Fantastic Fest

This should probably be subtitled "Mostly Fantastic Fest News" because with the festival starting Thursday, we're getting more news and info every day. We've also got some AFF news (and have heard that we may hear more on that front later this week), as well as actual non-fest items.

• Fantastic Fest has just published its ticket procedure for badgeholders to use this year, which fortunately has an online reservation component. Very good news indeed for those of us who can't always drive down to Alamo first thing in the morning, every single morning.
• In addition, the fest has announced its competition films and the members of each jury.
• Fantastic Arcade, the new videogame component of Fantastic Fest, also starts in a few days. To honor the event, you'll be able to play a new map in Left 4 Dead 2 called Fan Feast that is based on the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and The Highball. The Fantastic Fest blog has a video and more info for people who actually know something about videogames (i.e., not me).
• No word yet on who will be/was buried to watch the movie Buried, but I do love this photo.

Being a native Texan and a craft beer enthusiast, I feel the need to dispel a misconception about Texas beer -- Lone Star is NOT the national beer of Texas. Former Governor Ann Richards unofficially declared Shiner Bock the "national" beer of Texas during her term, as it was her personal favorite hailing from the Spoetzl brewery in Shiner, Texas. Sure, Lone Star beer will quench your thirst when you're floating down the Guadalupe River on an inner tube, but if you have a palate for real hop flavor or a good malt backbone, Texas offers many more and much better beers.

With an increase in the number of microbreweries in Texas, The Texas Craft Brewers Guild has finally come to realization. Central Texas has three microbreweries that have been producing and distributing for several years -- Live Oak, Real Ale, and Independence Brewing. (512) Brewing just celebrated their second anniversary and Thirsty Planet began hitting local taps in July. As if five microbreweries around Austin isn't enough, another eight new craft breweries are slated for Central Texas within the next two years.

What does beer have to do with the Austin film scene and Fantastic Fest? Plenty, if you want to enjoy the "draft" in Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

I thoroughly enjoy interviewing filmmakers and actors, but I was particularly enlightened by Austin video game developer and recent astronaut Richard Garriott during our podcast interview about the documentary Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission, specifically regarding his motivation. I asked Garriott what science-fiction authors had inspired him in his youth, to want to travel to space. The answer? None -- he read fantasy, hence the inspiration for his first game, Ultima.

For Garriott, space travel wasn't anything out of the ordinary. His father Owen Garriott was an astronaut, and all of their neighbors were in the NASA space program as well. It wasn't until Garriott was older that he discovered that not everyone goes to space, and his poor eyesight would prevent him from being a part of the NASA space program. He was determined to find a way to travel to space, and in 2008 it became reality as he joined a Soyuz mission into space.

If you didn't get a chance to see Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission during SXSW 2010, be sure to catch an encore screening at Fantastic Fest, which begins next Thursday. Screenings will be announced here.

As a film fan, I love short films for the same reason I enjoy short stories -- I get almost instant gratification with little investment of time, and then it's on to the next short. The stories and films might seem easier to forget, but that's not the case when a good story can be told in fifteen minutes or less. Such is the case with several short films I've seen over the years at South by Southwest Film Festival and Fantastic Fest. In the past it was difficult to see these films outside of a film festival, but thanks to the Internet more short films are available to a larger audience.

The most memorable shorts I've enjoyed were those I viewed at Fantastic Fest from 2006-2009, including Phil Mucci's gothic horror film The Listening Dead (view after the jump) which won the Short Film Jury Award for Best of Show in 2006. That same year was the Fantastic Fest debut of British filmmaker Simon Rumley with the well-directed short The Handyman starring Greta Scacchi, along with the full length psychological thriller The Living and the Dead. Rumley has a great behind-the-scenes making of The Handyman.

Practically every day this week, Fantastic Fest has announced movies, special guests, and events for its 2010 festival. Of course, the film fest does start two weeks from tonight ... but I suspect there are still surprises in store for festgoers.

Yesterday, the last wave of films in the festival lineup was announced, including some world premieres and sneak previews. Darren Bousman, who brought his film Repo: The Genetic Opera to Fantastic Fest 2008, returns with a preview of Mother's Day, along with two of the film's stars, Jaime King and Rebecca De Mornay. The star-studded action-comedy RED will also preview during the fest ... and Karl Urban will be in town with the movie (be still, my heart).

Personally, I am looking forward to Agnosia, the latest film from Spanish director Eugenio Mira, who will be at the fest. Mira was at the first Fantastic Fest in 2005 with his weirdly comic Lovecraftian film The Birthday, which I enjoyed.

Bill Pullman will also return to Austin -- he was here in 2008 for a couple of movies -- for special screenings of Spaceballs and a Master Pancake version of Independence Day. In addition, earlier this week Fantastic Fest also announced that Roger and Julie Corman will be in town to accept a lifetime achievement award, and will be around for a double-feature of the new documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed (about Filipino exploitation films) and Corman's new film, Sharktopus.

Let's get down to the Austin-related films and guests, which is why you read Slackerwood, anyway. (Well, that and my deathless prose.) Here's what I know about from this week's announcements:

I'm so tired. But I'm a bit tense. only two days left, and I can feel the start of Post-Fest Depression wanting to rear its ugly head. But there's two full days left...

That's how one of my 2009 Fantastic Fest Daily Dispatches started. It brings me right back to the fest. This is it, the final entry in our Fantastic Fest Flashbacks (we've already covered 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008). How the fest has grown. I'm looking at the screening schedule and it's now two columns of small fonts filling the page. So much to do and not enough hours to do it. The 2009 lineup ranged fromhorror-lite targeted to a younger audience like The Vampire's Assistant and Under the Mountain to the shocking Antichrist, and every possibility in between and around them. Literally something for everyone, Fantastic Fest 2009 seemed about as big as it can get, although we already know this year will be even bigger.

The opening-night film, Gentlemen Broncos, may not have been an audience favorite, but everyone seemed to enjoy the opening-night Party with cast and crew at the newly opened and not quite finished Highball, another venture by the intrepid Tim and Karrie League. The Battle Stag from the film could be seen in the Highball throughout the fest, and post-fest everyone was sad to see it leave. Other gala films screening at the Paramount had a stronger response, including Zombieland, which made everyone happy with a particular cameo from a 2008 Fantastic Fest alum, not to mention the Austin mention. I'm still regretting missing Survival of the Dead, but with so much to cover, and knowing how crazy downtown was with a UT home game and the Pecan Street Festival over the weekend, the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar was the place to stay for me. And guess what? Same thing is going to happen this year on Saturday; there's a UT home game and the Old Pecan Street Festival again on Saturday night.

Fantastic Fest has just announced another batch of films in its 2010 lineup, including another gala screening with special guests, a few sequels and remakes, and a variety of genre films from around the world. The fun starts in less than a month.

The gala screening -- which means it plays at the Paramount and has a red carpet beforehand -- is the U.S. premiere of Stone, which stars Edward Norton, Robert De Niro and Milla Jovovich. It's a drama about a parole officer trying to decide whether a murderer has truly reformed. Edward Norton will be here in Austin for the Friday, Sept. 24 screening as well as director John Curran.

The world premiere of 30 Days of Night: Dark Days, the sequel to 30 Days of Night, heads up an impressive list of other movies slated for next month's festival. There are films from Argentina, Hong Kong, Spain, Korea, Thailand, Japan, Mexico and of course the United States. Ong Bak 3, the remake of I Spit on Your Grave, the 1960 South Korean film The Housemaid and its 2010 remake, Adam Green's Hatchet II ... there's a lot of interesting stuff here. A full list of the announced films with descriptions, including which filmmakers will be at the fest, is available after the jump.

Fantastic Fest runs from September 23-30 this year, right here in Austin, primarily at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar but with gala screenings at the Paramount, and a few screenings and events in other venues around town. The fest has already announced its opening-night film, Let Me In, to be followed by a gala screening of Buried.

By 2008, after three fantastic years (2005, 2006, 2007), Fantastic Fest was no longer a fledging fest. There were definitely growing pains as the fests popularity grows. And why wouldn't it? The fest was based at the best theater in the world with world-class cinema that was well, fantastic on so many levels.

My favorite part about 2008 was the special online screenings, with a mix of shorts and features available for online viewing through B-Side. It made it possible to see more films that I would have otherwise. I got to see the disturbingly entertaining documentary; I Think We're Alone Now, profiling two Tiffany stalkers. Yes, that Tiffany, and yes, it was a recent documentary.

I love the docs at Fantastic Fest, they're very interesting, and I hope to see more. That's not to slight the Austin-based documentary about our youngest auteur, Emily Hagins, Zombie Girl: The Movie. Emily is currently working on her third feature film, My Sucky Teen Romance (which deserves kudos for the best title this year). And then there was Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! a doc about Australian filmmaking in the late 70s through the 80s, which played along with the Ozploitation film program featuring some of the same, from Mad Max to Turkey Shoot.

TO: Fearless Slackerwood Contributors

FROM: Most Fabulous Editor

SUBJECT: Newly announced Fantastic Fest 2010 opportunities

Folks, we've just received a press release from Fantastic Fest about another movie they've added to the lineup -- Buried, which stars Ryan Reynolds as a guy who wakes one morning to find himself, well, buried, and has to figure out where and why and how to get out. Reynolds and director Rodrigo Cortes will be in attendance at the screening, which will take place on opening night at the Paramount after Let Me In. Of course a couple of us will cover the red carpet, and I'm looking for especially good photos of Ryan Reynolds ... and yes, this is one of those occasions where you can send the best close-ups directly to me. Especially if he's a bit sweaty in the Texas heat. Ahem. Okay.

But that's not why I'm contacting you right now. In addition to the splashy gala screening during Fantastic Fest, Rolling Roadshow is holding a special screening of Buried in Austin on Saturday, September 18 called "Rolling Roadshow for One." I'd like it if you all would immediately head over to the Facebook invitation page for this event and sign up, even though only four people will be selected for the screening. I figure if all of you sign up, we have a good chance of someone being picked, and then we can get a review posted right on time for this movie as well as a fascinating feature about this unique Rolling Roadshow event.

Jenn's been taking us back in time to the early days of Fantastic Fest: 2005 and 2006. I'm switching on the time machine for 2007, a big year for the festival. The fun kicked off with a badge pick-up party outside in the back parking lot of Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar, with odd pinatas and a machine that aimed bloody spatters at willing victims and some interesting mechanical devices courtesy of Dorkbot Austin. This was the first year FF started using "traditional" badges, as I recall.

From a movie news point of view, 2007 was the year that surprised everyone when There Will Be Blood had its first public screening ever as a secret screening at the festival. I remember going to NYC the next year and hearing a PR rep fuss that "Can you believe? They screened it in Austin!" Of course all important movies should screen in New York and LA first, not the flyover.

In addition, 2007 was a big year for me because of Southland Tales. I realize a lot of people dislike this movie. I can't say I loved it, but I thought it was interesting -- my review refers to it as "a fascinating mess." It reminded me of some kind of alternative art exhibit where you admire the originality and the talent without actually wanting to take it home and put it on your wall, or even see it again. But "fascinating" and "extraordinary" were enough for the publicity folks, who asked me if I minded if they pulled those quotes from my review and attributed them to me in the publicity materials for the film. This is why we own the Southland Tales DVD: it's the only one with my name on the cover. I am by no means a quote whore, but it was an amusing experience for me.