Fantastic Fest

Monday, December 29, 2008

Pink Eiga DVDs out now!



Those of you who watched the unforgettable Japanese Pink Film series at FF '08 will not want to miss out on the new slate of titles being rolled out by Pink Eiga. They will be officially released on January 14 but if you're smart you can go to www.pinkeiga.com and buy them now.

The first titles released are the delirious FF favorite S&M HUNTER and the highly regarded NEW TOKYO DECADENCE: THE SLAVE. Check out screencaps and trailers and all the goodies that Pink Eiga has in their overflowing vaults and you'll be looking forward to a great new era of insane sleaze.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Deadgirl Finds a Home

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dark Sky Films has picked up the film Deadgirl for DVD release in 2009. Deadgirl had its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest 2008. Co-directors Gadi Harel and Marcel Sarmiento are also now associated with Gold Circle's remake of Jannik Johansen's Mørke. Congratulations to all involved!

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Migrating to new 2009 Facebook Page

We are migrating over from a Facebook group to a Facebook Page. Our 2008 Fantastic Fest group is outdated and we're getting with the new wave and have built a page for Fantastic Fest to be the home for our announcements and news from here on out.

If you are a member of the Fantastic Fest Facebook group, can you please join us and become a "fan" of Fantastic Fest on our new page?

The link to the new Fantastic Fest Facebook page is here.

Sorry for the inconvenience. It's all in an effort to serve you better. We'll only be updating the page from here on out (not the group), so if you want to find out about great screenings, news and events throughout the year, please join us at our new home. We'll have lots of announcements for you beginning in early January!

Alamo/FF favorites lauded by the Austin Film Critics Association!

The Austin Film Critics Association recently named its favorites of 2008, and wouldn't ya know it, some of our very favorite films of the year were on there too, many of which had their premieres at the Alamo Drafthouse!

Beloved titles LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (currently showing at South Lamar) and TIMECRIMES (opening in January) both rolled into town via Fantastic Fest and have been building a devoted following ever since. Also on the list was the documentary CRAWFORD, which made its theatrical debut at the Drafthouse a few months back.

Of course, there are tons more great titles on their list that we've been proud to screen, from THE DARK KNIGHT to MILK and about three fistfuls of others. So take a look if you wanna see what a bunch of fellow movie nuts with great taste think of the year in review:

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December 16, 2008 (Austin, TX) -- The Austin Film Critics Association announces its 2008 end-of-the-year awards in 16 categories.

In a city known for its population of over 1 million bats, the Austin Film Critics Association honored the Batman thriller THE DARK KNIGHT with 5 awards, including the top honor, Best Film. Christopher Nolan won for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (with his brother Jonathan) and Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded Best Supporting Actor. The film was also honored in the Best Original Score category.

Sean Penn took Best Actor for his performance as gay rights activist Harvey Milk in MILK, and Anne Hathaway won Best Actress as a recovering drug addict in the indie hit RACHEL GETTING MARRIED. Taraji P. Henson clinched Best Supporting Actress as the title character's mother in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.

Charlie Kaufman's script for his directorial debut SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK wrapped up Best Original Screenplay, while the critics fell for Colin Watkinson's cinematography in THE FALL.

WALL*E won Best Animated Film, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN won Best Foreign Language Film, and MAN ON WIRE won Best Documentary.

The group chose Danny McBride as their Breakthrough Artist for his comedic roles in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, THE FOOT FIST WAY and TROPIC THUNDER. Best First Film went to Nacho Vigalondo for the Spanish time-traveling thriller Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes).

CRAWFORD won the award for best film made in the Austin-area or by an Austinite. After making its world premiere in the capital city during the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival, director David Modigliani chose to distribute the documentary through Hulu.com after being picked up by B-Side Entertainment.

Top 10 Films:
The Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
Synecdoche, New York
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Wrestler
WALL*E
Frost/Nixon
Let the Right One In
Gran Torino

Best Picture:
The Dark Knight

Best Director:
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight

Best Actor:
Sean Penn, Milk

Best Actress:
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Best Supporting Actor:
Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Best Supporting Actress:
Taraji P. Henson, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Best Original Screenplay:
Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York

Best Adapted Screenplay:
The Dark Knight, Jonthan Nolan & Christopher Nolan

Best Cinematography:
The Fall -- Colin Watkinson

Best Original Score:
The Dark Knight, James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmerman

Best Foreign Language Film:
Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) - Sweden

Best Documentary Film:
Man on Wire

Best Animated Feature:
WALL*E

Breakthrough Artist Award:
Danny McBride, Pineapple Express/The Foot Fist Way/Tropic Thunder

Best First Film:
Nacho Vigalondo, Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes)

Best Austin Film:
Crawford

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Free Streaming Feature MINDFLESH at Twitch Dec 12-14

Our old pal and Fantastic Fest programming guru Todd Brown over at Twitchfilm is offering a free online streaming feed of Robert Pratten's trippy Cronenbergian sci-fi horror MINDFLESH.

That's pretty exciting news from our absolute favorite world cinema website. Hopefully the experiment works and we get more of this kind of thing down the road on Twitch.

Support the effort by checking it out at www.twitchfilm.net, it's the lead story on the site while streaming is available for free from Dec 12-14.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Fantastic Fest Favorite ALIEN RAIDERS now on DVD

Ben Rock's sci-fi thriller ALIEN RAIDERS, which rocked Fantastic Fest 2008 is now (or very soon) on DVD. If you saw it, you probably want to pick it up to show your friends if you didn't you owe it to yourself to check out a movie that Fantastic Fest guests called "a great thriller disguised as a B-movie" with "lots of laughs, some good scares and just a fun ride all around."

About ALIEN RAIDERS:

It's the end of yet another night at Hastings Supermarket, an idyllic family grocery store in Buck Lake, Arizona. But the normal closing-time monotony is broken when a group of masked and armed-to-the-teeth militants invade the store, immediately killing several of the employees and shoppers and holding the rest hostage. Though the hostage-takers at first appear to be robbers or terrorists, they reveal themselves to be a cadre of rogue scientists that have discovered and tracked an alien infestation to THIS STORE on THIS NIGHT, and they are determined to find out which of the survivors are extraterrestrials and end the invasion at any cost. ALIEN RAIDERS is a throwback to what we consider the golden age of creature features, the 1980's. This one falls somewhere between the seriousness level of THE THING or TREMORS. Nostalgic without being stale, ALIEN RAIDERS draws strong performances from a young ensemble cast composed of mostly working character actors that you've seen in a million small parts. You might recognize the monster hunting team: Carlos Bernard from his recurring role as Tony Almeida on "24" and Matthew St. Patrick who played Keith Charles on SIX FEET UNDER.
Read the FEARnet review here. They liked it too.