Fantastic Fest

Thursday, January 29, 2009

FRIDAY THE 13th advance screening!



SPECIAL ADVANCE SHOWING with the new Jason, DEREK MEARS, live in person! Also, producers BRAD FULLER and ANDREW FORM will be in attendance for this screening!!

Jason Voorhees is THE undisputable icon of terror.

After a long vacation from terrorizing the denizens of Crystal Lake, he's back in this bold reinterpretation of the most popular horror franchise in the history of the genre: FRIDAY THE 13th! From the filmmaker behind 2003's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and featuring a lead performance from SUPERNATURAL's Jared Padalecki, this is a new version of the FRIDAY films that looks to pay some serious respects to the finer points of the original series. Meaning the REAL star here is none other than everyone's most beloved psychopath, JASON VOORHEES, who'll be joining us for the show to field all questions and punish all horny teenagers!

Yep, the most eagerly anticipated horror film of the year is here, in a special FREE advance screening at Alamo . To get your tickets, email rsvp@fantasticfest.com with "CAMP CRYSTAL LAKE 4EVER" in the subject line. Winners will be randomly selected and announced/notified on Tuesday, Feb 10 by 5:00 PM!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

FF martial arts mammoth CHOCOLATE opens at Lamar!

chocolate
The director of epically slammin' two-fisted masterpiece ONG BAK has returned with his new protégé, who was in training for five years for this role. Jeeja Vismistananda portrays an autistic girl who learns martial arts from watching Tony Jaa and Bruce Lee on TV so as to exact revenge on those who bankrupted her mother.

Perhaps the most buzzed-about feature of the 2008 Fantastic Fest lineup, CHOCOLATE lives up to the hype. Watch the trailer and you know that this is action only developing Asian countries with little to no litigation industry can provide. Bone-shattering, painful, brutal and death-defyingly dangerous stunt work with no wires, no stunt doubles, and full, bloody raw-force contact.

If you saw it during Fantastic Fest, tell your friends. This is a limited engagement and it won't be around long!

Tickets and info here!

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN sweeps Swedish Academy Awards!

let-the-right-one-in
It pretty much goes without saying that LET THE RIGHT ONE IN has become the most adored Alamo movie in a hell of a long time. The perfectly constructed Swedish film has been playing at Alamo South Lamar for months straight, and is a straight-up favorite of every single member of our staff. But the good news keeps coming...

Sweden's Academy Awards equivalent The Golden Bugs (really) lavished LTROI with FIVE AWARDS last week, including Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Script. That original article is HERE.

And we couldn't agree more. If you look back on this blog to the Alamo Programmers' Top Ten Lists for 2008, you'll see that LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is at the top of every single one. And we're still proudly playing it at Alamo South Lamar, so if you haven't seen it yet, or have only seen it three or four times, you'd better get your tickets here before it's gone!

Monday, January 19, 2009

FF 2008 doc I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW opens at The Ritz!



This doc came out of nowhere to floor anyone and everyone that saw it at last year's FF. Though it was one of the few films we played that took place in reality, it was undeniably more bizarre and discomforting than anything else seen on screen all year. So, in order to further enlighten and terrorize our hometown audiences, we're bringing it back for an EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT AT THE RITZ, following its MUSIC MONDAY screening.

Seriously, if you missed this one at the festival, it's your moral imperative to catch it at the theater.

Here's what noted film historian Rodney Perkins has to say about this stunning document of humanity on the ropes:

"Many people are familiar with American pop singer Tiffany, who had a number of hit songs during the 1980s, including "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Could've Been." Less known is the story of two of Tiffany's most devoted stalkers: Jeffery Deane Turner, a 50ish man with severe Asperger's Syndrome, and hermaphrodite-in-transition Kelly McCormick. Sean Donnelly's documentary I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW tells the stories of these obsessed fans. Turner serves as an elder statesman of celebrity stalkers; he has been engaged in a pointless, multi-decade pursuit of Tiffany's attentions. In one famous incident during the late 80s (which is documented in the film) Turner showed up at Tiffany's emancipated minor hearing with a samurai sword and five white chrysanthemums. Like Turner, Kelly McCormick is completely obsessed, which is evidenced by the dozens of Tiffany images that paper the walls of her barren apartment, and McCormick's disturbing, profane rants about being united with the pop singer. McCormick's obsession, however, exists in an entirely different space than Turner's and seems to be rooted in a big tangled knot of psychological and physiological dysfunction that defies glib descriptions. I THINK WE'RE ALONE NOW packs enough mystery, horror, science-fiction and human intrigue into 100 minutes to fill a number of feature-length films. Everything in this film is completely true, however, and it's so strange that many will have a hard time believing it's real."

See it to believe it:



Oh man. Get your tickets HERE.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Fantastic Fest presents OFFICE SPACE 10-Year Reunion!


Mike Judge's OFFICE SPACE came out 10 years ago this February, but it only took a few months to become a classic. There's just something so familiar hidden in every frame of the film, we don't exactly know whether to laugh or cry or both. And long before that luxury flophouse, AMERICAN BEAUTY, came out, it was OFFICE SPACE that ignited in us all that Joe Schmo fantasy of finally saying fuck it, I'm out. God, how sweet would that be?

Well, through praise and persistence, SXSW and Fantastic Fest are bringing to Austin the most fantastic, fax-smashic event in the history of cinema- the OFFICE SPACE 10 Year Anniversary Reunion! Join us at the historic Paramount Theater on February 8, where the mastermind himself, Mike Judge, will be there to preside over the night's festivies of film and fun.

Expect an deluge of cast and crew to nearly crush the foundation of the Paramount! More confirmations coming in every day- David Herman (Michael Bolten) just confirmed this morning! Check the Alamo Drafthouse Showpage for up-to-the-minute updates about this colossal celebration.

We expect tickets to go fast (we just saw that in Texas alone, 34,000 facebooker's have OFFICE SPACE listed as thier favorite film!), so mark your calendars...

2009 Fantastic Fest and SXSW badge holders get a two day head start. Starting Thursday, January 15, at noon, all 2009 badge-holders will have super-secret password access to purchase tickets at either the Paramount box office our through gettix.net. Special instructions went out via email to badge-holders already, so if you didn't receive one and are a current Fantastic Fest 2009 badge holder, email us to find out how.

Tickets to the general public will go on sale on Saturday, January 17, at noon- act quickly!

If you really want to celebrate in style, a very limited number of VIP tickets will be on sale which will include a pre-event cocktail reception, a limited edition event souvenir, flair, an actual red Swingline stapler, and an after-party at Chotchkie's featuring pizza shooters, shrimp poppers and extreme fajitas!

This is a dream come true.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Fantastic Fest Bumper is a Viral Video Hit!

Last summer, Fantastic Fest held one of our famed Filmmaker Frenzy competitions to put together 30 second bumpers to play before the Fantastic Fest 2008 features. We received many a great entry, with Jason (TREEVENGE) Eisner's REPORT CARD winning the top slot, but - wouldn't you know it? - one of the many excellent runners-up has been getting all the online glory. I LOVE YOU JEAN CLAUDE, from "Austin-based comedy troupe" (that's what G4 calls them) Black Magic Rollercoaster has been featured on G4's "Attack of the Show", praised on VH1's Best Week Ever and Videogum and was even voted Video of the Day on /Film, and that's just for starters. It's received over 41,000 hits thus far and is being forwarded and Facebooked all over the place, so it could become even bigger, or maybe it just hit its peak, who knows? Either way, we couldn't be more proud of the BMR crew, and we look forward to more great work from them in the future.

And if someone sends you this weird video of a young Jean-Claude Van Damme, let them know it came from Fantastic Fest!

Monday, January 05, 2009

FF fave short TREEVENGE makes it to SUNDANCE!!!

Yep, it's true.

When the respectable programmers' backs were turned, jarring, jolting and rampagingly awesome horror/comedy short TREEVENGE made it into the celebrated Sundance Film Festival!! Not sure exactly how this happened, but it certainly somehow proves or disproves the existence of God.

One of the top honored shorts of FF 2008, TREEVENGE is directed by Jason Eisener, a young, rabid visionary Canadian filmmaker that we've been huge fans of since his HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN trailer ventilated our foreheads a couple years back:



Since then, Eisener has provided no shortage of similar brilliance, from TREEVENGE to his amazing FF bumper "REPORT CARD":



Yes, this boy's going places. And we'll be down on our knees worshipping him when he gets to the top, especially if the rumors are true about his epic feature film HOBOS WITH SHOTGUNS. Holy moley.

So sincere congratulations to you, Jason Eisener! Here he is with some holiday well-wishings along with some of his cronies. That's him at the top left, plotting your demise.

Friday, January 02, 2009

Timecrimes Karaoke Party Jan 16!

It's too early for details, but I wanted to tell everyone to mark your calendars now. After the 9:45 (or thereabouts) show on Friday, January 16 on the opening weekend of TIMECRIMES at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, you are all invited for a karaoke party in honor of our favorite Spanish director, Nacho Vigalondo. Nacho's karaoke performances are legendary, and it only seems fitting on the Austin opening night of his feature TIMECRIMES to break out the synthesized beats and wireless microphones for a song party in his honor. Fantastic Fest veterans, this is the show to come to. Bring your friends and share the rare and potent blend of time-travel suspense thrillers and spirited renditions of 80s pop classics.

Before the film for the duration of the run, we'll be encoring the collected short films of Nacho Vigalondo, a huge hit at the 2008 festival.

I've got a list of all of Nacho's favorite songs, and I demand that they all be sung by the end of the night. Tickets are not yet on sale for this show, but check back in the middle of next week when we hope to have the showtimes locked down.

Wholphin serves up a TIMECRIMES Appetizer



If you follow what’s going on at the Alamo Drafthouse or Fantastic Fest, then you’ve no doubt heard ad nausium our gushing praise for Nacho Vigalondo. That little Spainaird packs a big cinematic punch, and we can’t wait to finally put is brilliant feature TIMECRIMES on the Alamo screen, which opens for a full run at The Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar on January 16!

Before Nacho made TIMECRIMES, however, he was successful short film director, and was even nominated for an Academy Award for one particularly hysterical and bizarre gem called 7:35 in the Morning. All his shorts are exceptional (you can expect a great pre-show program of them when you come see TIMECRIMES at South Lamar) but there’s one in particular that got the whole crowd revved up- CHOQUE. A very funny and heartbreaking story of love, jealousy and bumper cars. Apparently, we’re not alone in loving it- the short is currently featured on the Wholphin DVD Magazine! (Incidentally, another Fantastic Fest short, Arthur Metcalf’s Fantasie in Bubblewrap, is also featured in the collection…did Wholphin send a spy?)

Above there’s a YouTube link for CHOQUE, but if you really want to do yourself a favor, go out and pick up a copy of Wholphin (I know BookPeople carries it here in Austin) to see the film in full resolution. Nacho is a great man and a better director. Do not miss your chance to check out TIMECRIMES.