This issue marks the beginning of our eighth year of printing, so it’s time to reflect. I could regale you with seven amusing years’ worth of stories about all the blunders we’ve made. But that’s kind of painful and this page doesn’t have enough room to tell them all. So let’s talk about our last issue instead. If you missed it, on our last cover we had She & Him, who are Zooey Deschanel and some guy. Normally, Zooey Deschanel the actress would never appear in this magazine. Film publicists are a pain in the ass. They’re extremely protective of their property and will string you along for months.

You all know Bruce McDonald right? Canada’s rock ‘n’ roll filmmaker. Director of Canadian classics like Highway 61, Hardcore Logo and last year’s The Tracey Fragments. His latest, Pontypool had its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival and it’s his first foray into genre films. It’s also the best horror film made by a Canadian director since David Cronenberg’s The Fly. Bet you didn’t see that one that coming.

On Valentine’s Day, radio shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie, who will play Nite Owl in 2009’s Watchmen) is driving through a zero visibility blizzard in the quiet Ontario town of Pontypool. He pulls over to the side of the road to take a call and a woman appears out of nowhere and starts speaking complete gibberish to him. A little bit shaken up he continues on his way to work at the radio station, located in the basement of a church. It’s a typical morning with reports on school closures, people calling in to complain that there’s no 9-1-2 number people can call for lesser emergencies and Grant trying to get under the skin of the sleepy town. Then a call comes through about civil unrest at a doctor’s office with numerous deaths. There’s not a peep about this on the newswire so is it a hoax? Then the BBC picks up on Grant’s report and wants to know if French separatist terrorists are to blame for all the deaths.

As the calls come into the station, it’s looking like the French aren’t to blame (this time) and Pontypool is in the midst of a deadly zombie outbreak spread by language… possibly of the lovey-dovey type Valentine’s Day language. What follows is a highly suspenseful sci-fi horror thriller that owes as much to the War of the Worlds radio play and Night of The Living Dead as it does to Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I got locked in a room with Bruce McDonald, Stephen McHattie and writer Tony Burgess for 10 minutes and the following conversation ensued.

Bruce, your last movie The Tracey Fragments: Ellen Page, Broken Social Scene, avant-garde editing, a hip movie. Your latest, Pontypool is a genre film, which is probably the nerdiest kind of movie you can make. Did you intend on making films that contrast so sharply?
Bruce McDonald: Not particularly. That was just the next thing up. Tony, the writer, and I have been working on this project for many years. The fact that the script came up was a neat antidote. It was exactly the opposite approach of the previous one so it was very refreshing in that way.

Are you a horror movie fan and if so which ones?
Bruce: Oh yeah. The classics. The Tenant, dunno if it’s horror but it’s a Polanksi film. The Shining. Love The Shining. The Host, which was out fairly recently. It’s a Korean film about a sea monster that’s creepy and good. Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The classics indeed.
Tony Burgess: Phantasm.

Phantasm is amazing but it makes no sense.
Tony: That film is very near and dear to me.

The Tall Man and the silver spinning spheres. It’s insane. What scares you?
Bruce: At the festival there’s a certain kind of character that’s around. It’s this desperate, wide-eyed, glassy, I’ve had a script for 12 years that I’ve been working on kind of crazy. To me that’s a bit scary and disturbing. You’re not sure what’s going on there.

Okay, well I won’t pull this script I’ve been working on out of the bag that I’d like you to read.
Bruce: Scripts out of the bag are fine. It’s more of the Mark David Chapman kind of guy.

What’s scarier: French separatist terrorists or a killer zombie virus?
Tony: Stephen Harper.

Bruce: They’re both pretty scary but I think Stephen Harper tops them all…

Stephen McHattie: The most scary thing is people with power. It’s scary because they can actually do things that harm you.

Tony: I think what’s scarier is when a media from another super power doesn’t know the difference from a terrorist or a zombie. You know the guns are coming but you’re not sure what the target is. Bruce: It’s not so much the French terrorist group that’s frightening but the guy who’s equated some political dissatisfaction with terrorism.

You bring the gore in this film but would it be fair to say you’re more of a fan of psychological terror?
Bruce: I think so. Your imagination will always provide the biggest scares. You go back to these guys who made horror films at RKO and they suggested the terror and they suggested the horror which was in the shadows and it was half-seen. Seems much more effective than the full CGI’d eight-eyed beast. I mean c’mon, it’s a computer program.

In a few shots in Pontypool, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash is prominently featured in the foreground. Explain to me why this wasn’t an accident.
Bruce: We love that book. I read it and my editor Jeremy had read it. There’s so much in it that’s simpatico to language and viruses. It’s a really terrific book and it’s our little salute to the author. So we just stuck it on the table there.

Stephen, how did working on this film compare to working on films like The Watchmen?
Stephen: This grew naturally. I got to work with Tony and Bruce on the character. It felt like we were all doing it together. If you’re working on a great big picture it has to be so planned out. A lot of times you can get stuck into trying to imitate a storyboard.

When do you call 9-1-1?
Stephen: Don’t think I can talk about that.

Tony: I have a five-year-old who’s always trying to call it so I’m constantly screaming, “No, don’t do that! Constable so-and-so is going to put you in jail if you do.”

Bruce: I’ve never called 9-1-1. Thank God I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had to. My father once called 9-1-1 when the hood ornament from his car got stolen.

Bruce: That’s why we need 9-1-2.

Is this film an assault on Hallmark cards?
Tony: That’s new and that’s true.

Excellent. Bruce McDonald hates Hallmark cards. Bruce, I talked to you a year ago and asked what’s the most you’ve ever drank in a single sitting. You said eight double vodka martinis. Has the number changed since then?
Bruce: I think it has.

Tony: Yeah, add a couple cognacs to that number.

Every year the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival does an amazing job screening the sickest and most disturbing horror movies from around the world. Last year it was Inside and Frontier(s). Before that came sick gems like S&Man, Hostel, High Tension and Calvaire. This year it was Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs. The film begins with Lucie, a pre-pubescent girl who’s been beaten to a pulp, running for her life from a slaughterhouse in tattered bloody rags. This is one of the least offensive scenes in the entire movie.

Lucie (Mylene Jampanoi) was bound and subjected to extreme forms of torture at the slaughterhouse. Now institutionalized, it’s unknown why this happened, who her captors were, or how she escaped as she refuses to talk to anyone about it, except a friend she makes named Anna (Morjana Alaoui). Fifteen years later we meet a normal family eating breakfast together. The doorbell rings and the father opens the door. It’s Lucie with a shotgun and, without saying a word, puts a giant hole in his stomach then goes on what could be described as an Ellen ram-Page. After making quick work of the rest of the family she calls Anna for help. She’s convinced these were the people who abused her many years ago. Anna thinks it might be all in Lucie’s fragile mind but decides to help anyways. Making things more complicated, there’s a monster loose in the house. To talk about what happens would ruin the numerous unbelievably amazing plot twists (seriously, they’re Crying Game quality plot twists sans the penis).

If you brave this film, be prepared for disturbingly graphic depictions of a woman getting smashed in the head with a hammer, self-mutilation with razor blades and kitchen knives, a little girl being blasted in the back by a shotgun and a woman having nails wrenched out of her skull which were holding a sensory deprivation mask on her head (while not in any way suggesting a correlation, it should be noted that Benoit Lestang, the man responsible for all these brutal effects and makeup, committed suicide shortly after the film’s completion). As deplorable and disturbing as the subject matter and presentation is, don’t dismiss this film as just more torture porn.

The performances, storytelling and technique in Martyrs are undeniable. It’s sick and disturbing masterpiece. A movie you’ll either love or wish you could unwatch. It goes places, extremely dark and disturbing places, that North American filmmakers wouldn’t dare go near. If you look at horror filmmaking as a neverending contest to raise the bar for the amount of trauma you’re allowed to unleash on an audience, then Pascal Laugier holds the barbed wire crown, for now.

For you, what makes a good scary movie?
It’s a film that has a face to the plot it tells. The lack of cynicism and the lack of distance is my idea of a great genre film. A film made as a direct expression from the director. That’s why I love the classics from Dario Argento and Mario Bava. They used the genre as a way to express themselves.

What do you prefer more, gore or psychological horror? Or simply put: visual versus mental horror?
I think for me the gore and the special effects is not the purpose. It’s a tool I have at my disposal to make films though. It’s just like colour, frame, cut, photography. Gore is the same. It’s one of the tools. I can’t spend two years of my life doing gore for the gore.

Like it or not, your film is going to be lumped in with the torture porn genre because… well… there’s a lot of torture in Martyrs.
I have no problem with that.

What differences do you see between French torture porn versus American torture porn?
There is no real French torture porn wave. Torture porn is already dead. It’s just a word invented by jaded journalists. It’s the coming back of the rogue wild horror film from the Seventies. After Wes Craven killed everything by doing Scream, we lived through 10 years of funny horror films. I hated it. I was not alone. The new wave that came back was called torture porn. It means nothing though. As a fan, I loved Hostel, I love Eli Roth’s work but I consider my work very different. I’m not an American, I’m French and my sensibilities are very different. I was interested in using the imagery of torture porn and turning it into something different. Yes, shocking, but still disturbing for a horror audience.

Why do you think offending people is a good thing?
It’s the matter of what horror is if you want my opinion. As a fan of the genre, I was very tired of horror films that said nothing to no one. That’s one of the traps of the genre. The genre can be made from fans, for the fans and it’s in a kind of ghetto. It’s totally powerless. I wanted to make the genre offensive and disturbing again. Once again, the genre first existed for that kind of purpose. Trying to offend the dominant thoughts, the dominant people and trying to express something else. Trying to express something more real, the kind of reality that society doesn’t want to reveal.

The film already opened in France. Can I get you to tell me about the rating it received and the controversy around that?
We had some problems with the rating commission in France. Not because of the level of gore though. A lot of films like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ did not get this kind of rating. At first I didn’t understand. They were trying to punish and kill the film. In France, when you get an 18+ rating, your film is dead. It’s like a porno. It’s like XXX. It was a way for them to censor me without asking me to cut anything. So we fought a lot and I was supported by all the unions of the French film industry. I was very surprised. It was a matter of principle. Even for people who didn’t like the movie, it was a matter of freedom of speech and expression. Finally we won and got the normal 16 rating and the film had life.

Did you set out to make an entertaining horror version of Passion of the Christ?
Passion of The Christ is a very funny and stupid film. It’s so gory that I’m fascinated by watching it. I watch it like I watch Italian sword and sandals films. For me, Mel Gibson’s take is not that much better. It’s a silly little film made by a guy who thinks he’s a genius. He’s not. The film is, at the same time, boring and fascinating.

Do you expect anything different in North America when it’s submitted to be rated?
The Weinstein brothers bought the film for the American territory. I think it’s probably too much of a European film to be released in North America. I’m not sure if the regular North American horror fan is going to get it, to be honest. I’m very, very proud that a film shot in French has been sold in almost 40 countries. That’s very rare. Some will be in theatre and others will be on an uncut DVD. For an ego matter we prefer the big screen. But most important to me is that the audience can watch the film uncut.

Why is the film set in 1985?
It was done to create distance between our time and the time in the film. I liked the idea that everything had happened in the past. The only testimony of the film would be the Super 8 footage at the beginning. Also, to be honest, I shot the film in Montreal and for me it was good way to make Canada look more like France.

About an hour in I thought the movie was going to end. Then there’s an incredible plot twist. Did you know the direction the story was going to take when you started writing it?
I found my story as soon as I learned the real definition of the word martyr. What is explained in the film is real. The very definition of the film is someone who sees something, a witness. I knew that I had my subject of the film when I realized that. Once again, it was playing with the archetypes of the horror genre and making them fresher again. To impress the audience, even the audience that watches 10 horror films a week. I didn’t want the audience to be in advance of the story. It’s a very involving experience and a very unsafe one.

Are gunshots your preferred method of introducing a plot twist?
Yes. Any time there is a direct act of violence, it turns the story into something else. There is consequences to what we do. I also like the idea that the more Anna tries to the solve problems, the more she is buried by a new problem. Like the audience. Any time the audience thinks that they know what kind of horror movie she’s in, I try to make them wrong. That’s not the path I’m going to take. Follow me.

Was it important for you to tie up all the loose ends in the film to justify all the violence?
Absolutely. I don’t like the word justify but I knew it would explain to the audience why I’m showing so much violence from the starting point. It’s a film about suffering. It’s a film about pain. It’s not a film about torture. I wanted the audience to feel pain because I make my main actress suffer so much. I didn’t want any distance between their suffering and the audience’s suffering. My film, for me, is very empathetic. You have to feel for them. I never make a laugh at my main characters. I love them and I want them to stop suffering. It’s a very sad movie. I would even say it could be a depressing film. Its saying our time is over and evil has eaten everything. People are just hurting each other and it’s the end of it.

Exactly how many times did Lucie hit the mother in the head with the hammer?
One shot for each year of suffering. Let’s say 15. (note: it’s closer to 20).

What does your mother think of the film?
She hasn’t seen it yet. She’s probably gonna go in France tomorrow night. My father didn’t watch it either. Both of them for different reasons. My mother because she’d get sick because she can’t stand the vision of blades slicing skin. My father is afraid to be shocked by the scenes of the film and wonder, “How did I raise this boy? Where did I do wrong?”

Last year’s Halloween editor’s letter about the time I waterboarded a friend of mine for fun upset a few people. It was a joke, okay. No one at this magazine has ever drowned anyone and me and my friends don’t physically torture each other for fun. Emotionally? Well that’s a different story. So this year I’m going to tone things down a little and tell you the very true story about how I like to eat human flesh.

I’m trying to get fatter. I’m not emaciated or anorexic or anything; I’m actually pretty normal sized. I just want to get fat so I can have a distinguished gut. To accomplish this I’ve started exclusively drinking Bakon, the bacon-infused vodka, and invented a new meal between brunch and lunch. I’ve also stopped lying about how much I exercise. I never exercised at all, but all the lying I was doing required a lot of effort, which burned precious calories. While getting fatter isn’t easy, I’m enjoying doing it. I’ve just got one problem: my goddamn skinny genes… err jeans.

Raif Adelberg’s body is covered in tattoos but the cutest is of a peanut on his palm. It’s there as a reminder to never to let things slip through his hands. Darker by comparison, he has the Charles Manson quote “I can never be in love. Because I am love,” tattooed on the inside of his arm. It’s there because he finds Charlie very interesting. This is just one of many amusing contradictions surrounding this Vancouver artist/fashion designer.

Screw objectivity. Eli Roth is awesome. He’s almost singlehandedly responsible for reinvigorating the horror genre back in 2002 with Cabin Fever. Yes, his directorial debut was an entertaining, low-budget, gore and boobiefest. More importantly though, Cabin Fever was wickedly successful and let Hollywood studios know it was okay to make R-rated horror films again. Not one to fall victim to a sophomore slump, his follow-up was one of the most memorable and controversial films of our time: Hostel. Love it or hate it, Hostel is extremely slick and driven by a brilliant concept. Brutal and uncompromising, it’s a film you can’t forget, even though a lot of people wish they could.

First issue of the most exciting year for ION yet! We have some awesome new staff. We have an awesome new look. We have an awesome new office. We have some awesome new mobile technology that’ll enhance your experience with the magazine. And now we have an awesome new website as well. Guess how this year is going to be for us?

In case you’re not the kind of person who pays really close attention to movies and follows the UK street art scene, there’s a really interesting case of life imitating art going on right now. In Alfonso Cuarón’s brilliant film Children of Men—about the worldwide chaos that ensues when the human race loses the ability to have children—there’s a scene where Clive Owen visits his cousin to get a travel visa. The cousin works for the government and is in charge of preserving great works of art, like Picasso’s Guernica and Michelangelo’s David, so they don’t get destroyed in the anarchy. As Clive Owen enters his cousin’s place, in the background there’s a large chunk of wall that has Banksy’s Kissing Coppers on it. Banksy is an anonymous UK street artist who’s almost more of a folk hero and media darling than a vandal. When a new work by Banksy almost magically appears on the side of a building, it’s on the 6 o’clock news. His work is highly sought after and fetches top dollar at auction houses.

When you were 18 the only direction your life was heading was to the liquor store parking lot to try and convince prospective patrons to buy you some coolers. When Harmony Korine was 18 he already penned one of the most controversial American films ever made, Larry Clark’s, Kids. His directorial debut came shortly after in 1997 with the equally eyebrow raising Gummo. He followed that up in 1999 with the extremely arty Julien Donkey-Boy. Along the way he’s directed videos for Sonic Youth and Cat Power, co-written a song with Björk, written another Larry Clark film, Ken Park, and showcased his photography in numerous art shows around the globe. While his creative output hasn’t always been pleasing on the eyes or easy to understand, to say he’s had an eclectic, fascinating and boundary pushing career is a gross understatement.

Marjane Satrapi experienced more by the time she was an early teen than most do in their whole lives. Born into a progressive middle-class family in Iran, when Marjane was nine the Islamic Revolution happened. Then a few years after that, war broke out between Iran and Iraq. Because she was an imaginative and outspoken child, at a time when being imaginative and outspoken could get you thrown in jail, her parents sent her to Vienna (exiled, as she refers to it) to complete her schooling.

I’ll just come right out and admit that I’m a huge fanboy of Dario Argento. This man has given us so many demented, violent and beautiful films, that I put him up there with David Cronenberg. So when I was sifting through the descriptions for the 349 films screening at the Toronto International Film festival this year, it was his latest, The Mother of Tears that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. When I got an interview confirmation with him, I started taking deep breaths into a paper bag to avoid hyper-ventilating.

You may not be aware but Bobcat Goldthwait, the guy with the funny voice from the Police Academy movies, doesn’t actually talk like that. You also may not be aware that he’s silently been chalking up an impressive list of director’s credits. Though some thought his 1992 directorial debut Shakes the Clown (aka the alcoholic clown movie) was career suicide, it had at least two fans. Martin Scorcese was one. Another was Jimmy Kimmel. Through that connection he got to directing Comedy Central mainstays like The Man Show and Chappelle’s Show as well as Windy City Heat, hands down the funniest made-for-TV movie you’ll ever see. After this came a two-year stint in the director’s chair at Jimmy Kimmel Live.

If you blinked at some point in the late ‘90s you might have missed it, but electronic dance music was cool for about a year. In January 1997, two Frenchmen in robot costumes, Daft Punk, released their groundbreaking debut, Homework. Though a decade old now, Homework hasn’t aged a day and it easily rivals the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack as the most influential dance music album of all time. The album inspired some of the greatest music videos ever made and, consequently, Homework was a crossover hit that got huge airplay and introduced legions of people to dance music.

“The guy who made Hellboy and Blade 2 made one of the best films of 2006.” It doesn’t exactly roll off your tongue with ease. However, after watching Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, you’ll find yourself forced to say it. But maybe this isn’t such a shocker. For years del Toro’s been living a dual identity. On the one hand, he’s a purveyor of high grossing special effects laden blockbusters that cause popcorn munchers around the world to squeal with delight. On the other, he’s the auteur responsible for stylish arthouse horror classics like Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone that appeal to the snobby chin stroker in all of us. With Pan’s Labyrinth, he offers a new experience that’s sure to appease fans of both. Those familiar with del Toro’s body of work will immediately recognize the structure in Pan’s Labyrinth as the same used in Devil’s Backbone—a fantasy/horror story told from a child’s perspective set against the backdrop of fascist Spain. A young girl named Ofelia, who loves fantasy books, accompanies her pregnant mom to live with her new stepfather, Capitán Vidal. As far as evil step-parents in fairy tales go, Vidal takes the cake. He’s the evil leader of a fascist army maintaining a military stronghold in the hills of post civil war Spain.