Austin Culp's blog

Fantastic Fest Review: The ABCs of Death

Austin Culp — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:00:01 +0000

Saturday night, Fantastic Fest held the U.S. premiere of the anthology film, The ABCs of Death. Like last year's Slacker 2011, this film featured 26 of the best, up-and-coming or already established horror directors showing off their creative ideas about death. The directors include Adam Wingard (You're Next), Ti West (House of the Devil), Noboru Iguchi (The Machine Girl, Robogeisha), Austin native Angela Bettis (May) and Adrián García Bogliano (Cold Sweat, Penumbra).

Before the screening started, Tim League took the stage to apologize about the print we were supposed to see. In the craziness of various festivals it had been invited to, they had neglected to send a print back to the Alamo for this first screening. All was okay, as they had a working copy of the film, although it was missing a few big edits that made it to TIFF. So while this was close to the final film, it wasn't nearly as tight nor did it have some corrected title cards, which really could help decipher some of the strangest deaths.

One of the most fun parts about The ABCs of Death is that the films are not preceded by what's going to be the killer in each episode. Each short will drag you through, making you guess the whole way through. Rather than having all the kills be something out of a horror movie, some very unique and obscure deaths are tossed in the bunch to throw you off. Sometimes, the killer isn't even an outside force but something in the characters themselves that led to their death. With all of this hype built up around what each death would be, some failed to reach the same successes as others. This shortfall could have been for lack of a good letter in some instances, but in others, I was left wondering why the director had gone that way.

The anthology film had its highs and lows. Because it includes so many different visions, it could only be expected that some would stand out more than others. My favorite letters of the bunch included: D, L, Q, T and W. I'll leave it up to you to guess what those could be.

Fantastic Fest 2012 Day Two: Devils, Motors and Combat Girls

Austin Culp — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 15:00:13 +0000

Fantastic Fest is now past day two and lots of great things have happened. Thursday included the premiere of Frankenweenie (Rod's review) and screening of Antiviral, where director Brandon Cronenberg decidedly wanted to keep away from comparisons to his father. I didn't stay for the final film of the day so I could be prepared to spend the entirety of Friday at the fest.

I started out Friday morning at the screening of Here Comes the Devil, which screened along with a Norwegian short, Videoboy. The short was very similar in tone to the feature that followed it. Videoboy takes you along with two young boys, as they visit a mysterious kid who lives in a household with a library of VHS tapes. Beyond the library stands a hallway, leading up to the top floor where it's forbidden to go. The overwhelming sense of dread as these boys try to figure out what's going on upstairs works well with Here Comes the Devil.

Fantastic Fest 2012 Guide: The Most Fun Homework You'll Ever Do

Austin Culp — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 14:30:17 +0000

Fantastic Fest is just around the corner. So that means your time to catch up and do your homework on films screening at the fest is growing shorter every day. Some favorite directors from Fantastic Fest past are returning and others are making their first appearance. I know some of my most anticipated are hard to familiarize yourself with beforehand (New Kids Turbo), but you can find most of these films at your favorite local video store (Vulcan! I Luv Video!) or streaming online. Hurry now because you're losing days at this rate.

Fantastic Fest selection: The American Scream (dir. Michael Paul Stephenson)

Stephenson's previous film Best Worst Movie premiered at SXSW 2009, and documented the cult phenomenon Troll 2. The filmmaker's latest documentary stays in the same genre yet takes a look at three passionate haunted house enthusiasts as they prepare their home to scare the living hell out of those who walk through it. The American Scream producer Zack Carlson appears in Best Worst Movie as well.

Prep work: Best Worst Movie is available on DVD. Look for it in the documentary section (just see if you can spot the terrific Tyler Stout artwork). It's also available for rental on Amazon Instant Video ... and embedded below, via Hulu.

Robert Rodriguez Shares His 'El Rey' Network Ideas

Austin Culp — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:00:43 +0000

In recent months, the news has included a constant stream of Robert Rodriguez stories, with his animation studios opening one week, winning an entrepreneurship award in another week, El Mariachi being inducted into the National Film Registry late last year, Machete Kills casting announcements almost daily in prep for shooting this summer, then Sin City 2 following that, then a Heavy Metal remake and the list doesn't end until early 2014 when his new television network, El Rey, will premiere on Comcast.

But amid his busy schedule, the Troublemaker Studios co-founder was able to set aside 90 minutes of his time to talk to the next generation of innovators, like he himself was back in the early 90s and still is today. The University of Texas at Austin hosted a conversation with Rodriguez and UT Radio-TV-Film Professor Charles Ramirez-Berg, "The Future of Latino Images in Film and Media," on May 2.

San Antonio Film Festival Co-Sponsors TFPF Workshop

Austin Culp — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:00:21 +0000

Now that we're in mid-April, the deadline for the Texas Filmmaker's Production Fund is getting closer and closer. But that doesn't mean we've stopped hitting the road for more workshops. This past Tuesday (April 10), I made my first foray into the workshop world by presenting one in San Antonio in the Longwith Radio-Television-Film building at San Antonio College.

San Antonio College lives just a few blocks off of I-35 near the heart of downtown San Antonio. San Antonio Film Festival director Adam Rocha met me at the RTF building and took me on a tour. After checking out the luxurious lecture hall, we went to see the rest of the building. Adam showed off the school's radio station, KSYM 90.1 FM, where their Hot Mustard morning radio show goes on. Just within the past few years, the RTF department moved out of a nearby house into the Longwith RTF building, which also houses two TV studios and a music production facility.

SXSW 2012 Panel: Festribution

Austin Culp — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:00:14 +0000

SXSW Film Festival is past now and the business is just getting started. On the second day of the fest, I took the time out to attend panels about how films will be seen and sold in the future. "Festribution" focused on how film festivals are beginning to get in on the action with distribution. Panelists included Chris Horton (Associate Director of Artist Services, Sundance), Jason Janego (Co-president of RADiUS-TWC), and Nancy Schafer (Executive Director of Tribeca Film Fest).

Horton mentioned something that's already been in the public sphere for almost a year now: Sundance Film Festival has created an Artist Services program which is designed to help films reach more audiences after their Sundance premiere. Just last week, Sundance announced the first ten films to be included in this program through a unique digital distribution deal through New Video. Any film that has played at Sundance, either this year or 15 years ago, qualifies to have their film placed on iTunes, Hulu, Amazon VOD, Netflix and Sundance NOW.

The most exciting aspect about this new development is that not only will it include recent Sundance films, but past films which never got their proper release after Sundance. As more festivals get hands on with the films that they curate, it could really open up the marketplace more for unseen films. Just this year after Fantastic Fest, Drafthouse Films announced that they would be distributing two of my favorite films from the fest (Klown and Bullhead). The gap between festivals and distribution is getting smaller every year.

SXSW 2012 Panels: FEARnet and the 3 R's of Horror

Austin Culp — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:03:48 +0000

Beloved Fantastic Fest directors Adam Green (Hatchet, Frozen) and Joe Lynch (Knights of Badassdom, Wrong Turn 2) appeared on a SXSW Film panel on Sunday, presenting their new TV show Holliston for FEARnet. This graphic, chaotic sitcom will be making its premiere on April 3.

The show is produced like many other sitcoms on broadcast television, including a laugh track, three-camera set-up and even shot on a soundstage (the same soundstage used for Seinfeld's first few episodes). Although shot like a sitcom, it does not feel like your traditional sitcom whatsoever. During a sizzle reel, we were hit smack in the face with some very obscene (yet still funny) humor. The length of the show does vary though, with some episodes going over 35 minutes. But given their first season is fairly short (six episodes), more is better.

If you've ever seen any of Lynch's or Green's movie work, you can expect some of that same attitude to come through the tube. The show is filled with several references but not the typical Star Wars or Lord of the Rings references that you'd see in shows today. Their jokes show their diversity in taste, ranging from Cannonball Run to Cannibal Holocaust. The film geek ratio of their jokes is very high and its actually a big relief to not see a joke coming from a hundred miles away. The casting of Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) and Oderus Urungus (GWAR) really shows that FEARnet is giving these directors full control of their work and it'll be refreshing to see that.