This being my first time going to the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. I would be making this trip with the good Mr. John Allison from the website RowThree.com who was making the trip out to Fantasia from Saskatoon (a city in Saskatchewan Canada, look it up) via a short stay in Toronto. Knowing we'd be arriving later in the evening on Thursday (opening night of the festival), I decided to play it safe and not purchase tickets to any of the opening night films. The opener was the big budget film The Sorcerer's Apprentice which I'll be able to see anywhere and the other two films would be playing later should I really want to check them out.
On Tuesday and Wednesday of the week of the festival I purchased my tickets only missing out on two films which were sold out at the time. Looks like no Rubber or First Squad for me but I will be catching a couple Serbian genre films, and a mix of animated, foreign, martial arts and horror flicks during my stay.
The drive from Toronto to Montreal was a pretty uneventful one with much discussion about film and festivals being had between me and John and with the odd text message from Kurt Halfyard of Twitchfilm.net as he was coming in via train the same day. Upon arriving in Montreal we checked into our hotel and got settled in before John and I decided to grab some dinner. Later we'd be heading out to the opening night party @ club 1234.
After food was had we got word from Kurt that he had arrived and we met up with him at his hotel before jumping over to the party. Club 1234 had a beautiful red carpet set up with a nice outdoor patio section at the front of the club. There was live entertainment in the form of fire breathers and a bar tender who liked to put on a show. When John ordered a Long Island Ice Tea, what would have taken a normal bartender a couple minutes to put together with substandard ingredients took this talented bartender about 10 minutes as he not only did everything properly, he did it with style. He very much deserved the tip I gave him. Inside the venue it was decent enough. Bartenders weren't as good but there was other entertainment to be had in the form of a lovely lady swinging on a chair in the middle of the main room, random dancers performing routines in the middle of the dance floor and Metropolis playing on every wall. The club was a pretty good location and much talking was had between like minded individuals before I decided to turn in for the night and get some rest before my first day of films.