The initial lineup was announced yesterday for the 2009 edition of Fantastic Fest, the genre festival that takes place in late September at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse. Programmed by the inimitable Tim League and friends, this year’s festival will kick off witht he premiere of Jared Hess‘ third feature, Gentleman Broncos, starring Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords. Other highlights from the selections thus far announced:

• Cory McAbee’s incredible episodic “musical space western” Stingray Sam (trailer above)
  
• Morphia, Alexei Balabanov’s follow-up to the delightfully grotesque indictment of Soviet decay Cargo 200 (to which I gave a special prize as a member of a jury at last year’s Fantastic Fest)
• Buratino: Son of Pinocchio, described as a musical in which “the Estonian son of Pinocchio who quickly forms a rock band, commits terrorist acts, falls in love and gets embroiled in a maniac’s plot to conquer the world”
• Two relatively recent Magnolia acquisitions: the highly-anticipated (at least, if our search logs are any indication) District 13 Ultimatum; and Ti West’s excellent homage to 80s horror, The House of the Devil
  
• The Legend is Alive, a Vietnamese martial arts film which would seem to join the Late Bloomer sub-genre of weird-ass Asian pictures about violent disabled adults
• Love Exposure, the 4-hour upskirt epic which recently won the grand prize at the New York Asian Film Festival
• The Revenant, which would seem to join Joe Dante’s Homecoming in the sub-genre of films about Iraq veterans returning from the dead, and which recently won the audience award for best narrative at CineVegas
• Truffle, a Canadian film about a truffle miner whose “incredibly sensitive nose … makes him valuable, especially to the sinister pair of furriers plotting to seize control of the local truffle industry with the help of their furry, mind-controlling creatures.” Attendees of one screening will be treated to a five-coure truffle dinner, akin to the event that accompanied last year’s FF screening of the Brazilian prison drama/food porn hybrid Estomago.

Fantastic Fest runs September 24-October 1.

There’s the SXSW of indie premieres, and then there’s the stuff the fanboys come for; the home of Ain’t It Cool News and the Alamo Drafthouse has an understandably enthusiastic place in its slate for midnight gorefests. So relax fanboys: Sam Raimi’s “work-in-progress” screening of May 29’s Drag Me To Hell (missing ambient sound and end credits, but generally looking ready to judge) showed the final product will give you what you want. There will be cartoonish gore and gleeful bad taste; yes, there will be Evil Dead shout-outs. Alison Lohman shall suffer the punishment of beautiful blonde women everywhere: she will atone for her selfishness, and she will do it in a wet t-shirt.

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Most 12 year old kids are busy updating their MySpace pages or planning on what they’ll wear to school the next day, but not Emily Hagins. She decided to direct her own feature film about zombies entitled Pathogen after watching a screening of Undead, and Zombie Girl: The Movie is documentary that chronicles her effort from concept to the first screening. Emily’s a local gal, so this movie was a shoe-in for this year’s Fantastic Fest.

Filmmakers Aaron Marshall, Eric Mauck and Justin Johnson stumbled across Emily and her movie when they saw a local ad looking for people who wanted to be zombies in a movie, and when they found out how old Emily was, they decided to do a documentary about the film, which turned into 146 hours of footage that had to be broken down into a digestible size.

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Fantastic Fest is hosting four “Secret Screenings” of movies that haven’t been released yet, and the first one unspooled last night to a theater full of people who had no idea what they were about to see. Rian Johnson was in town with a print of his movie The Brothers Bloom, and one lucky audience got to see it several months early.

It’s hard to watch Bloom and not think about the world that Wes Anderson’s films inhabit. Places where people travel by steamship, are always immaculately dressed, and consist of extreme caricatures. Johnson’s first feature Brick had that quality, and The Brothers Bloom has it in spades. It’s a fantasy world that Johnson himself probably wouldn’t mind living in, and I’m sure he’d have a fair share of people willing to follow him. At least one theater full of people last night wouldn’t have minded.

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As Fantastic Fest gains in prominence as a must-attend spot on the festival calendar, the special events organized by Tim League and friends are becoming as notorious as the wide-ranging selection of international genre and exploitation films on the official lineup. From shooting lessons to field trips to far-flung barbeque joints, to multiple karaoke parties and totally unofficial after-after parties in the hotel suites of celebrity attendees, the only criticism of the festival that keeps coming up is that there’s actually too much fun to be had, too much to do.

But this is not necessarily a Fantastic Fest-specific problem; with the Alamo Drafthouse chain itself, League has created a year-round home for Too Much Fun for not just cinema nerds, but anyone who likes to wash their pop culture down with copious amounts of beer. This became evident yesterday afternoon when, after a screening of the paraplegic serial killer film Late Bloomer (about which more, later), I snuck out of the Alamo South Lamar to head across town to the Alamo Ritz for Michael Jackson Thrill the World, a sing-a-long, dance-off and drinking contest set to the music video masterpieces of the King of Pop.

But contrary to appearances, the point of the evening, according to host Henri Mazza, was not to have fun. “I don’t care if you have a good time,” he said. “The most important thing tonight is that you learn how to do “Thriller.”

The Alamo is getting together a contingent to try to break the record for the “largest group synchronized “Thriller” Dance,” and they’re also hoping to attach “upwards of 2,000″ “Thriller”-dancing zombies to the back of next month’s Day of the Dead parade. After letting the crowd warm up with a one-minute dance contest (which the young lady above lost in spite of her sartorial dedication to the endeavor) and by singing and dancing along to videos like “Bad” and “Rock With You,” the Alamo brought out a dance teacher to train the wannabe zombies for their future engagements.

Watch three or more Michael Jackson videos back-to-back-to-back and, whatever you think of the man or his music, it’s impossible to deny that no pop star has ever really tried to top him in terms of sheer scope. And even when he’s very, very bad, he’s compelling. The several minutes of narrative exposition tacked on to beginning and end of “Remember the Time” are ridiculous, but audaciously so: it’s no “Thriller,” but that Jackson thought that this –– an epic set in ancient Egypt in which he plays a mysterious shape-shifter who makes out with Iman under the nose of her husband Eddie Murphy and slave Magic Johnson –– was a good idea is, in a way, thrilling.

Though it took the crowd a while to get into it, by the time MJ was yelling about meeting a love interest “in the park, after dark,” a good portion were on their feet, laughing and singing along. Maybe it was the beer, maybe it was the majesty of the choreographed dance. Maybe it was that, in hindsight, all of the pretentions within the Jackson canon––from traditional heterosexuality to the dominatrix-outfitted teenager trying to prove he’s tough in the Martin Scorsese-directed “Bad”––make us feel like we’re privy to an inside joke. Regardless, like so much else at Fantastic Fest, Thrill the World felt like an illegal amount of fun.

See more pics at our Flickr page.

You know a festival isn’t going to be typical when the opening night includes something called “The World Air Sex Championships.” And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like. While Air Guitar contests have started to become popular all over the world, the Alamo Drafthouse thought they’d take it to the next level by having contests simulate sex with… the air. Surprisingly enough, they didn’t invent the art –– it was imported from Japan, of course. Appropriately, after the US premiere of Zack & Miri Make a Porno, the air sexers took the stage.

Last night was a culmination of 13 months of smaller contests leading up to the finals, and to our virgin eyes it was a sight to behold. You had “The Frenchman” with a French flag painted on his chest, the girl who simulated sex to “Hot For Teacher,” and even a complete troupe of air sexers who came out dressed as, respectively, Sarah Palin (complete with inflatable pig… with lipstick), John McCain, a bulldog, a moose, and a Secret Service agent. I’m seriously surprised that both the performers of that one and us in the audience didn’t end up in Guantanamo for that one.

After the break you can watch some video highlights from the championship at what is definitely not your normal film festival.

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As summer cools down, the movies heat up. In this episode we take a look at what’s coming down the pipe this fall. Sure, some of the season’s movies will be blatant Oscar bait, but we still can’t wait to see what Hollywood has in store.

Yesterday marked the beginning of a week of mutant pigs, autistic kung-fu masters, and Japanese nudity. I’m referring of course to Fantastic Fest, Austin’s genre film destination. We talk to festival programmer Zack Carlson about what to look forward to.

Burn After Reading, the latest offering from the Coen Brothers, won the top box office spot last weekend, but did it win our hearts? We shall discuss.

 

 FilmCouch 88 [40:38m]: Play Now | Download

(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)

0:00 - Intro, listener feedback about The Fall and what we missed at the Toronto Film Festival

4:46 - Fall movie preview

21:27 - Interview with Zack Carlson of Fantastic Fest

31:27 - Burn After Reading

filmcouch-88

Fantastic Fest, held at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin in September, announced a number of films and events today. As expected, the Jean-Claude Van Damme meta-biopic JCVD made the cut, as did the Leos Carax/Michel Gondry/Joon-ho Bong omnibus, Tokyo! Other highlights:

• Wicked Lake, in which “four buxom ladies head out to the country for some good old-fashioned naked lesbian Wiccan frolicking.”
• Fear(s) of the Dark, a collection of six animated horror shorts by acclaimed graphic novelists (see trailer above).
• Santos, which has probably the most baffling film festival catalog capsule description I’ve ever seen: “A wild, sweeping tale of comic book nerds versus superheroes in a battle for the future of mankind. Think Ultraman with a Latin American brain transplant.”

Also: at 2pm EST today, if you’re on Twitter (check) and you’re planning to attend Fantastic Fest (check), you should send the following message to your followers:

I’m heading to Fantastic Fest (Sept 18-25)! Join me there and pass it on! New films and fun announced at http://www.fantasticfest.com

Those who mass tweet will be get themselves on the list for the Fantastic Fest opening night after-party.

Before Saturday’s screening of his incredible Mister Lonely at the Alamo Ritz here in Austin, director/notorious bullshit artist Harmony Korine took the stage and, wired mic in hand, paced back and forth whilst grasping for the appropriate words to mark the occasion. “I’m not used to theaters where people eat like this,” he began. “I saw somebody back there choke on a nacho.” Pause for effect. “I got excited.”

Korine then launched into a story about the last time he was in Austin, which, he claimed, was at age 16, when he was picked up on a hitchhiking road trip by a guy who drove whilst eating raw sticks of butter. Long before Korine got to the punchline, the guy sitting next to me, who earlier said he was friends with the filmmaker, started laughing. He leaned over and whispered, “None of this is true.” Not that it matters––it was the best stand-up comedy I’ve seen in a while.

More on Mister Lonely soon.

Austin film lovers (and SXSW loyalists, like yours truly) have been eagerly awaiting the opening of the new Alamo Ritz, which replaces the old Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado Street as downtown Austin’s Mecca for people who like to simultaneously watch movies and drink beer. The Ritz had its grand opening last night; bloggy reactions after the jump.

photo via Austinist.

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I’m getting ready to fill out my first-ever application for Butt-Numb-a-Thon, Harry Knowles’ annual 24 hour, marathon film festival. My tastes do not always neatly dovetail with Knowles’, but for years, friends who have attended past BNATs have come back with rapturous reports. Another cause for excitement: this BNAT will be the first to take place at the new Alamo Ritz, which is replacing the old and much-beloved Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Austin.

Like a Telluride for genre geeks, the lineup is a total mystery before the festival begins, and lucky attendees must stay in their seats for the full 24 hours or risk missing something. About half the films are vintage and/or lost classics, the other half are (generally) Hollywood films that have yet to be released. Last year’s audience was privy to the premieres of Knocked Up, Black Snake Moan, Rocky Balboa, 300 and Dreamgirls, as well as screenings of The Informers, Inherit the Wind, and a “1976 X-rated animated” film called Once Upon A Girl, which caused my friend Jette Kernion to write, “Harry, I am sending you the bill for any psychotherapy I may need as a result of watching this thing.”

The application is rigorous: in addition to answering questions about Kurt Russell movies and “celebrity sexual fantasies” (presumably, they’re not one and the same), you’re instructed to upload “your favorite photo of you from a past Halloween Celebration or Costumed affair.” Out of thousands of applicants, Knowles hand-picks the couple of hundred eventual attendees. My chances of being deemed worthy of attendance are probably pretty slim, so cross your fingers for me, and if you want to apply, all the info is here.

[Via Matt Dentler]

Harry Knowles’ Fantastic Fest closed last night with a (badly kept) secret screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. We weren’t there, so let’s go straight to those who were. I’ll update this post as more folks weigh in. Suffice it to say, at this point, the first negative word will be news.

• Mike D’Angelo [via GreenCine Daily, via Twitter]: “Not much more than formal mastery and a ferocious Day-Lewis turn, but hey, that’s plenty.”
• Marjorie Baumgarten for Variety: “There Will Be Blood was indeed an unusual choice to close out this year’s Fantastic Fest, as Alamo Drafthouse Cinema founder and host Tim League was the first to admit. Though the film hardly belongs to the science fiction, fantasy, animation, and crime genres that attendees had been snacking on all week, League attested in his introduction that the film is undeniably “fantastic.” [...] However, it took Ain’t It Cool News‘ Harry Knowles to point out during the Q&A that Plainview was the “best monster” he had seen all week. Anderson responded that Dracula was in his thoughts as he was writing the screenplay. “There Will Be Blood” indeed.”
• An anonymous text messager, also via Variety: “Easily one of the best movies of the year.”
• Matt Dentler: “God Bless P.T. Anderson, for making his fifth consecutive slam dunk. I’m just so stunned and impressed and shaken by this film.”
• Jeffrey Wells, quoting reader Dan Brown: “‘I know the film won’t be well received by everyone. The two and a half-hour running time might be off-putting for Middle American styrofoams but I was really into the movie right from the start.’ The most interesting sounding aspect, he adds, is that ‘the first 15 to 18 minutes of the film are dialogue-free.’”
• Scott Weinberg at Cinematical: “It’s more than a ‘departure’ for the director; it’s a monumental display of ‘evolution’ that’ll wow the established fans and impress a helluva lot more new ones. This is a dark, compelling and effortlessly engrossing film, one bolstered by a lead performance that ranks among the very best of Lewis’ impressive career.”
• John DeFore at The Hollywood Reporter: “Director Anderson’s critics might not know what to do with this picture, which has none of the attention-grabbing flourishes of earlier films — no hailstorms of frogs or deus ex machina pianos here. The closest it gets to self-conscious showiness is its closing scene, a confrontation as memorably strange as the fireworks-popping, “Jessie’s Girl”-belting drug deal in Boogie Nights.”
• Peter Martin at Twitch: “In several important ways, though, There Will Be Blood was the perfect film to close the festival. First, it is a major stride forward by Anderson. Not only has he left behind the present-day San Fernando Valley suburban milleau of his last three films, he has greatly sharpened his storytelling abilities and broadened his visual palette. Second, this is a tale in which the characters fully embrace their emotions, resulting in sometimes over the top behavior that’s familiar to anyone even mildly acquainted with genre fare. Third, the film features a monstrously entertaining performance by Daniel Day Lewis, embodying a man quietly hellbent on achieving success, and you can never have too many monsters at Fantastic Fest.”

See also our spoileriffic report from the Blood preview at Telluride.

Rumors are swirling that there will be a “secret” screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin this week/weekend, as part of Harry Knowles’ Fantastic Fest. Jeff Wells says Paramount denied and the Drafthouse won’t confirm, but one of his commenters says someone “very high level” told him that there will “definitely be an Austin screening.” If the picture wasn’t finished three weeks ago for the older, generally forgiving audience at Telluride, could it really now be finished enough for Harry Knowles’ take-no-prisoners fanboys/girls? Can’t wait to find out. I’ll be keeping an eye on Jette Kernion and Matt Dentler’s blogs for Fantastic details.

Here’s a round-up of a few late-afternoon tidbits from across the film blogosphere:

• At Slackerwood, Jette Kernion has a fully-illustrated review of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Simpsons Feast. “The second course soon followed: Blinky (the three-eyed fish) in a sauce made from tomacco (Homer’s magical crop that resulted from planting tomatoes, tobacco, and uranium from the nuclear power plant)…His eyes were made from white asparagus and caviar. He was a very tasty three-eyed fish.”
• AJ Schnack takes a look at the year thus far in documentary box office. When you see the year’s Top 20 docs laid out by grosses, the discrepancy between the fiction and nonfiction economic systems really hits home: “Looking at the year to date documentary box office, the elephant in the room (there are so many mixed metaphors in that) continues to be SICKO … no other [documentary] film has crossed $1 million at the box office.”
• Like Film Junk, I too got really excited when I heard that a trailer for Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind had leaked onto YouTube. And then I tried to watch it.
• At Edward Copeland On Film, Odienator remembers The Roach, “one dance that blew me away” upon watching John Waters’ Hairspray for the first time. “I laughed so hard that I choked on my popcorn. If you lived in the neighborhood I grew up in, this was an activity with which you could identify. It was pure John Waters, a mix of absurdity and social commentary. Here was the rich snob girl from Baltimore stomping roaches and shaking her ass while the lyrics commanded her to “squish, squash, kill dat roach!”
• My creepy old-lady crush on Michael Cera continues unabated.