MEDIA COVERAGE SUMMARY REPORT
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At Toronto Film Festival, a Lineup to Make You Scream
By MEKADO MURPHY
Toronto International Film Festival A scene from “The Green Inferno,” directed by Eli Roth.
In September, the Toronto International Film Festival will celebrate a quarter century of gore, ghouls and goo, also known as the Midnight Madness section, and the programmers have come up with a lineup of suitable fare for the anniversary.
Eli Roth is back in the director’s chair with “The Green Inferno,” about a group of humanitarian college students kidnapped by cannibals in the Amazon jungle. Mr. Roth’s directorial feature “Cabin Fever” was featured in Midnight Madness in 2002.
Another program alumnus, the Japanese director Hitoshi Matsumoto, returns with “R100,” about a man who joins a mysterious club with a yearlong membership that has only one rule: no cancellation under any circumstances. Other titles pay tribute to Chinese vampire movies (Juno Mak’s “Rigor Mortis”), involve paranormal activities (Mike Flanagan’s “Oculus”), or traffic in dead cheerleaders (“All Cheerleaders Die” from Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson).
Published: July 30, 2013
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TIFF docs and screams: See what’s playing at Midnight Madness and more
Fresh frights from Eli Roth and a sex comedy from Japan’s Hitoshi Matsumoto are among the flicks headed to the Toronto International Film Festival, as well as documentaries from Errol Morris and illusionists Penn and Teller.
Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson’s All Cheerleaders Die will open Midnight Madness, the festival’s late-night cavalcade of horror and offbeat comedies.
It includes Roth’s The Green Inferno, which centres on a group of college students kidnapped by cannibals in the Amazon, and Matsumoto’s R100, billed as “a wild and hilarious trip into personal sexual fantasy.”
The TIFF Docs slate includes Morris’s portrait of Donald Rumsfeld in The Unknown Known, and the art mystery Tim’s Vermeer, directed by Teller and produced by Penn Jillette.
Canadian-helmed docs include Barry Avrich’s Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story, Jody Shapiro’s Burt’s Buzz, Alan Zweig’s When Jews Were Funny and Alanis Obomsawin’s Hi-Ho Mistahey!
The Toronto International Film Festival runs Sept. 5 to 15.
Published: July 30, 2013
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TIFF 2013: Four must-see international titles
There are a tonne of big Hollywood movies and homegrown Canadian flicks to see at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. But if you’re looking for something a little more offbeat to take in at TIFF, your best bet would be to check out some of the festival’s many international offerings.
Whether it’s a high-brow French arthouse movie, an off-the-wall Japanese comedy, or something in between that you’re looking for, there are quite literally hundreds of films to choose from at the annual festival. Here are four international films to watch for at TIFF 2013.
“R100” (Japan)
"R100"
It’s difficult to not sound insane when describing a Hitoshi Matsumoto movie. The oddball Japanese comedian and filmmaker behind previous TIFF hits like “Big Man Japan” and “Symbol” is back again this year with “R100." It tells the story of a family man (Nao Ohmori) being relentlessly hunted by a group of S & M dominatrices. You read that correctly. If you’ve never seen one of his movies, nothing can really prepare you for how bizarre a Matsumoto movie is. That uncertainty about what you’re going to see is part of the appeal, though. The only guarantees are that the experience is going to be weird and funny. “R100” is a part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness programme – a lineup of genre films that typically draws the most passionate movie fans around. Expect “R100” to get an enthusiastic reception at the late-night screening. www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
With close to 300 features, documentaries, and short films from all over the world set to play the festival this year, there is plenty to see and not nearly enough time to see it all. The previously list movies are all solid bets, but for more international options, be sure to take a look at the full schedule here.
Published: Sept.5, 2013
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TIFF 2013: 63 films reviewed
The scoop on what to see and what to skip at the Toronto International Film Festival, Sept. 5 to 15.
R100: Japanese comic turned director Hitoshi Matsumoto explores the nature of desire through the world of kink, told through the eyes of a mild-mannered salesman who joins a club where he can be humiliated by a succession of dominatrixes. Shot through a sepia-tinged lens with flashes of pale pastels added later, it’s a film designed to satirize modern Japan and to shock. (One particular scene will raise hackles.) Occasionally edifying, mostly unsettling. B.D
Published: Aug.27, 2013
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R100
Directed by Hitoshi Matsumoto By Scott A. Gray
The royally weird purveyor of surreal and cheeky meta genre satire, Hitoshi Matsumoto (the wild mind behind Big Man Japan and Symbol) applies his delightfully mischievous reality filter to film noir meets Zen S&M flick R100.
Tossing a wink at viewers primed to attempt to interpret his latest impishly obtuse trash art puzzle, the desaturated, sepia picture opens with a woman in a trench coat smoking while gazing in a mirror. Her mouth opens: "Did you get the answer? Was the question hard?" and suddenly we're at a pub table and the woman is sitting across from a man. He explains how "Ode to Joy" is all about pussy and then leaves the bar.
She follows, at a distance initially, and then attacks him in a public square, ripping off her trench coat to reveal bondage gear underneath as she throttles him. Obviously there must be some sort of explanation. A perfectly timed flashback — the visual indicator of which also serves as a clue to the greater meaning behind it all — clues the audience in on the details of an arrangement our apparent victim made with a special agency.
Bored of the rut routine carved into his life's path, the man signs up for an uncancellable contract, under which he requests to be assaulted by six uniquely talented dominatrixes randomly over the course of a www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
year. The only rules he must follow: always be submissive and no touching. This "masochism manifesto" promises to lead to a "revelation of self."
While how viewers respond to Matsumoto's vision will likely tell you something about themselves, what this bizarre journey definitely does lead to is hilarity and a strange sort of poignancy. Demonstrating a rare gift for the absurd, the film is edited together with the broad physical flare of silent film slapstick, mixed with the zaniness of cartoon anarchy. Furthermore, each music cue is impeccably selected to enhance whatever kinky distortion of reality is occurring on-screen.
Between bizarre sessions of having his ass kicked and sushi smashed in public, to name a few of the tamer confrontations, our protagonist spends time in a humble home with his son and father. Note the lack of a matriarch. Important, yes, but it's not as simple as that. Like all of Matsumoto's movies, the plot just scratches the surface of what he's really getting at. There's a great deal of warmth to go with the weirdness and smirking, symbolic decoys, both in the main story and… well, that would be telling.
R100 is such a special and unusual piece of cinema that it's the type of art enhanced by the element of surprise. Try not to learn too much about it before catching it, but be assured that if the idea of a combination of the sensibilities of John Waters and David Lynch is appealing, then this is an eccentric ode to bliss that should easily scratch that strange, little itch.
Published: Sept.4, 2013
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R100
Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto. Starring Nao Ohmori, Mao Daichi. 100 min. Midnight Madness. Sept. 12, 11:59 p.m., Ryerson Theatre, 43 Gerrard St.; Sept. 13, 11:30 a.m., Scotiabank Theatre 9, 259 Richmond St. W.; Sept. 14, 9 p.m., Scotiabank Theatre 10, 259 Richmond St. W.
BY: Jason Anderson
RATING: 8/10
A massively popular Japanese comedian whose past big-screen efforts include the monster- movie parody Big Man Japan and the surrealist oddity Symbol, Hitoshi Matsumoto indulges his affection for the racy subgenre of “pink films” with this appropriately deranged Midnight Madness entry about a meek man who makes an ill-fated arrangement with a shadowy S&M www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
service. The sight of former Ichi the Killer star Nao Ohmori being happily beaten and humiliated by a succession of black-leather-clad dominatrixes is soon trumped by far more outrageous scenes that confirm Matsumoto’s status as Japanese cinema’s nuttiest provocateur.
Published: Sept.2, 2013
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TIFF 2013: R100 (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
You know the five minutes of every Quentin Tarantino movie where he focuses on some woman’s feet all lecherously and you can kind of hear him behind the camera panting like Quagmire from Family Guy? Imagine that feeling for about two hours, mixed with a healthy dose of those Tosh.0 videos where skateboarders neuter themselves grinding down rails. That’s basically what you get when you watching Japanese director Hitoshi Matsumoto’s R100.
The film follows Takafumi Katayama, who joins a fetish of the month club that promises to have dominatrixes randomly show up and torment him over the course of a year, kind of like The Game with a leather belt around its neck and a lemon edge in its mouth. When the bondage gang starts involving his family in their torment, Takafumi tries to back out, leading to a climactic battle with S&M ninjas.
So, the film is insane. That should be clear without me getting into the metatextual elements, or explaining the scene when the “Queen of Saliva” spits on our hero for 15 solid minutes like a competitive eating contest running backwards. But it’s also hilarious, quirky, and strangely engaging, with strong performances, bizarre visuals, and a warm—but undeniably blackened— heart.
Published: Sept.7, 2013 www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
Quick TIFF Reviews: R100 (Dir. Hitoshi Matsumoto)
Running as part of the Midnight Madness series at the Toronto International Film Festival (the wildly popular showcase of schlocky, violent, disgusting, and/or campy flicks), this film from Japanese comedian and general oddball Hitoshi Matsumoto is bound to delight viewers looking for something they've never seen before.
This completely deranged movie follows Takafumi Katayama, a middle-aged furniture salesman, as he struggles to come to terms with the loss of his wife (who is in a persistent vegetative state following an accident). Wandering through his days, Takafumi (played by Nao Ohmori, who looks for all the world like a Japanese Kevin Spacey) hopes to escape his depression by joining a secretive, mysterious S&M club. The club really has only two rules, he learns: He must be submissive at all times, and he can never leave the club.
A film about surrender, about the schizophrenic disorientation of grief, R100 is shot through with utterly surreal sequences, and rides a compelling (if absurd) conceit: Each member of the crew of dominatrixes (referred to as Queens) who appear at irregular intervals to humiliate and beat Takafumi has a particular skill. (But not the skills you're maybe imagining? One of them is referred to as the Queen of Gobbling, for instance. She, um, eats people whole.)
Like some psychedelic mash-up of Eyes Wide Shut, The Trial and Naked Lunch, R100 is by turns disgusting, hilarious, and tedious. Though it occasionally pulls back from its main narrative to reveal a broader framework (the secret behind which it would be unfair to give away, but know that the title is a play on the age-restrictive film ratings system in Japan), for the most part the audience must surrender to the demented flow of the thing in order to have any fun. There's not a lot here that makes any sense in a conventional way, so this is a film that will live or die based on the willingness of the audience to submit to its randomness, its imaginative lunacy.
Having pulled most of the colour out of the film, Matsumoto's vision here is grey and cold, austere and lonesome, with occasional splashes of vibrant colour appearing as messages, clues. A capable, if eccentric, director, Matsumoto is at his best when shooting the sly, clever S&M sequences. An early scene in which a Queen stands over Takafumi's shoulder in a sushi restaurant and smashes his dinner with her open palm, piece by piece, before forcing him eat the mush with his fingers, is sinister and powerful. And, in the most memorable scene in the film, the Queen of Saliva's punishment of Takafumi is basically bukkake performance art, a moment of amplified feminist power. It's also completely repulsive and gag-inducing. But, hey: Midnight Madness, am I right? www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
TIFF 2013 Review: R100 Is Another Mind Bending Trip From Japan's Savant Of The Strange
By the time Matsumoto Hitoshi made the move into feature films with his 2007 effort Big Man Japan, he was already a massive star in his native Japan, his television comedy work having firmly established Matsumoto as one of the nation's most popular entertainers. The conversation at the time was dominated by Matsumoto versus Kitano chatter -- as in, would this latest comedian to move to the big screen from the small have a chance at matching the critical acclaim of his predecessor. With Matsumoto now four feature films into his big screen career, it is increasingly clear that those early debates miss the point entirely. Not only was the supposed competition between the two former TV comics made moot by the simple fact that Matsumoto's work is far, far better than Kitano's since he made the move, but even talking about Matsumoto in TV comedy terms at all overlooks the fact that he has become so very much more.
While Matsumoto's work is often funny, it is hard to even refer to him as a comedian at this point. He is a www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
world builder of the highest order, a man who sees thing through a perplexing, often confounding, always left of center and surprising lens. The absurdity of his work is never without a point and he is long, long past the point of simply cracking jokes to try and get a laugh. The laughs just happen to be a handy side effect of a larger design. And he is very much up to his usual tricks with R100.
A play on the Japanese film rating system which tops out at R18, R100 follows Momori Nao as Takafumi. A bland man living a bland existence in a bland universe, Takafumi has latched on to a rather unusual method of bringing some color and joy into his life. He has joined a bondage club. But this is no run of the mill bout of S&M, no. These dominatrixes come to you wherever they wish and ply their trade right out in the open. The publicness of the humiliation is precisely the point and the rules are simple: once you enter a contract there is no breaking it. You must submit. You can never initiate contact with the 'Queens'. And it is exactly what Takafumi needed in his life, at least until the Queens in question refuse to acknowledge his limits and his attempt to back out of the contract leads to rapidly escalating consequences.
What Matsumoto has done here is essentially take the premise of David Fincher's The Game and applied it to S&M with some very odd and frequently perplexing results. Matsumoto engages in what is now recognizable as his customary structural tricks and meta-narrative devices to create what is very likely a significantly different experience than what you may be expecting thus far. You see, despite the premise and the presence of a great many latex clad women, R100 is actually a rather sedate and cerebral affair.
Though the festival website lists the local rating as 18A, that cannot possibly be correct as the film contains not a moment of female nudity - the only nudity at all comes with an entirely innocent shot of Takafumi giving his son a bath - scarcely any explicit talk and a cross section of the S&M world that - a couple of intentionally ridiculous exceptions aside - mostly just involve Takafumi getting slapped and kicked a lot. Matsumoto's title, designed to scream, "This is the most extreme thing EVER" at his audience, is clearly a part of the joke at play here. The entire film, on one level at least, digs at the continuous urge to be more extreme and more daring with shots of the meta-narrative 'director' of the film confirming an intentional decision to not give the audience what the title promises.
What the film does deliver is an intensely intelligent, more witty than funny, and fabulously acted study of the lengths people will go to secure happiness. On the relative scale of his work, R100 stands a significant step behind Symbol - which is still comfortably Matsumoto's strongest film - while still being very, very good and demonstrating once again that Matsumoto is one of the most ferociously unique filmmakers on the face of the planet.
Published: Sept. 9, 2013
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R100: Toronto Review
A man obsessed with bondage gets more than he bargained for in cult director Hitoshi Matsumoto’s comic fantasy.
Japan's outlandish and totally original auteur Hitoshi Matsumoto can count on his cult following, a Columbia Pictures remake planned of his monster comedy Big Man Japan, and the endorsement of a retrospective at the Paris Cinematheque to rustle up an audience for R100, a film whose very surreal, disturbing first hour dissolves in disappointing B-movie nonsense at the end. Still it’s hard to remember a film about S&M as funny as this one, or one as beautifully and weirdly imagined. It was a much-followed Midnight Madness title at its Toronto bow and should whip up forgiving special interest audiences who enjoyed the director’s earlier work.
Once again the hero is an ordinary fellow leading a life of quiet desperation. Takafumi Katayama (played by Nao Omori, Sweet Little Lies), the regimented salesman in the mattress department of a big store, is secretly into bondage. He gets more than he bargains for when he signs a contract to be beaten by beautiful dominatrices for a year.
Adding another level to the film’s surreal comedy is the idea that Takafumi and his fetish obsession are part of a wacky movie directed by a wizened old man of 100, which is being screened by an official censorship committee. Not only do they not understand the film (and their perplexity is hilariously justified by all the inconsistencies in the plot), but the parade of whip- wielding ladies in black leather is too much for them to bear. Hence the title R100: they propose to rate the film as suitable for audiences of 100 and up.
Along the same meta-lines spoofing the film business are several interruptions in the story when characters think they feel an earthquake coming on. This is explained as being a nod to contemporary issues, apparently a requisite in Japanese films.
The film opens with an irresistible take-off on the dark lady thrillers of yore. In a well-heeled restaurant, Takafumi is meekly talking to a sultry vamp about Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, when she kicks him in the face Bruce Lee style. He follows her out on the street, where she drops her trenchcoat, revealing a costume that would make Victoria’s Secret blush, and kicks him down a flight of marble stairs. Strange comic-strip ripples radiate out from his puffed-up face as he gets off on the mistreatment.
Soon we find him in a dungeon-like building, ringing the bell on a door marked Bondage. A diabolical fellow behind the desk (Suzuki Matsuo) offers him something special: a year-long www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
contract for surprise beatings when he least expects them-- a contract that cannot be canceled. Of course he signs up.
At first things go well. At the oddest moments, in the most ordinary places, a high-heeled “queen” dressed to the hilt appears out of nowhere and humiliates our hero. The deadpan scene in a quiet sushi bar is anthology-level filmmaking.
But then the viewer has to accommodate these laugh-out-loud moments with the sobering fact that Takafumi’s beloved wife is in a coma and he has to look after his little boy Arashi with only occasional help from grandpa. As the mix of straight drama with kinky madness gets wilder and wilder, the audience feels more and more uncomfortable about their guilty visual pleasures. It soon becomes apparent why Matsumoto felt the need to preface the film with a warning that it’s fictional and none of God’s creatures were hurt in the making.
It’s hard to guess how the story will conclude, and unfortunately the answer didn’t come to Matsumoto, either. The final reels introduce a new character, the Amazon-like CEO of the Bondage company, played by the blonde giant Lindsay Hayward, who is better known as the world’s tallest female wrestler. In her first screen appearance she succeeds in being outrageous enough, but her army of queens – who include the Saliva Queen (comedienne Naomi Watanabe in an unforgettable role) and the unbelievable Gobble Queen (stage actress Hairi Katagiri), the Whip Queen (Shinobu Terajima) and the Voice Queen (Mao Daichi) – are so infinitely more original and entertaining that the ending is one big let-down.
As the mild-mannered, sad-eyed hero who loves Beethoven, Nao Omori has come a long way since he portrayed Ichi the Killer for Takashi Miike. His calm, sad-eyed performance makes everything that happens even more surreal.
The main CGI effect, the protag’s fat-faced look of stupid ecstasy with radiating ripples, is cringe-worthy. It stands in weird contrast to the dreamlike atmosphere created by the camera, lighting and set design. Satoe Araki’s costumes are a hoot, all masterful variations on black leather bikinis with straps and laces.
Published: Sept.11, 2013
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Exclusive Toronto Trailer Debut: Matsumoto's 'R100'
Watch the exclusive debut of the trailer for "R100," the Hitoshi Matsumoto film that will world premiere in the Midnight Madness section at September's Toronto International Film Festival.
The film marks the fourth feature directed by Japan absurdist auteur and TV comedian Matsumoto. Hollywood producer Neil Moritz is remaking his first film, Cannes entry "Big Man Japan" (2007) and the Cinémathèque Française mounted a 2012 retrospective of his work in Paris. There Matsumoto announced his next project: “I’m going for far-out absurd nonsensical movie on the next one," he said. "Since 'Scabbard Samurai' is more like a movie, the next one will go to the extreme opposite. It will be rated 80 (meaning no one under 80 will be permitted to www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
see the film).” The title of R100 is a word play on the Japanese ratings system, suggesting that the viewer should be at least 100 years old to see the film. "R100"'s tongue-in-cheek subplot about the filmmaking process challenges the concept of rating, or any kind of judgment, of films.
In a comedic performance as a dead-pan, no-nonsense police officer, Matsumoto asks the question: "What happens if you get what you asked for?" Matsumoto set out to create a “far-out absurd nonsensical movie” that is kinky and even silly, full of S & M sexual fantasies. That's a subject Matsumoto has explored in his comedy skits and radio shows. He was intending to break down the notion of comedy. While his last three films used improvisation and employed a mockumentary style, with "R100" Matsumoto stayed close to the script and hired professional actors. In that sense, "R100" resembles the more conventional structure of a feature film.
Here's the synopsis:
A very ordinary man (Nao Omori) who takes care of his son while his wife lies in a coma, enters a very ordinary building. Following a seductive ride on a merry-go-round, he signs up with an exclusive club. Membership is one year only and cannot be cancelled under any circumstances. Happily he endures dominatrix intrusions in his daily life, until they get a little too close to his unsuspecting family. With a courage not displayed in his professional life as a bed salesman, he tries to cancel his membership, evoking the wrath of the American CEO, who descends upon Tokyo to teach him a lesson...
Published: Aug.12, 2013
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R100 | 2013 TIFF Review Joy Pain Club: Matsumoto’s Latest Insistent Weirdness Uneven
After his delightful if belabored 2007 debut Big Man Japan put him on the map, director Hitoshi Matsumoto returns with another slice of strangeness with R100, an S&M inspired fever dream of alternate realities that’s not quite as compelling as it is confounding. Drug fueled hallucinations, secret clubs and leather harnessed vixens abound, but this is more Rihanna’s style of S&M, teasingly vague rather than titillating or sinister. Fans of Matsumoto are likely to be reeled in, but inexplicable twists and turns aggravate its intermittent flashes of interest.
A beautiful woman, possibly a prostitute, applies make-up while she lazily smokes a cigarette as she readies herself for a meeting with Takafumi Katayma (Nao Ohmori), who we assume to be her potential client. A strange conversation devolves quickly into sudden violence, pushing the conflict into the streets. Soon after, we learn that Takafumi, a salesman, whose wife left him in the lurch with two kids, has joined a secret club where a strange man on a merry-go-round gives him a bottle of pills that will induce an alternate reality where a series of dominatrices will visit Takafumi and engage him in an S&M scenario dictated www.hcconsultingonline.com 647. 348. 3468
by whatever the woman’s particular talent happens to be. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy plays in the background, and we’re told that when pain exceeds a certain limit, it becomes joy.
As delighted as Takafumi seems to be by these unplanned encounters, they soon begin to take over his life, as the women begin interrupting his work routine. Then, we learn that Takafumi’s story is actually a film, a screening actually, being watched by an unknown group of people whose discussions yield that the 100 year-old director of the film means for this story to reflect the reality of modern day Japan, but that viewers will not understand the film until they are themselves 100 years of age. They’re as confused as we are, yet we follow them back into the screening room with a wizened director to continue Takafumi’s tale, who now is at odds with the secret club (operationally known as Bondage), and the big boned blonde CEO shows up in leather to rain on Takafumi’s rebellion. A final battle sees Takafumi coming full circle within himself, where “masochist turns to sadist,” and thus, opens a final door. Of course, the final door reveals a hilarious sequence that comes out of some zany left field.
Matsumoto’s most telling hint comes from the director of this film within a film, for, like the concept of the canine tooth in Dogtooth, there isn’t going to be a clear meaning to be derived from R100 and there won’t be many 100 year-old people to weigh in. It’s just too bad that Matsumoto’s film loses steam about halfway through the proceedings.
Audiences will recognize Nao Ohmori from Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, and here his face gets unnervingly distorted each time he enters his alternate fantasy world. Sadly, we never really care about him. Beethoven’s glorious 9th should also bring A Clockwork Orange into the conversation and maybe there’s even a Kubrickian omnipotence to the malignant secrecy of Bondage, but the favorable comparisons end there, for there’s a repetitive blight to R100, even as it parades a host of grotesque and inventive dominatrices, the most intoxicatingly brilliant being the Queen of Gobbling, who exits the film all too quickly.
Takafumi’s reality is a dark, drab world where color seems to have seeped away from too many washings. But the energetic vibrancy of his pretend time loses steam just as quickly, unfolding with all the pizzazz of bizarre video game.
Published: Sept.12, 2013
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