The 2008 Fantastic Fest Jury members and films

We are proud to present the 2008 Fantastic Fest Jury Members and Jury Films. Awards for all these catagories as well as the AMD Next Wave, Bloodshots, Fantastic Fest bumper, Fantastic Fest online, best Shakey Face and Audience Award will be all be announced at the Fantastic Fest Awards Ceremony on Monday, September 22.


The 2008 Animated Shorts Official Selections:
Bernie's Doll

Blood Will Tell
City Wasp
Coffee Vending Machine and His Sword
Dog
The Facts in the Case of Mr Hollow
Fantaisie in Bubblewrap
Film Noir
Fish
Game Over
Karaoke Show
Muto
The Squirrel Next Door
Violeta
The Watermelon Chickens

For the first time this year, the Animated Shorts will play as a program at Fantastic Fest, screening three times throughout the festival, 3:45 PM on Thu, Sep 18, 1:45 PM on Sun, Sep 21, and 3:50 PM on Wed, Sep 24.

Members of the Animated Shorts jury:
Sammi Inoue Harte: is a founder of an animation studio called Saiko Studios. She is also an anime voice actress for ADV Films, Funimation Entertainment, and an Animation Instructor. She is better known for her role as the Chocobo in Final Fantasy: Unlimited, the anime series, and as Kohran Li from the anime series Sakura Wars.

Doug Jones: After lying about his age, Doug Jones got his first job in film, shoveling popcorn behind a candy stand, at the age of 14. Since then he has worked at a half dozen different movie theaters, programmed films for a half dozen different film festivals and arts organizations and even made a few short films and music videos (which will never see the light of day again). He is currently Senior Programmer at Film Independent's Los Angeles Film Festival.

Mike Wilson: The Grand Champeen and CEO of videogaming's leading champion of independent artists and original titles, Gamecock Media Group. He has spent most of his career fighting the good fight on behalf of independent artists from all forms of media, including but not limited to film, comics, video games, and food art. He's very happy to be passing judgment on the works of the filmmakers and busboys of tomorrow at Fantastic Fest.



The 2008 Fantastic Shorts Official Selections:
Breach
Eel Girl
Green
The Heist
Kingz
L'accouchement de Wendy
The Object
Outsource
Rojo Red
Some of an Equation
Spandex Man
Stagman
Well-Founded Concerns

Members of the Fantastic Shorts jury:
Jette Kernion: A film critic and feature writer in Austin, Texas. She grew up in the New Orleans area, and has been writing online since 1998. While her high-school classmates were reading Seventeen and V.C. Andrews, Jette read Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine, in which Harlan Ellison's "Watching" essays inspired her to see and write about non-John Hughes films. Some of her favorite movies (this week) are Holiday, Some Like It Hot, The Wild Bunch, Evil Dead 2, and Brazil. In her free time, Jette also edits the Austin film blog Slackerwood and contributes to Cinematical.

Allison Wilmore: Editor of IFC.com's film news site, the writer of the Indie Eye blog and the Thursday host of IFC's daily web show Lunchbox.

Chris Holland: In 1996 Chris Holland co-founded Stomp Tokyo (www.stomptokyo.com), one of the first web sites dedicated to fringe cinema. The site was touted by the New York Times as "a place to indulge one's questionable taste." Holland went on to co-author the book "Reel Shame: Bad Movies and the Hollywood Stars Who Made Them," and his writing has appeared in numerous other books and magazines. After serving as the Marketing Coordinator at the Austin Film Festival, he now works at indie film distributor B-Side as the Director of Festival Operations. His new book, "Film Festival Secrets: A Handbook for Independent Filmmakers," will be available in Fall 2008.




The 2008 Horror Shorts Official Selections:
Auburn Hills Breakdown
Butchers Hill
Cam2Cam
Cosita Linda
Electric Fence
I Love Sarah Jane
The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon
Road
El Senor Puppe
Snip
The Tap
The Tiffany Problem
Treevenge
Vincent, le Magnifique
You Better Watch Out

Members of the Horror Shorts Jury:
Devin Faraci: The main writer and muckraker for CHUD.com - Cinematic Happenings Under Development. A native Brooklynite transplanted to Los Angeles, he remains staunchly carless. You can see Devin in the documentary Heckler, now on DVD, where he hurls at Leonard Maltin unprintable but creative expletives.

Marco Pecota: Vice-president of RUE MORGUE MAGAZINE. In 2001 he founded VENI VIDI VICI MOTION PICTURES INC., a production company whose mission statement is to create works that are vibrant and artistic, yet remain commercially viable and appealing. To date Marco has produced several films including POLISHED, DYING LIKE OPHELIA, and PINK, all have aired to acclaim at international festivals and on the CBC and BRAVO networks. In 2004 Marco made his directorial debut WHAT CASSANOVA TOLD ME based on the acclaimed story by Susan Swan. Marco is the producer of RUE MORGUE CINEMA’sTM new films THE EYES OF EDWARD JAMES and THE DEMONOLOGY OF DESIRE.

Don May, Jr.: President of the longest-running independent DVD company, Synapse Films. Known worldwide for his beautiful work in film restoration and exemplary DVD releases, Don is never one to turn down free festival passes and beer. He hasn’t been to Austin, Texas since his original work on the LaserDisc version of the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE so he’s looking forward to having a few buckets of crawfish and watching movies... And maybe some bull riding if he gets stupid.


Many of the 2008 Horror Shorts will be playing as part of our new signature heart-stopping program "Short Fuse." Short Fuse plays three times during the festival, 4:00 PM on Thu, Sep 18, 9:00 PM on Sun, Sep 21, and 1:50 PM on Wed, Sep 24.


The 2008 Fantastic Features Official Selections:
Astropia
Cargo 200
Ex Drummer
How to Get Rid of the Others
Left Bank
Santos
Sauna
The Substitute

Members of the Fantastic Features Jury:
Karina Longworth: Karina Longworth is a film and new media critic/blogger based in New York, NY. Her writing has appeared in FILMMAKER Magazine, The Huffington Post, Netscape, NewTeeVee, The Raw Story and TV Squad. She currently writes and edits SpoutBlog, a daily film culture blog dedicated to discovering under-the-radar hotness and deflating the over-exposed. She is a frequent festival juror and conference panelist, and has appeared on G4's Attack of the Show!, AMC's Movies That Shook The World, CNN.com Live, and Studio 360 on NPR. In 2005, Karina co-founded Cinematical, which quickly became one of the largest film blogs on the web. As editor and lead contributor at Cinematical, Karina covered film festivals, wrote 10-12 news items a day as well as 3-4 feature stories a week, and wrote, produced, and hosted a short-lived daily video podcast. Karina contributed to Cinematical through the early months of 2007.

Drew McWeeney: Also known by his pseudonym Moriarty, Drew is a film critic, screenwriter, and the west coast editor of Ain't It Cool News. McWeeny, along with partner Scott Swan, is a working television writer, writing two episodes in the "Masters of Horror" strand, both directed by John Carpenter. The pair also co-wrote the episode "Skin and Bones" for the NBC horror/suspense anthology television series "Fear Itself (TV series)". In May of 2008 it was announced that "Bat Out of Hell" , a major motion picture written by McWeeny and Swan, would be directed by Joe Dante.

James Faust: James Faust is the director of programming for the AFI Dallas Film Festival.



The 2008 Horror Features Official Selections:
Acolytes
Art of the Devil 3
The Burrowers
Donkey Punch
Feast 2
Jack Brooks Monster Slayer
Let the Right One In
Seventh Moon
Wildman of the Navidad

Members of the Horror Features Jury:
Scott Weinberg: A self-appointed "horror advocate" who reviews films for FEARnet and Cinematical (he's now the managing editor!) and loves nothing more than a week full of high-end cinematic lunacy. Longtime Fantastic Fest juror and now the host of the infamous Fantastic Feud, Scott is easily one of the loudest, goofiest, and most insatiably passionate movie geeks you'll ever meet. His pet peeves are rude people, long walks on the beach, crappy sequels, documents that don't auto-save, PG-13 horror, drunk Britons, and Illinois Nazis. Oh, and if you talk during a FF screening, that annoying SHUSHING is coming from Scott. So shut up please.

Kier-la Janisse: Known to Austinites as a former programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and creator of its "Music Monday" series. She is the founder of the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival and the BIG SMASH! Music-on-Film Festival, both in Vancouver, and is an independent exhibitor of exploitation cinema, curating programs at the Blinding Light!! Cinema and the Criminal Cinema in Vancouver and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. She is currently a programmer for the Winnipeg Cinematheque, where she curates the weekly Big Smash! Music Scene series and the Cabin Fever childrens' retro series, and is the Asian film programmer for the San Francisco Indie Festival. She has written for Filmmaker, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazine and is the author of A VIOLENT PROFESSIONAL: THE FILMS OF LUCIANO ROSSI, published by FAB Press in 2007.

Daniel Pozarik: Followed up a five year stretch as a video store clerk with 4 years in international distribution & sales. Daniel's favorite film is BLADE RUNNER, prefers the new DAWN OF THE DEAD to the original, and is a big Lee Marvin fan.