Fantasia 2010 - Prix du Public

So the Audience Choice awards just got announced. I read the first half and thought, holy fuck the audience is stupid. Then I read the second half and calmed down somewhat. I'll list them for you with my comments (i.e. incoherent ranting) below each category. I didn't see any animation films or enough short films to comment on those categories, so I left them out.

Meilleur film asiatique/Best Asian Film
Gold – Ip Man 2 (Hong Kong)
Silver – Sell Out! (Malaisie)
Bronze – Castaway on the Moon (Corée du Sud/South Korea), Dream Home (Hong Kong)

I didn't see either Sell out! or Castaway on the Moon, but from what I heard they are both worthy, but Ip Man 2 is a total shank, a case of big-name popularity over actual quality. The Hong Kong showings were pretty weak this year, sadly, but Gallants crushed Ip Man 2 in originality, style and spirit. Ip Man 2 isn't a bad movie at all, but the second half is basically Fearless drained of all the joy.

Meilleur film européen, nord-américain ou sud-américain/ Best European, North or South American
Gold – A Serbian Film (Serbie)
Silver – At World’s End (Danemark)
Bronze – Rec 2 (Espagne)(Spain)

Now this is some serious horseshit. I'm starting to think the Serbs pulled a great, big scam on us this year. It seems like everybody who is involved in the industry or in reviewing are tripping all over themselves to say how once you view this film as a metaphor it overcomes its exploitative content. It's bullshit and you know it. This is straight up shock torture porn with no moral core and nothing interesting to say beyond "life is shitty when you rape and kill your neighbours and are then rightfully blamed for it." I'm not going to bother to name all the European, North or South American films that played this year that are far superior to A Serbian Film. Simply look to the list on your right. I'm very disappointed with the people for this choice.

Meilleur long métrage canadien ou québécois/Best Canadian or Quebec Feature
Gold – The Shrine
Silver – Suck
Bronze – Frankenstein Unlimited (Québec), Neverlost

Great choice by the people! I didn't see any of the other Canadian films, though (besides If a Tree Falls), so I could be wrong here. But The Shrine was great so I'm very happy they won.

Prix Guru du film le plus énergétique du festival/Guru Prize for Most Energetic Film of the Festival
Gold – Ip Man 2 (Hong Kong)
Silver – Rec 2 (Espagne)(Spain)
Bronze – Symbol (Japon)

Gallants was so much more energetic than Ip Man 2. I don't know what people are thinking here. I won't go on and on though, because overall, the films didn't have that much energy this year. They were good but they didn't ramp it up like in year's past in terms of energy, so this was a very tough category for me to vote in.

Film le plus innovateur/Most Innovative Film
Gold – Symbol (Japon), A Serbian Film (Serbie)
Silver – Sell Out! (Malaisie)
Bronze – Rubber (France)

Take A Serbian Film out of here and you have some solid results. Otherwise, what the fuck, raping a baby is now "innovative". Oh look I'm going to make a movie about a porn star who is forced to do more and more snuffier films. I'm so edgy and innovative. Fuck off. How could the people be so gullible?

Meilleur documentaire/Best Documentary
Marwencol (É-U)(USA)

YES!!! The people are geniuses! ;-)

Edit: a tweeter, (whom I noticed because he was complaining about Ip Man 2 being over-rated) made a very good point about the people's awards: "Audience Awards are unfortunately driven by the amount of people seeing the films, and the generated hype to fill the place. Thus, hyping IP MAN and Serbian Film like crazy to fill Theater Hall twice on prime time does skew those Awards." I still can't understand how so many people could have actually considered it the best film of the fest, but that does help explain how the numbers might be relatively inflated. It's a bit much, but maybe each film should be weighted by its overall attendance and then the votes for those films scaled accordingly, so a film that had a higher percentage of vote relative to attendance would do better than one that maybe had more overall votes.