trapped Ashes.)



Ah yes, Borat. The Opening Night MM flick, complete with loads of hullabaloo, an almost impossible-to-get ticket, a fleet of 20th Century Fox vehicles out front and the fabled Kazakh journalist himself riding up on a horse. Everything was in place for one of those truly spectacular film fest nights...



...until the projector broke about 25 minutes into the movie.



This is how crazy it got: while the theater staff tried to figure out what was wrong, a local magician of dubious talent hopped up and tried to keep the audience entertained with spoon-bending tricks (or at least prevent them from rioting, at which I guess he succeeded.) Meanwhile up in the balcony, Larry Charles led a crack team of experts up to the projection booth, a group that included a surprise cameo by Michael Moore. Our hopes were raised - surely Moore's fabled blue collar powers would save us! - but alas, fifteen minutes later, Charles and then Moore staggered out, defeated by the malicious Canadian technology.



So, no Borat review. The 25 minutes I saw were incredibly funny though. Kazakhstan's version of Pamplona's Running of the Bulls has to be seen to be believed.



I did see one film before Borat though, which stands a good chance of being one of my favorite films of the whole fest, even with nine days to go...




Fido (2006, directed by Andrew Currie)



What if the seminal event of Romero's zombiverse had happened, not in the angry chaotic late 60s, but in the shiny happy strait-laced 50s?



More importantly, what if Night of the Living Dead had been made with 50s, and not 60s, sensibilities?



Part satire and part stinging social commentary, as all the best zombie movies are, Fido easily trumps not only Sean of the Dead as a 'zombedy' but also smacks around that ridiculous French attempt at a genre deconstruction They Came Back. The film's high concept is deceptively simple. The dead have risen from their graves due to space radiation, but after a short gory war they are tamed thanks to the invention of an obedience collar that suppresses their urge to eat human flesh (science to the rescue!) As a result the undead become the perfect slave labor force - cheap, replaceable and low maintenance - ushering in a consumer golden age (at least inside the small enclaves of the living scattered around the country) with the dead staffing every menial job from factory work to delivering papers.



Young Timmy, however, has a problem. His dad's zombiphobia leaves his family as the only one on the block without a house zombie and himself as a social outcast at school. When a bigwig from ZomCon (the corporation that invented the collars) moves into the neighborhood, Timmy's mother goes out and gets a zombie anyway. With no living friends Timmy quickly becomes buddies with his zombie, who he names Fido. What's poor Timmy to do, however, when Fido's collar starts going on the fritz, and the bodies start piling up (and then walking around?)



Playing out as an extended episode of Leave It to Bubba, Fido leaves no obvious or subtle joke behind - from the gee-whiz classroom newsreel that kicks the film off, to a Bizarro version of a MedicAlert ad ("Grandpa's fallen... AND HE'S GETTING UP!!!"), to the inevitable Lassie gag. It also benefits from some great casting. Rock-solid character actor Dylan Baker is in top form as Timmy's dad, while Carrie-Ann Moss is perfectly off-kilter as his mom. Tim Blake Nelson has a wicked turn as the eccentric zombie expert who lost his job with ZomCon because he prefers his undead young, female and fresh. They're all overshadowed by Billy Connelly as Fido though. Known more for his mad verbal comedy skillz, Connelly proves here that he's just as adept at physical comedy, drawing laughs from his stiff attempts to remember what it was like to be a living person or even just from the widening of his eyes.



And as a portrait of the rot beneath the surface of the 50s version of the American Dream, Fido is just as effective in its own way as Far From Heaven was. The world ZomCon has created is perfect - no crime, no poverty, no non-white people - if you simply turn a blind eye to the fact that you're surrounded by death, and that the only thing keeping you from being eaten is a piece of easily-breakable technology...



Hardcore zombie film fans will probably be disappointed by the low gore quotient, but everybody else needs to see this as soon as they can. It's a hoot.