Get Your Midnight Madness Fix Early with Phanstasm II at Lightbox!

Can't wait till September 5th to get your Midnight Madness Mojo working? Or are you worried that your Q&A skills might need so polishing up? Then why don't you come out to the Rue Morgue/TIFF co-presentation of Phantasm II on Saturday, August 24 at 9:30 p.m. at TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King St. West.) Colin Geddes will be there to present the film and host a Q&A with Midnight Madness Alum Don Coscarelli. Tickets are $15 and can be scored here.

Ronda Rousey's mom on Making the World Better

In UFC 360 Magazine, UFC women's champion Ronda Rousey says that her mom (Ann Maria Rousey DeMars) taught her that her life's mission is to make the world a better place:

My mom has a lot of sayings, and one of them is, "Your mission in life is not to be happy. It is to leave the world better than how you found it." So I feel like I am finding my own way of doing that. 

Rousey has been able to leverage her fame into doing charity work for organizations such as FreeRice.com

Bruce Buffer: There are no problems, only solutions

UFC Octagon announcer and semi-pro poker player, Bruce Buffer, maintains a very positive and passionate approach to everything in life:

"There are no problems in life, only solutions"

YOU'RE NEXT Filmmakers Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett: "We are the horror audience."

Midnight Madness Alumni Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett talk about their film You're Next with The Los Angeles Times.

You're Next had a rollicking world premiere in 2011 as part of the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival that had the audience on its feet cheering during the screening.That first showing has become part of the film's lore, a signal of its effect on audiences. It opens Aug. 23 around the U.S.

"We came to realize that the best way to deconstruct horror nowadays is actually just to make a really great horror movie," Wingard, 30, said recently in East Hollywood, not far from where he and Barrett live on the same block. "You don't have to sell the reference thing or be that clever. Recognizing all the horror tropes and playing off audience expectations is kind of the new deconstruction."

Though the film is full of spiky scares and elaborate bloody kills, it is also driven by a sharp wit[.]

"We went into the recesses of our minds and said, 'What got us into filmmaking?'" noted Wingard. "And we realized it's fun, action-y horror stuff geared toward having a good time."

Read more here.

Joe Rogan on Happiness

Joe Rogan on Happiness:

I'm not saying I've always been happy, I was very dark early in my life. When I was young, when I was in my early twenties and my teens, I was not a happy person by any stretch of the imagination, not even remotely. But I knew it was possible. And because you manage your life the correct way, because you get the to a situation where you have a lot of good fortune and you have a lot of good friends, literally your mental state becomes a happier mental state. People don't understand is a lot of the reason why you feel like shit is because your life f***n sucks, and you're supposed to feel like s**t to motivate you to get the f**k out of the life you're in. Whether it's a relationship, whether it's a job, whatever the situation is that sucks, whatever the thing is inside you that's rotting you out from the inside, whether it's you wanted to do something else but you didn't have the balls to pursue it, you wanted another girl but you couldn't keep her because you're a liar. Whatever the f**k it is that eats at you, you got to straighten that s**t out or you will never be happy. You can't just flood yourself with chemicals and trick your brain into thinking this reality is acceptable because it's not really what's going on. What's going on is you know that you haven't done the best that you can do.

Jason Ellis on Believing in Yourself

ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE...The Remake?

One of programmer Colin Geddes' most puzzling hints this past Midnight Madness Lineup Announcement Eve teased a remake of a 2001 film:

Lots of incorrect guesses followed. Even after the lineup was announced the following morning, some wondered, "Where's the remake?" Well, that remake is All Cheerleaders Die, which directors Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson first made in 2001 as a low budget shot-on-video feature. It's hard as hell to get a copy of that version now and persistent Internet searching yields precious few screen captures:

McKee and Sivertson are bringing their spiffy new version of All Cheerleaders Die to the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival for its world premiere as the opening night film of Midnight Madness.

ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE screening times:
Thu., Sept. 5th, 11:59PM, RYERSON
Fri., Sept. 6th, 3:00PM, BLOOR HOT DOCS
Sun., Sept. 15th, 9:30PM, SCOTIABANK 11