Launch Party, Issue Teaser, and Editor Watchlists

Here's what In The Mood Mag has been cookin' up for you this winter...

Save the Date: Issue 6 Launch Party

To celebrate In The Mood Mag’s upcoming issue, we’re teaming up with The Bleeding Edge to present an evening of readings and short films in Toronto!

February 16th • Doors: 7:30pm
The Pilot, 2nd Floor (22 Cumberland St) • PWYC
Facebook Event

WITH READINGS BY:
EJ Kneifel
Stella/Tago
Fan Wu
Sennah Yee

AND SHORT FILMS BY:
Sophy Romvari
Steffi Tupe
Raphael Lotus Jackson

---

Issue 6 Teaser ❄️

Here are some wintry excerpts from some Film Diaries coming up in our next issue…

Ravenous (1999)

by Celia Mattison

It’s 1847 and Guy Pearce’s John Boyd has been shipped off to a remote fort in California, a punishment for his wartime cowardice. He arrives, still-trembling, to six inches of snow, prime territory to encounter a scenery—and then some—chomping Robert Carlyle as the mysterious soldier Calhoun and a legend about the Wendigo, an insatiable cannibal who steals the power of his victims. 

Grisly bone snapping and open-mouth chewing in wet, unctuous Foley are accompanied by a tinkling Blur soundtrack and MTV screen wipes because outside of the period setting, it’s still 1999. What else could harmonize the cartoonish cruelty of relentless westward expansion, of unchecked territory grabs, of the Oregon Trail before it was Candyland-ified?

The Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979)

by Jaime Chu

It is currently -8 degrees Celsius in Tallinn, Estonia, where the film print of The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel is housed at the Estonian national film archives; and -17 degrees in Shymbulak, Kazakhstan, where the film, a detective story that takes place at a ski resort cut off from the outside world by an avalanche, was shot in 1979. Shymbulak is the largest ski resort in Central Asia where the Soviet Olympics team used to train. There is a view of the ski lifts at the resort on WorldCam; the vibe—the low-res but luscious high contrast, the cold, capricious blue tint, the untamed lens flare and the destabilizing angle—is not that different from the opening shots of The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel. Out here, anything ordinary or anything absurd could happen.

---

Our Editor-in-Chief’s 2023 Watchlist

by Gabrielle Marceau

I have never made a watchlist that I genuinely intended to complete (completing things is not my strong suit). But this year, in the spirit of self improvement, I have made a list of 93 films I am committed to watching. Below are some of my truly lofty goals.

1) I used to have a habit of falling asleep during screenings, especially in film classes (too many sleepless nights agonizing over an essay or commiserating in the campus pub). Which, all these years later, gives me a creeping sense of doubt: Have I actually seen City Lights? How much did I get through The Battle of Algiers before drifting off? Did I dream Strangers on a Train? This year I will keep the lights on, splash cold water on my face, and find out.

2) I am aiming to make a dent in the 64-titles-long list of ‘80s movies my boyfriend handed to me in a dimly-lit bar early in the relationship, after I had mentioned, off-hand, that I had an aversion to the decade (too much bad hair, too many precocious preteens). I said I would watch them (À Nos Amours, Sudden Impact, River’s Edge) without exactly meaning it. But 5 years later, I have kept the notebook pages with the handwritten list—and I will keep my promise.