The door is locked, and there's no way to knock it down... Digging around,  you manage to find some items: A jar of mayonaise, a broken clock, and some expired lottery tickets. What do you do!? Well not much, because I don't know how to program 3d flash games. But there's still hope.

Ever play those room escape games?

After watching Hitoshi Matsumoto's latest film, you might be inclined to find your way out of some of these ridiculously intricate point and click 3D locked room mystery games!

While arguably, the tools are decidely less random than those seen in Symbol - the item combinations and consequent usage concepts are pretty abstract. Unfortunately, unlike in the film, there are no cool comics with encouraging theme music (that I know of) to brainstorm with. Though there are FAQS out there (but those are no fun, and don't really help your brain to melt)

Anyhow, the best of these games are FREE, load quickly with a solid connection, a fine alternative to crack, and in glorious 3D - no complex controls to learn, only need to point and click.

Start with the classic Crimson Room, and see where it takes you!

One of the resons I'm looking forward to Hitoshi Matsumoto's Symbol tonight is that respectable art cinema and I have a long history. It might not seem like it now, but I've done my time with scenes of people smoking and broken televisions and heavy eyeliner and blue filters, repetitive gestures and symbolic colors and abstract animation and the rain. Lonely wheeling seagulls and the failure of communication.

So Symbol's teaser alone makes me laugh. I mean, if your past is riddled with respectable and artsy film, cherubs emerging penis first from the walls of an empty white room should at least seem familiar.

Symbol screens at TIFF on: Thursday September 17, 11:59 pm - RYERSON / Saturday September 19, 12:00 pm - CUMBERLAND 1.

Way back in 2007 Colin introduced us to Hitoshi Matsumoto: the mad genius challenging Takeshi Kitano as reigning king of Japanese comedy. I've said many times that the Asian film fanbase at Midnight Madness is the most loyal of the various fanbases that make up our community and Matsumoto did not disappoint with his rookie offering Dainipponjin.

Matsumoto returns to Midnight Madness this year with Symbol. Here is the trailer More...

More Madness picks, this time from Tim League, founder of Fantastic Fest and the Alamo Drafthouse!

A Town Called Panic

I became a fan of the Belgian TV version of this show since I first heard of it on Twitch. Watch a few of the original language episodes online and this will only marginally prepare you for the manic, surreal adventure that awaits. This stuff is pure brilliance.

Symbol

Japanese TV comedy legend Hitoshi Matsumoto's BIG MAN JAPAN was one of my favorite films from 2 years ago at midnight madness and he's back with more jaw-dropping insanity with SYMBOL. You will never guess where this outlandishly bizarre film will lead.

REC 2

Spanish directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza blazed onto the scene in 2007 with the knuckle-biting, lo-fi zombie mock-doc REC. I've yet to see the full film, but the operatic trailer literally raised goose-bumps on my arms when I first saw it. I can't wait to check it out.

We are graced with the presence of the great Grady Hendrix: writer, raconteur, programmer of the New York Asian Film Festival, and always, always the coolest guy in the room. There's this rumour going 'round that TIFF ends on the 19th of September, but make no mistake -- TIFF ends whenever Grady leaves Toronto. Here's what he thinks you should see:


MIDNIGHT MADNESS PICKS

ONG BAK 2 - on-set shenanigans reached critical mass during the shooting of teeny tiny action star, Tony Jaa's, big fat directorial debut. The production went massively over budget, the shooting schedule stretched on into infinity and Jaa vanished at one point, rumored to be visiting a guru in the forest, or praying in seclusion, or hiding with his parents. Midnight deals were made, negotiations were presided over by police chiefs, and kidnap rumors swirled until everyone hugged and made up and Jaa agreed to go back to work. The resulting film is a jungley fever dream, as primitive as the pounding of the tom toms, full of leering close-ups and populated by a gallery of grotesques, like something Guy Maddin would have nightmares about after an evening spent watching Thai action films and eating spicy sausages. Massive and inarguable, ONG BAK 2 is a dreadnaught of a movie that crushes everything in its path. Is it good? That's debatable. But is it entertaining? Aw, hell yeah.

A TOWN CALLED PANIC - Midnight Madness usually seems to play host to Asian action movies, gory horror flicks or satirical send-ups of fanboy genres like gory horror flicks or Asian action movies. So when a straight-up surrealist comedy like A TOWN CALLED PANIC comes along it needs people to buy tickets. Produced by the French, A TOWN CALLED PANIC almost completely erases classic French fuck ups like the Maginot Line from memory and it's tenser than PSYCHO, more romantic than CASABLANCA and has far less Bruce Willis than ARMAGGEDON. Rescuing stop motion animation from the twee hands of Henry Selick, ATCP is the kind of movie that lives on in your brain after you see it like a happy memory. Or a tumor.

SYMBOL - what's the matter with Japan? Why are Japanese people so weird? Unknown. But further investigation is required. Said investigation begins with SYMBOL, a further spelunking into the fifth dimension after movies like THE TASTE OF TEA or FUNKY FOREST: THE FIRST CONTACT. Hitoshi Matsumoto previously directed DAI NIPPONJIN, a movie that never got hailed the way it should have since it was, after all, a masterpiece. Deciding to go for a full-on attack on audiences, Matsumoto has taken off the gloves and now refuses to play nice, blasting our faces with the kind of surrealist crazy-pants filmmaking that leaves audiences thinking, ZOMG JAPAN!!! Plus, masked wrestlers.


FAVE FOUR NOT IN MIDNIGHT MADNESS

ACCIDENT - Soi Cheang is the best Hong Kong director you've never heard of. Starting out shooting digital video doodles before his deeply moving gothic gentrification romance, DIAMOND HILL, broke him into the mainstream he went on to do horror (HORROR HOTLINE: BIG HEAD MONSTER) and action (DOG BITE DOG) giving everything his own brutal stamp and rich visuals. Now comes ACCIDENT, produced and given an impeccable high production value sheen by, Johnnie To (VENGEANCE) and it's a movie that has been in post-production seemingly forever. Starring the under-rated and overly-tanned Louis Koo and the vampirically sexy Richie Jen, it's about hitmen who make their hits look like accidents, before they start having accidents themselves. With a soundtrack by the incomparable Xavier Jamaux (SPARROW) if it's not one of the best Hong Kong movies of the year, it's certainly going to be one of the best looking.

BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS - Weirdo Herzog remakes Abel "No One in America Will Finance My Movies" Ferara's BAD LIEUTENANT? Done. Especially since crying, naked, penis-flashing Harvey Keitel has been replaced by Nic Cage and His Amazing Hair Plugs. Shot to look like a Lifetime Movie, this promises to be an eyeball scorcher. Any movie that contains the line, "Shoot him again, his soul is still dancing," deserves to be the break-out, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE-sized hit of this year's TIFF.

VALHALLA RISING - Nicholas Winding Refn made the PUSHER trilogy and for that alone he is a God. But now he's turned his attention to Vikings who, as we all know, are the new pirates, who were the new ninjas, who were the new aliens, who were the new robots, who were the new vikings (waaaay back in 1955). So it all comes full circle. Misty, muddy, bloody and bare-knuckled, VALHALLA RISING isn't just the greatest name for a death metal band ever. It's also one of the best-looking movies in this year's TIFF line-up.

BARE ESSENCE OF LIFE - the bloodless write-up on the TIFF website doesn't even start to indicate how strange and great this movie is. Kenichi Matsuyama, the teen heartthrob from DEATH NOTE and DETROIT METAL CITY, plays a retarded farmer who falls in love with a teacher who just moved to his hick town from Tokyo. A completely boring opening 45 minutes lulls you to sleep before the movie begins to throw brain removal, ghosts and more at your face. Despite how boring it seems, it's one of the weirder movies in this year's TIFF and it deserves something - tap-dancing dogs in front of the theater, a big awesome poster, good word of mouth - to lure audiences in.

So perhaps you've already watched the trailer for Symbol, but are still unsure of what you're getting into. 

That just means you're not insane enough yet.

Here are some subtitled links to some of Machan's (as Japan affectionately knows him) previous work:

So this first one, I rate at about a 3/5 on the weird-o meter, but let's ease this in!

Kinda get a sense of where this is going?

Yep.

Check Out Symbol at TIFF: Thursday Sept. 17 11:59 PM - RYERSON/ Saturday, Sept. 19 12:00 - CUMBERLAND 1

Hitoshi Matsumoto's second film, Symbol is one of this year's Midnight Madness selections, and promises to be one of the strangest of the program's history. Coming from the writer/director/star of 2007's Dai-Nipponjin, nobody should be surprised.  The film opens in Japan a couple days before screening at TIFF so unlike most films at the festival its marketing campaign is in full swing.  Of course, it's a weird one.

First are the two teaser trailers that have been released:

Teaser 1

Teaser 2

The poster:

Thanks to Jason Gray for the tip on the Hello Kitty promotion. More images of Kitty (is that too familiar?) in Matsumoto's pyjamas can be found linked off of his blog entry.