Film | by Shane “Unrated” Hnetka

It’s almost the end of the year which means lots of people are starting to make their Best and Worst of lists. I haven’t seen enough new stuff to bother doing that — and after a while all those lists get boring anyway. But recently filmmaker Guillermo del Toro released a different kind of list.

Dark Dreams Of Films Never Made

Del Toro recently revealed a list of films that he has written scripts for and done early pre-production on but never made. It’s quite a large list. Some I remember being announced like Justice League Dark. Others, I had no idea he was planning on making like The Count of Monte Cristo and Fantastic Voyage.

There are 18 projects that del Toro has never made — the big one being all the work he put into doing H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Lots of movies on del Toro’s list, IMHO, would be awesome to see him make. Sadly, they’ve never come to pass. Still, like all storytellers, del Toro keeps moving forward. Currently, he has five projects on the go. As for all the rest, we can only dream.

Building And Subverting Ratings

Lars von Trier’s latest movie, The House That Jack Built, has been courting controversy since it screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Like most von Trier films, it’s repulsed over half the people that have seen it and received praise from the rest.

The distributor IFC also went and offended the Motion Picture Association of America. IFC screened a special one night only “director’s cut” of the film without the ratings or consent of the MPAA. The film IFC is releasing is R-rated with 80 seconds cut out. The MPAA claim IFC violated its policies and could have mislead audiences who might not have wanted to see the unrated director’s cut.

IFC advertised it as the unrated director’s cut for one night only so I don’t see how that would’ve mislead anyone. The MPAA is just mad at getting passed over and are being pricks about it. This isn’t a movie that’s going to go into wide release anyway. It’s really only going to be playing in specialty theatres, so I don’t know why a R-rated cut is even necessary.

Shane Hnetka is a made-in-Saskatchewan film and comic book nerd. His column “Sunday Matinee” appears weekly on our blog.