By MICHAEL GINGOLD
We told you here about the U.S. release plans for the new fantasy/crime/horror thriller by the creators of PONTYPOOL, and now we’ve got word on the sooner release in Canada, for whom the poster is a bit more harshly worded.
DREAMLAND, directed by Bruce McDonald from a script by Tony Burgess and Patrick Whistler, will be available for home viewing across the country on AppleTV, Bell, Cineplex, Cogeco, Rogers, Shaw and Telus on May 29. Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle star, reprising characters introduced in the post-end-credits scene of PONTYPOOL, along with Juliette Lewis, Henry Rollins and Tomas Lemarquis. The synopsis: “DREAMLAND follows reluctant hit man Johnny Dead Eyes [McHattie], who—on the orders of diabolical underworld kingpin Hercules [Rollins]—must cut off the pinkie finger of his jazz legend doppelgänger The Maestro [also McHattie]. Johnny makes his way through a neo-noir cityscape populated with street urchins, vampires and a crime queen called The Countess [Lewis] while—like all movie hit men—contemplating getting out of the game. But first he’s got to set a few things right…”
“Making the movie, I encouraged the team to embrace the Dream in DREAMLAND,” McDonald says. “We tried to keep a hatch always open to the subconscious. We tried to have instincts rule over logic. We embraced the guiding spirits of filmmakers Louis Buñuel, David Lynch, Peter Mettler, Bruce Weber, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, of poets Jim Carroll and Richard Brautigan, of writers William S. Burroughs and Raymond Chandler, of musicians Chet Baker, The Eurythmics and Alice Cooper.”
