Fantastic Fest

Got your attention, huh? Brownie points if you can name the film that prop on the left is associated with. Hint, it screened at Fantastic Fest 2006.

Last week we started the Fantastic Flashbacks, a five part series looking back at the first five years of Fantastic Fest, starting with year one. Today, let's remember 2006, when the fest extended to its now-usual week of films and events.

There were quite a few celebrities at Fantastic Fest 2006, kicking off with R. Lee Ermey for Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, so you know they played his "Take Your Ass Out" Alamo promo. And you know the crowd went wild. Ermey may be a badass on the screen, but he was an absolute sweetheart to the many fans talking to him before the film in the lobby. He wasn't the only celebrity on hand; there were many geekgasms over the presence of Darren Aronofsky, and even though Mel Gibson's presence seemed like a PR opportunity to soothe over his first foot-in-mouth debacle, the special rough-cut screening of Apocalypto -- the first of the ever-popular "secret screenings" at Fantastic Fest -- was worth it.

That's not to say they were the only "names" there. Lucky McKee, the director of May, was there with his new film, The Woods, along with May's leading lady, Angela Bettis, who directed McKee in her film, Roman (which would make a great companion film to May, but that's another post).

Fantastic Fest screened so many films this year, it was impossible to see them all. Like the occasionally tepid Beowulf and Grendel with a then not well known Gerard Butler. He wasn't there, but it's entertaining to remember a film before he was well known.

First among the bigger films is Severance -- for the buzz alone. The tagline says it all: "Another bloody office outing." This team building retreat plays well as a survival horror and for black humor. The cast is fantastic and the script smartly takes sudden turns when little moments look predictable. I ended up seeing this three more times at fests and special screenings and I'm still annoyed it didn't do better in theaters. It was like I was stalking the film, but honestly I wasn't. If you've ever worked in corporate cubefarms with soul sucking lights and bizarre policies and even stranger people, well, it hits home.

Last month I started getting nostalgic for Fantastic Fests Past as I was de-cluttering and packing for a move. And while it is only July, fans of the festival are already getting excited for the 2010 edition, with two more months to go. If you're on Twitter or Facebook and live in Austin, you probably saw an explosion of tweets anticipating -- then commenting on -- the first round of films announced for the 6th annual Fantastic Fest last week. Seems like a perfect time to reminisce about the first five years of Fantastic Fest to me. Let's start at the logical place ... Year One, October 2005.

The inaugural year of Fantastic Fest was a sparse program compared to later years -- only four days long, and just two screens at a time for films and special events. There weren't distinct programs yet, other than a retrospective of post-apocalyptic films from around the world, starting a tradition of popular retrospectives that get some attendees as excited as the new releases. With a heavy representation of Asian horror, it's no surprise in later years that trend would continue.

Buying a VIP badge got you all sorts of goodies, mostly stuffed in a SXSW bag. We had the coolest badges ever in 2005, though -- these padded deals with a little flashlight in them, very helpful for reading the black with tiny white font programs.

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You all know what I mean when I say "Fantastic" news tidbits, right? Fantastic Fest is in September and we should be receiving -- and publishing -- regular updates on the lineup, special guests, and whatever other treats the festival has in store for us this year. But there's some other Austin film news, too, so I thought I'd take the lazy way out -- er, I mean the convenient way for readers, that's it -- and combine it all into one nice newsy package.

• As I mentioned, Fantastic Fest announced 13 films in their 2010 festival lineup yesterday. If you are a Fantastic Fest fanatic, you probably already know this. I noticed people on Twitter exclaiming that they'd been constantly refreshing the festival website page while eagerly anticipating the news. Nearly all these films are from other countries: Sweden, France, Serbia, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong and Japan. I don't know much about most of them -- I saw Ip Man at Cinemapocalypse last year and liked it enough that I'd watch Ip Man 2, and The Violent Kind premiered at Sundance this year. IndieWire has the best discussion of the films so far, which isn't a lot ... but it's been pointed out to me that most of these films are North American premieres so U.S. writers don't know a lot about them yet.
• Speaking of Fantastic Fest, one of my favorite movies from the 2009 festival is now available on DVD and Netflix Watch Instantly: the animated surreal Belgian film A Town Called Panic (Panique au village). Go find this and watch this immediately. Here's my review from Cinematical.
• Jenn Brown and I really enjoyed the locally shot feature The Happy Poet at SXSW this year (Jenn's review). The filmmakers just let us know that they're showing the film in San Antonio this Saturday night at Unit B (with a bike ride downtown afterwards to a Q&A session). Hot dogs are also involved, naturally.

Could the next Marko Zaror be staying at your place in September?

One my favorite things about Austin's festivals, and Fantastic Fest in particular, is the camaraderie. There's a tremendous feeling of community, and it's common for out-of-towners to stay with locals, especially since most of their waking time will be spent around the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.

Cut to last month when some friends of mine -- other Fantastic Fest veterans -- noticed that the Fantastic Fest website didn't include anything about housing. We found something about hotels, but nothing else. We talked about Butt-Numb-a-Thon and how one person in particular who has a guest room had a great time hosting an international guest for BNAT, and was thinking it would be fun to host someone else for Fantastic Fest.

That made me think about  how Alamo and Fantastic Fest staffers have often hosted visiting filmmakers on tight budgets -- one year a call went out looking for housing options for some shorts filmmakers from Colombia. So I passed on the suggestion to Jill, the Guest Manager for Fantastic Fest, and guess what? Now you can host a filmmaker yourself.

One of the most iconic devices in horror films is a maniac terrorizing a local town, the worst of which is one who preys on children. But what if the urban legend turns out to be real? 

Filmmakers Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio explore a real-life horror story of a boogeyman legend come to life in Cropsey, a movie about a series of murders centering on an abandoned state institution on Staten Island, New York, the suspect, the victims, and perceived versus actual guilt.

The "Cropsey" urban legend is so pervasive in the Hudson River valley region of New York, even people in outlying areas are familiar with it. Details change, but the core is the same: there's a maniac, he's armed, and he hunts kids. From a time when it was still common for kids to spend hours on their own without adult supervision, such cautionary tales kept some of us who were old enough to leave our own yards to be just a little more careful. On July 9, 1987, Jennifer Schweiger disappeared, and suddenly the boogeyman was real.

Let's see what's been going on with Austin-related film news lately:

• Austin Film Society is celebrating 10 years of Austin Studios with a big Make Watch Love Movies party on June 18 starting at 6:30 pm. Admission is free for AFS members, Texas film crew and Austin Studios neighbors, although you can help sponsor the event if you choose. The event will honor Moody Anderson as well as Alison Macor's book about Austin film, Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids. Elizabeth Avellan, Mike Judge, Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez will be hosts.
• The Paramount Theatre is looking for five "volunteer publicists" -- bloggers who will spread the word regularly about the joys of the theater's Summer Classic Film Series. In return, you get an all-access pass for the film series. Too bad I don't already have a website devoted to this sort of thing or I'd be right there in line. Deadline is tomorrow so act fast.
• Nueva Onda kicks off its 2010 monthly Movie Nights on Thursday with three short films: Flat Daddy, a work-in-progress documentary about military families; the short-short To Do That from local filmmaker Jason Brenizer; and Manos de Madre, the story of a Guatemalan woman forced to live on a garbage dump, which played at the Hideout during SXSW this year. Also, check out the new Nueva Onda Movie blog for info on upcoming screenings.

Last September, just before Fantastic Fest, the Slackerwood gang recorded a very memorable podcast with Alamo Drafthouse staffer Zack Carlson. Like many Alamo staffers, Zack wears many hats: shorts programmer for Fantastic Fest, lead programmer for Alamo Drafthouse in general and the guy who intros and programs Terror Tuesday. During the podcast, he quietly mentioned that he was finishing up a book he's been working on for the last five years that would be out some time in 2010, so "published author" is about to join Zack's other titles.

Since Jette and I were at Alison Macor's book signing over the weekend, it got me thinking: I hadn't heard about Zack's book in a while. I asked him about it yesterday, and guess what? Not only did I find out that the book's available for pre-order, but I got a little teaser about a special event scheduled to happen in Austin during this year's Fantastic Fest.

Edited by Zack Carlson and fellow Austinite Bryan Connolly, Destroy All Movies!!!: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film is a reference book that provides a complete guide (900 pages!) to every punk or new waver to hit the big screen, including interviews and stills. Fantagraphic Books is the publisher. The description on Amazon makes it look like a must-have for anyone who calls themselves a cinephile, or an Alamo-ite.

It's barely February, and Fantastic Fest 2010 already has news!  A few days ago, John Bullington let the cat out of the bag about a feast event -- or should I say the cow -- when he mentioned on Facebook he is going to be cooking a local, grass-fed, 600-pound cow for Fantastic Fest in September. 

Bullington, the executive chef at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, has been enticing palates at the Alamo for years, with movie feasts that sell out in hours. He also flexes his culinary skills a bit with special events at Fantastic Fest, particularly the annual filmmakers luncheon and dinner events like the Truffe truffle feast in 2009. A lot of planning goes into these events, and now he's got less than eight months to plan a carnivore's delight of a feast. 

In the picture on the left, Bullington, along with Fantastic Fest co-founder Tim League, may very well be discussing another crazy plan for the festival. Be assured that when these two pair up and mix film and food, no holds are barred. 

Chef Bullington's plan for the 2010 fest is not just a roast beef. He intends to roast the cow whole, which will take 17 hours over a huge firepit, "Argentinian style." The cow has already been picked out, and when I spoke with John on Friday, he joked about getting pictures of the cow and putting it on t-shirts. 

Based on the already overwhelming response, pigs and lamb will probably added to the menu to make sure there will be plenty of meat to go around.If you remember the feast at the premiere of Seventh Moon at Fantastic Fest 2008, despite having two whole roasted pigs, that ran out quickly, so Fantastic Festers are definitely carnivorous. 

Could I possibly have picked two martial arts films further apart on the ratings scale than Wushu and Fireball? On one end of the spectrum is the first "family" martial-arts film I've ever seen that wasn't American in origin, and on the other end is pure martial-arts porn, in which whatever plot is present serves to string hard-core brutal action sequences together. Both films are now available on DVD from Lionsgate Films.

Jackie Chan Presents Wushu

As executive producer of Wushu, martial-arts legend Jackie Chan introduces a new generation of talented martial artists in such a way that this film will please fans young and old. Antony Szeto -- known for his animated fantasy film Dragonblade -- directed Wushu and also choreographed all the stunts.

Talented and seasoned actor Sammo Hung Kam-Bo (Kung Fu Hustle, The Medallion) supports the young cast as Li Hui, father to brothers Li Yi (Wenjie Wang) and Li Er (Fei Wang). Szeto discovered Wenjie Wang at Sonjiang Wushu College, which is where Wushu was later filmed.

I've been out of town for the past week, and the best way to catch up on Austin film news is to share it with everyone. Hopefully at least some of the following items are news to you, too.

• RIP to actress Brittany Murphy, who was not a Texan but played one on TV, very convincingly, for over a decade as the voice of Luanne Platter (a name I have always adored) on King of the Hill. Murphy also had a role in Robert Rodriguez's film Sin City. She died on Sunday; some news sources are reporting heart failure, others attributing her death to natural causes. She was 32.
• We've mentioned the search for the young female lead in the Coen brothers' remake of True Grit a couple of times. Looks like last month's Austin auditions didn't turn up that perfect actress, so Paramount is now holding an online casting call for teen girl hopefuls. The film will be shot at least partially in Central Texas in Spring 2010 -- Blanco County News reports the Old Blanco County Courthouse may be one location used next April or May. [via @tamarlovesu on Twitter]