Born from a festival that had everything to do with laughs and nothing to do with cinema, now in their 12th edition, the Just For Laughs Film Fest have pretty much developed their identity, attracted name films and talent. This year’s fest will begin with a Bang! or I should say a Bong! with David Gordon Green and the Apatow team (Seth Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg,
co-star Danny McBride) coming down with one of the rare advance premieres of Pineapple
Express and a Q&A. Other special guests and accompanying films include:
Father and son team of the Reitmans
(Ivan and Jason for those coming out of a coma) presenting a Master Class on filmmaking on July 18. Sundance hit Baghead from Jay & Mark Duplass gets a screening on
July 14th and the 20th studio fair with Rainn Wilson (The Office) starring in The Rocker.
The Deal – a film adapted by William H. Macy from screenwriter Peter
Lefcourt’s novel gets a July 17 screening. Just Buried (preemed at last year’s TIFF) sees Jay Baruchel and director Chaz Thorne introduce the film and host a casual Q&A after the screening on July 12th. The CGI animated Space Chimps voiced by Andy Samberg from SNL also shows up. Spencer Rice of Kenny vs. Spenny fame will present a premiere of his new indie film Confessions of a Porn Addict. Rice stars as Mark Tobias whose life is picture-perfect; except for one thing…he’s addicted to porn! Screening on July 17.
On the French side: we have the premiere of (I’ve lost count on how many of these have been released) Astérix et les jeux olympiques with local comedian Stéphane Rousseau likely to show up. French star and director Dany Boon presents a sneak-preview of his latest comedy (Will Smith picked up the remake rights at Cannes this year) Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis, the most successful French language film ever with Box Office sales of over $200 million and still counting. Next up will be Ma vie n’est pas une comédie romantique by French director Marc Gibaja, and Nicolas Pagnol will present his grandfather’s (Marcel Pagnol) classic Topaze.
