Celebrity Sightings

Writer/director Dax Shepard, cinematographer/director David Palmer and producer Nate Tuck were on the red carpet for the premiere of Brother's Justice at AFF 2010. The trio were also the stars of this mockumentary about Shepard's efforts to delve into the martial arts genre, although Palmer is most often behind the camera as "the camera guy." It's the natural relationship between Shepard and Tuck as they try to enlist more people in their project that I enjoyed the most. Check back soon for my interview with Shepard, Palmer and Tuck.

Here are more photos from the event, including the cast and crew of the short film The Legend of El Limbo, which preceded Brother's Justice. First up is star Dax Shepard.

Austin Film Festival is over for another year, but we're still covering it. And now that official photos from AFF are available for the panels related to By Way of Helena, here they are. Above are DB Sweeney and Jeff Fahey, who took the lead roles during Friday's script reading.

The above photo of Casino Jack director George Hickenlooper, with actor Jon Lovitz, was taken on Thursday night at the Paramount. Hickenlooper and Lovitz were in town for the Austin Film Festival closing-night film and party -- red carpet beforehand, Q&A afterward, you know the drill.

Hickenlooper then headed to Denver to screen Casino Jack at the Denver Starz Film Festival. Sadly, George Hickenlooper died in Denver on Saturday morning. He was 47 years old. His filmography also includes Factory Girl, Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the short Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade (on which the feature Sling Blade was based) and the documentary Hearts of Darkness about the making of Apocalypse Now.

I can't say anything better than Moises Chiullan does over at Badass Digest, and I urge you to go read his column about the director. Chiullan was friends with Hickenlooper and had planned to work with him on a Hearts of Darkness commentary track.

There's a lot of buzz about the script reading for the raucously funny The Hand Job on Sunday at the Rollins Theatre with Bill Hader, Colin Hanks, Jessica Alba and others. But earlier during the conference, AFF held another, quieter script reading on Friday in the stuffy little Maxmillian Room at the Driskill. What for? By Way of Helena, a twisty western revenge thriller as yet to be produced. 

Earlier in the day, screenwriter Matt Cook participated in the Black List panel, as his screenplay for By Way of Helena was voted one of the best unproduced screenplays of 2009 on The Black List. Immediately following, Black List founder Franklin Leonard introduced Cook for a reading of his script.  Helping Cook was an eclectic mix of well known and lesser known actors.  The entire lineup at the front of the room, in order, was Cook, Jason Newman (Silas, Clem), Lauren Wolf (Maria), Richard Dillard (Saul, Governor Ross), Yesenia Garcia (Marisol), DB Sweeney (David), Jeff Fahey (Abraham), Savannah Welch (Naomi), Karl Anderson (Isaac), Shannon McCormick (George) and John Spong (Narrator).

After an abbreviated day yesterday, I decided to brave the Hair of the Dog Brunch, which I've never gone to before. Held at Ranch 616 on Nueces, it was simple Texas style fare, but ohhh, soo delicious. I think I found a new brunch spot. I could get addicted to their chorizo scrambled eggs and the shredded beef. Damn, that was good. And the crowds seemed happy, too, not just because staffers and volunteers were handing out Topo Chico mineral water to those waiting in line, but because as people finished eating, the musical chairs seemed to be a blessing, as people got to meet new people.

The Texas Film Commission folks were there, and I chatted with a couple of their staffers for a while, and who joined us, but Alfred Cervantes of the Houston Film commission, and then Andrew Lee and DE Ward of The Spirit Molecule. In our conversation, Andrew and I talked about indie film promotion and Andrew indicated that they hadn't worked out a complete plan on that yet for The Spirit Molecule, but just happened to mention that they had over 54,000 "likes" on ther Facebook page. I think you all would agree that if you have 54,000 fans on Facebook, you don't have to rush.

I may have only seen one film at Fantastic Fest 2010 on Wednesday after hitting the wall for a second time, but I managed to get a third wind for a full last day on Thursday. What a day it was -- I had to spend this morning recuperating from lack of sleep and too much rich food and tequila from the closing-night party. For all the Fantastic Fest veterans that were disgruntled with open invites for parties in previous years, this year's festivities were the redemption with an amazing event for all badgeholders as well as the hardworking Alamo Drafthouse staff and Fantastic Fest volunteers. For more details, read Jenn's recap of the closing-night party.

I started out my last day at Fantastic Fest at the 10 am press screening of Troll Hunter, which had been the secret screening the night before, with director Andre Ovreda in attendance. On Thursday night, I'd chosen Fatso over gambling on another secret screening; the only secret screening I attended in 2010 turned out to be Hell Driver, which I walked out of after 15 minutes.

Lead actor Eduardo Noriega and director Eugenio Mira attended Fantastic Fest in support of their latest film, the world premiere of Agnosia. The producers of Pan's Labyrinth and The Orphanage brought another suspenseful story to Fantastic Fest with Agnosia. It is a visually stunning and elegant period piece about Joana Prats, a young woman whose childhood bout with encephalitis leaves her stricken with agnosia, a strange neuropsychological illness that affects her perception. Joana becomes the center of a sinister and life-threatening plot to discover her father's secret formula for a lens with revolutionary military implications. Two men who both have desires for her play integral roles in whether she will be cured of her illness, or a victim of the dastardly plans. Noriega plays Carles, Joana’s fiancé and her father’s right-hand man, who has some dark secrets of his own.

Mira is a veteran of Fantastic Fest, as he debuted his film The Birthday at the very first Fantastic Fest in 2005. Mira has also collaborated with Nacho Vigalondo on short films and composed the score for Timecrimes. He can also be seen in my favorite Vigalondo short as the nervous keyboard player in 7:35 In the Morning.

The Slackerwood gang is starting to falter a bit at this point in the film festival. All three of us covering Fantastic Fest were rather tired on Wednesday and needed a break from moviegoing. Jenn was stricken with migraine woes and spent the day recuperating. Debbie was unwell but managed a movie in the 9 pm slot. And I went to my day job in the morning to catch up there a bit, despite feeling like I'd been run over by a truck, and didn't show my face at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar until after 5 pm.

After the usual chitchatting, my first event of the day was the red carpet for Red. I admit I got a childish kick out of saying "the Red red carpet." I am so easily amused. It was a small red carpet, very easy to work with -- a few cameras and one subject, actor Karl Urban. Urban plays the foil to the team of good guys in Red. If his name isn't ringing a bell, you've probably seen him in the most recent Star Trek movie (as McCoy) or the Lord of the Rings trilogy (as Eomer) or going way back, as Julius Caesar on Xena: Warrior Princess. He was extremely polite and everything went smoothly.

Jenn already covered the list of this year's Fantastic Fest Award winners in her Fantastic Fest: Day 5 Dispatch, so I'll just share the highlights through photos. And like Jette mentioned in her earlier post, words are hard to put together when you average five films a day and a 4 am bedtime.

The audience award winner of Fantastic Fest 2010 was Bedevilled, with director Jang Cheol-so and Producer Han Man Taeg (seen above). Bedevilled is primarily a horror film, but the story is a blend of dark humor, drama and suspense. Actress Ji Sung-won took the Best Acress award for the AMD and Dell "Next Wave" Spotlight Competition for her role as Hae-won Chung, a young woman with a bad attitude living in Seoul. She's identified as a murder witness, but she doesn’t want to cooperate with the investigation. An involuntary vacation leads to even more trouble.

I've been seeing a lot of movies and talking to a lot of people at Fantastic Fest this year, and my brain is a little sluggish. Words are difficult. So I'm just going to give you a taste of my experiences in the first half of the festival, in photos. They're sourced in Flickr so if you want more details, click the photo to see its description in Flickr. After the jump, you can see photos from red carpets, karaoke, filmmaker Q&As, and other festival events.

Feel free to share links to your own Fantastic Fest photos in the comments -- I'd love to see what everyone else has been up to this year. Slackerwood has several photographers at the fest, so keep an eye out for more photo essays here soon.