The formula for a productive, engaging debate on the state of indie film? Take a festival founder and a controversial filmmaker, throw them in a boxing ring, and add a hundred or so hecklers and a lot of cheap booze. Also, a stars and stripes unitard wouldn’t hurt. And, voila — the circular indie film apocalypse conversation finally gets interesting.
On Monday evening, Fantastic Fest commandeered the South Austin Gym (conveniently located in the same mini-mall as the festival’s two key venues, the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar and the new Highball, a former Salvation Army store converted into a bar/bowling alley/event venue by Alamo mastermind Tim League) to throw a throwdown featuring battles of both “body and spirit” between various friends of the festival. The basic format seemed to change with every bout, but the basic concept was simple: the opponents would first take the stage to debate a given topic ostensibly of interest to the Fantastic masses, and a winner for the brains portion of the battle would be declared via audience applause. Then, each debater would step out from behind their podium, install a mouth guard, and box two rounds so that a champion could be declared based on brawn (or, more likely, luck). The first three rounds, featuring an assortment of online critics and Austin favorites were well received, but the main event was worth waiting for: League, the co-founder and guiding spirit of Fantastic Fest, vs much-maligned filmmaker and experienced boxer Uwe Boll. The debate topic: Independent film is dying and/or dead.
The imbalance of the physical match between slight-of-stature League and trained killing machine Boll was its key selling point. The hypeman/ref ran down Boll’s list of qualifications: “He’s rumored to have a PhD in everything! It’s rumored that he’s the reason Germany reunited! He’s rumored to be making Miss Pacman this fall! He’s also trained as a fighter, which is more than I can say for his opponent!” The fight, it was said, “will later be known as The Timothy League Memorial Debate.”
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, 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-biopicJCVD 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.
My first couple of nights in Cannes, I was in screenings until almost midnight, and then I’d go to meet the people I’m staying with at the Grand Hotel, where we’d have drinks and then eventually share a long cab ride back to our place. The Grand is, apparently, Where Everyone Goes, which has it’s charms, but it also inevitably results in 30 minute waits amongst a partially-tuxedoed mob around the bar in order to have the privilege of paying 10 Euros (about $17, I think) for a single cocktail. Apparently, it wasn’t always like this. “Where’s the Cannes dive bar?” I wondered aloud to a group of veterans. The answer: “The Grand WAS the dive bar.” Whoops.
So when I heard that Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest founder Tim League was planning on throwing a renegade karaoke party in Cannes last night, I really, really wanted to see him pull it off. But it seemed impossible. So what if he had brought his portable karaoke system all the way from Austin? Where was he going to find a bar––in Cannes, during Cannes––that would be amenable and available to a bunch of scrappy Americans looking to scratch a drunken irony itch? And with the exchange rate being what it is, how would any of us be able to afford the amount of alcohol necessary to fuel such an endeavor?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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