Midnight Madness Teaser Selections: Gunn’s Super, Moshe’s Bunraku and Carpenter’s The Ward

TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes naturally used the twitter and 12 midnight combo to announce a handful of titles that are the make up of this year’s section. Among the titles we have Wu Ershan’s The Butcher, The Chef and the Swordsman stars Ando Masanobu, BenChang You and Kitty Zhang. After taking a long break from directing, John Carpenter will preem The Ward – the horror pic stars a panicked Amber Heard (check out the production diary below). Next we have Guy Moshe’s Bunraku – with Josh Hartnett, Woody Harrelson, Demi Moore and Ron Perlman in an original universe a la “Sin City” and draws from a mixed bag of genres, including puppets, origami, comic books, video games and German expressionism.

Finally we have a Ted Hope produced high profile indie action comedy Super – the James Gunn film stars Rainn Wilson, Liv Tyler, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Nathan Fillion and Linda Cardellini. Wilson plays Frank, a seemingly average Joe who is madly in love with his troubled wife Sarah (Tyler). But when Sarah leaves Frank for Jacques (Bacon), a smooth-talking drug dealer, Frank transforms into pseudo superhero The Crimson Bolt, stakes out Jacques sleazy hideaway, and wages a one-man war on crime. What he lacks in superpowers, he makes up for with a trusty pipe wrench. Every superhero needs a sidekick and so enters Libby (Page), a cute sociopathic teen working at the local comic book store, who morphs into ‘Boltie’ and teams with Frank to take Jacques down.

Other titles currently rumored to be revealed tomorrow at noon include, James Wan’s Insidious, Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud’s Red Nights and Jim Mickle’s Stake Land.