Wall-E to close Tokyo film festival
Jason Gray in Tokyo
15 Sep 2008 13:16
Pixar’s Wall-E will be the closing film of this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival (Oct 18-26).
Wall-E opens theatrically in Japan on December 20th as the last major territory for the $290m international hit. As previously reported, John Woo’s Red Cliff will be TIFF’s opening film.
TIFF has also announced the world premiere of action omnibus Kill in the Japanese Eyes section. Led by Sky Crawlers director Mamoru Oshii, the four-part film features climactic chanbara (samurai sword action) battles. Oshii is joined by directors Kenta Fukasaku, Takanori Tsujimoto and Makoto Tahara. Produced by Deiz and Geneon Entertainment, Kill opens theatrically on December 6.
Now in its 21st year, TIFF is the centrepiece of the 16-event Japan International Contents Festival (CoFesta) which runs for 29 days from Sept. 30 - Oct. 28.
Other details regarding the TIFF competition jury and line-up are expected to be announced at the official press conference on September 18.
But this is THE time of the year, and perhaps one of the last times to certainly see Wall-E at a good time of your choice on the big screen with a large crowd, because many cities are having a ‘Films in the Park’ series. It’s not a film festival like big towns have, or traveling shows like the Jewish Film Festival. Just google your area, or state, country, with ‘Wall-E’ and perhaps ‘park’ and you might be surprised what shows up. Tomorrow I’m driving to see one of these about 70 miles away. A man who figures prominently in the film will be there, since he lives only 45 min from Pixar and less to Lucas films…
In the following years, Wall-E will be shown less and less frequently, a sad shadow of his former glory… Poor Wall-E.
Edit: actually Google automatically shows the top entries as places near your location. I used ‘Wall-E’, ‘park’ and ‘film’ and got showings in the next few days in the Pixar area, Tempe Arizona, State College (Penn State) and locations in New York and the midwest, northeast and perhaps some overseas with English town names.
Oh look, I’m a ‘Garbage Boy’ now. I have found inner peace, err cube.
Yeah, they had a movies at the park thing at the botanical gardens in my city in summer, but I forgot. No doubt they’ll have one for Up in January next year.
Actually, as the past Earth Day this year has shown us, WALL-E is being used for Earth Day and environmental stuff all over. Just as An Inconvenient Truth has, it’s going to continue on through the perceived environmental message (the fact that Stanton didn’t intend this is irrelevant, it’s still happening). Stanton’s undertones that were meant to serve the story not be it were quite fortuitous in this way, he’s created something that’s clearly a beautiful timeless Sci-Fi love story, but it also has obtained longevity via these environmental undertones.
Don’t be surprised if, next Earth Day, WALL-E and An Inconvenient Truth are still the top picks for that time of the year.
I can see a lot of science fiction geeks getting together to watch it occasionally. I bet when there’s a new Pixar film coming out tons of people watch it too.