And so begins the first annual Fantastic Fest here in Austin, held at the best theater in town (Alamo South Lamar) spanning four days of horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic film. Actually, they programmed too many films. There’s 24 films being shown and only enough time to catch 19. Still though, it’s a real treat and I have a feeling based on today’s attendance that it being the first year gives those of us lucky enough to be around all the more glory. Sort of like being at QT1 or something.

Anyway, it was the first full-on perfect autumn day outside today. Never got out of the 70s, a brisk breeze constantly blowing through, not a cloud in the sky. I got to the theater about an hour early and got a choice parking spot right in front.

They had several doors to the lobby open creating a crossbreeze. Some of the AICN folks were already there, a few guys I sat next to all through QT6 and have seen at film events since then, and the Feast/Project Greenlight people were there to pick up their badges. Stan Winston had brought a model for the giant robot and Zorgon ship used in Zathura, which were on display in the lobby. Since this is the first year, I could actually buy my way into the cool-people circle and get a VIP badge which lets me sit down first, get into the party after the Zathura premiere tonight, and a free poster/t-shirt (in a SXSW bag with Exploding Dog artwork on it!!!). Of course, they have a special VIP poster that’s different from the badass black poster i spotted last night but completely forgot to gank one on my way out, so I had to fork up ten more bucks to get the most badass poster. They also have a clearly-more badass golf-style shirt that i want as well…

After hanging out in the lobby and chatting with a few people, they casually let us know that people with cool badges could sit down. It seemed like everyone was in a rush to see this movie with Robin Williams instead of Strings… they are crazy. Strings (www.stringsthemovie.com) was up there on my list of films to see when I sat down with the schedule and planned out what I’d watch when. I’d heard stark raving good things about this film and also that a 35mm print of it in the US is pretty much a miracle. According to Harry Knowles, the film’s only been screening on film one other time in America…

So when the lights dim, Tim League, Alamo Owner and all-around cool dude, gets up and says that we are the most discriminating audience because this is the film he would be seeing right now and he’s gonna try to sit with us and watch it if he doesn’t get pulled away. of course he got pulled away. It made me wonder for all the cool stuff he puts together and hosts and documents and stuff like that, his life must be so hectic that he probably doesn’t get a chance to just sit and watch movies much anymore. I’ll come back to this at the end of this entry.

Before the film started, they showed a short called Moongirl directed by Henry Selick, who directed Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and the animation stuff in Life Aquatic. Well, apparently he’s converted to CGI for this short, a 9 minute story about a boy who’s fishing by moonlight with his pet squirrel and manages to hook this massive catfish constellation of stars. The celestial fish drags him up out of Earth and flings him at the moon, crashing through the canvas exterior into the hollowed out core where this huge merry-go-round lays dormant. Immediately, jagged monsters made of shadow try to get in but a girl and her pet (giant) cat keep them at bay while they repair the hole. There’s a bit of talking and some stuff with lightning bugs and a pretty cool little action scene where the shadow-monsters try to steal the lightning bugs but they get them back and eventually use them to fuel the merry-go-round. It’s revealed that the boy is now Moonboy and must stay there until the next kid comes flying up with fresh lightning bugs, that fresh lightning bugs is, in fact, what makes the moon light up.

I enjoyed this short more than I thought I would. I really liked the childish simplicity of logic here mixed with ideas that would be really really tough to pull off with any medium but CGI. They Might Be Giants supplied the score and the character design reminded me a lot of Psychonauts, where the kids have huge eyes and wide heads but are very personable and quirky.

Then Strings started. Put simply, this is a marionette epic. What elevates it to a really great movie is that the marionettes are aware of their strings, and in fact have a whole mythology set up around them, tying their mortality directly to them. At once they acknowledge that they are dependant upon these spiritual/physical links to the heavens up above but also act with complete free will like any live-action character in any other story. There’s a whole system set up around the strings that constantly creates striking visuals or cool ideas… you see how marionettes are born, how they get hurt, heal, grow old, and die. There’s a military general character who is very tough and therefore has much thicker strings than other people. A newborn baby’s strings are whisper-thin. It’s a really great use of the medium. On the other hand though, there’s a really epic story going on with these characters, involving a war between factions, political intrigue, backstabbing, love, etc. etc. This could be Dune but with puppets, Hamlet but with puppets, or Braveheart… but with puppets. This mixture makes everything very strange and beautiful. The director keeps coming back to these landscape shots of beautiful scenery obscured by thousands and thousands of strings, each leading down to control some marionette. it’s really striking to see. I was really impressed with it.

Afterward Harry wheeled around and geeked out on it a bit with me. We both loved how the city gates and prisons are nothing more than bars that raise, since characters can’t pass under them, and how the ability to jump really high is like a super power. Very cool concepts based on what life would be like if you had strings going from you straight up to heaven. None of the buildings have rooves or anything, and in the final climactic battle when they set a forest on fire, just pushing people against them is lethal because the flames catch their strings on fire. There’s an absolutely beautiful shot of the army getting mowed down seen only by strings burning and breaking and falling.

Here’s another cool thing. Tim mentioned that VIP people didn’t have to leave the theater before the next show, which was the Zathura premiere. Sweet! I have the best seat in the house! Except, since there was security there to check for cameras or recording devices, they made us leave but we got directly in front of the line and got to go right back in. I feel so special.

When i was out in the hall, Kier-la approached me and asked me how the movie ended. She said she was watching up above (presumably in the projection room) but got called away during the end. Again, I wondered how often these really cool, super-film literate people get time to just sit and enjoy a film. To be perfectly honest, when I first saw Kier-la i didn’t think she was attractive at all. However, when I approached her to ask about her horror trivia game, I was struck by how cute she is. Her face is absolutely adorable. and now I’m finding that the more I talk to her, the hotter she gets. For real. It’s not like… a “thing” or anything, I won’t be stalking her or anything like that… yet.

It also kind of helps that she could kick my ass in any sort of movie trivia/conversation/debate/whatever. Explaining how the movie ended to her I actually got a bit nervous because I wanted to do it really well and be all interesting and emotive. Best to just stop typing at this point I think…

Random notes from my notebook:

- Now that I know that Sunny from Alamo downtown has a kid and a guy, my favorite waitress there is blonde Carrie. I also have a favorite waitress at South Lamar… she’s been my favorite since like the second time i went there for the Godfather feast but I never knew her name till tonight. what is it? Carrie!!! OMG star-alignment coincidence-or-is-it!

After that, I took my same seat for the Zathura (sonypictures.com/zathura) premiere. They had original planned to show the movie on two screens to accomodate everyone but it looked like just the one screen was just shy of being full. This may not bode well for Fantastic Fest, but the crowd gave a really good reaction so I think the filmmakers present felt sufficiently loved. Plus it’s a thursday… I’m curious to see if the fest gets busier during the weekend.

This was like the big premiere of the event. They brought out this huge Fantastic Fest banner and Harry gave an intro and explained how tough it is to program event-heavy films early because they’re usually just not done until a few weeks prior to release. Luckily though, Favreau used a lot of practical effects on this one and aside from a few effects not being done (they all looked done to me though) and a few pacing tweeks, the movie was pretty much complete. In attendance was Favrea, producer/Ralphie Peter Billingsly, the editor (sorry buddy, forgot your name), and actor/Punk’d-or Dax Shepard. I’ll get to the Q&A after the movie though.

My first and still probably my biggest surprise with this movie is how good the script is. I am not a big David Koepp fan at all… and fully expected this to be klunky with the characters like Panic Room but to my pleasant surprise it wasn’t at all. The first ten minutes have some really top-notch character establishment stuff that all seems natural and real while at the same time economical and efficient. Tim Robbins’ small role still has a little meat to it and his interaction with the kids was great.

There are a few lines right off the bat (like the teenaged daughter, whom Robbins has just woken up, saying she’s hooking up with her boyfriend later:
Robbins: I don’t like you saying that.
Daughter: It’s just an expression, it doesn’t mean anything.
Robbins: I hope it doesn’t.
Daughter: it doesn’t.
Robbins: I hope it doesn’t.
Daughter: It doesn’t! We should’ve never watched Thirteen…).

So now i thought back to how Jumanji started… with these weird period kids burying this box in a spooky graveyard or something and a statue of Colonel Sanders lit by lightning strikes. This movie is clearly another beast entirely from Jumanji. They still both have magical boardgames and like, really scary dangerous situations for kids to be in (I think Chris Van Allsburg has cornered the market on that. His children must be MESSED UP), but after that this movie leaves Jumanji in its dust.

When the game stuff starts, it’s done like any well-crafted action movie. Really the only thing classifying this as a “family film” is a few lines toward the end regarding brothers being there to help eachother and that’s what brothers are for. If you cut out three minutes of this film, you have a very entertaining sci-fi action movie. Granted it’s still kinda light-hearted, but who cares… the Post Apocalyptic movies are coming later.

The Q&A was fun… Favreau was pretty open with his answers, Dax was funny, and the editor pleaded with us not to suggest any changes; he wants to go home. The effects were really a tight interweaving between practical and CG, sometimes even putting a guy in the robot suit but CGing his arms in and his legs out, still keeping the weight of the torso’s movement though. I can’t tell you how cool it was to see giant lizard guys actually there being photographed by a camera rather than moving all smooth and silky CG-style. Plus having the robot and the space ship out in the lobby helped as well.

After the questions stopped coming, I went out to my car to get a camera to snap some pics of the props. I saw all the celebs getting into their Navigators to head to the afterparty. Here’s where the decision came in: go to the Elks lodge and play vintage boardgames and try to get 20 seconds of face-time with Favreau and maybe having to settle for Dax, or stay and watch Wolf Creek?

Random notes from my notebook:

- Dax told a story about being in a theater watching a movie and having this little girl stand up in the middle of it and say “I love this movie SO much!” like she couldn’t handle keeping that emotion bottled up anymore… and that’s everything good about movies right there

- Dax also did a full-on impression of Mike Judge and his favorite direction to give to Dax during the shoot of his new movie Idiocracy: “Dax, in the next take, could you be a little less gay?” it was funny.

I’ve been wanting to see Wolf Creek (www.wolfcreekmovie.com) since Australian night at QT6, when Quentin Tarantino told the story of his favorite Aussie actor John Jarratt. Jaratt was the star of the giant Croc movie he showed that night called Dark Age, and the story, in a nutshell went like this: He’s his fave actor so when Aussie press asked him who his fave actor was he named John Jaratt. They were all surprised because, unbeknownst to QT, Jaratt had become sort of a TV handiman with a show where he basically guided you through building shelves or fixing your sink, that type of stuff. Well, QT persisted and the next day all of the Aussie press had headlines: HANDIMAN JARATT HAS HANDI-FAN TARANTINO. Cut To: Greg McLean trying to get this horror movie called Wolf Creek togather, about a group of kids who get abducted by some random dude out in the middle of nowhere. McLean was trying to convice the studio to hire none other than John Jaratt for the random killer role but they were laughing him off, saying he’s just a has-been with a handiman show on TV.

The QT headline hits and what do you know, Jaratt gets the gig. Jaratt’s so good in the role that his career is now going through a resurgence! (as an epilogue to this particular tale of coincidence… after I watched Jaratt in Dark Age that night at QT6, I went home and checked the news and wouldn’t you know it there’s an announcement that Greg McLean, producer/writer/director of hit horror film Wolf Creek, has announced that his next film will be a Giant Croc movie!)

Exhale.

So ok, i am hardcore, I am die-hard. I didn’t go to the party because I wanted to see this movie so bad.

Kier-la intro’d this one, saying that she tried really hard to get it because the Weinstein Company bought it without even showing it and have been very secretive about it since then, generally giving the impression that it’s really good and they know it. She also mentioned that the gore is supposed to be pretty grisly, citing Irreversible and Funny Games as movies it’s been compared to. Ahh Kier-la, my crush grows. The guy next to me said that she was invited in to one of his film classes to talk about the birth of exploitation film. I SO want a film-scholar girlfriend right now.

ANYWAY, the show started with an Australian animated short called Ward 13, which is a big escape sequence where this guy with a bandaged up head runs and fights with deranged doctors that are turning their patients into monsters. It’s really bizarre but very fast-paced and actually had a few funny gags thrown in there. Highly surreal.. like Mr. Bob meets Jacob’s Ladder.

Then Wolf Creek started. The film takes a very 70s approach: lots of long lenses, lots of sunset lighting, a cutting rythm that doesn’t really explain what’s going on but more like gives glimpses of scenes that aren’t really important enough to know all the details anyway. Then they break down in the middle of nowhere and a guy comes along and offers to town them back to his place and fix their car.

Now, at this point, about 50 horror movie cliches and pitfall cookie-cutter situations are probably flashing through your mind. You can probably guess how the rest of this movie goes. In some ways you would be sort of right but for the most part you are dead wrong, dude. First off, the movie doesn’t devolve into typical third-act Hollywood horror filmmaking of today. There’s no lightning storms or big twists that a good guy is really a bad guy or anything like that. OK there are a lot of “this key won’t start this car!” going on but it’s shot in a really great gritty naturalistic way. It’s really more akin to films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes where you just watch as events unfold. It never quite becomes apparent that these are just characters in the movie you’re watching, which is quite an achievement for a horror film!

Also, some of these cliches do get flipped. Maybe it’s because it’s Australian instead of Hollywood-churned-out, but the sequence and way that events unfold didn’t feel comfortable to me, it didn’t feel expected. For example, the kids are made up of two women and one dude… and there’s like a good half hour where we don’t see the dude AT ALL. We don’t know if he’s dead, alive, escaped, whatever… he’s just not dealt with for a solid half-hour. There’s also a great interchange between the women, where one seems to take the familiar “strong girl heroine” role but then gets completely stripped of any power, both figuritively and literally. We don’t even see her die… that’s how unimportant she becomes and the film treats her likewise.

Maybe I’m reading into it a bit much but I just really had a great time with this movie. It’s really what I love about horror films. The gore/violence was not as traumatic as Irreversible (haven’t seen Funny Games yet but i’ve read about it and it’s on my list), but John Jaratt does make one hell of a bad dude. There’s a GREAT scene involving him and a high-powered rifle. There’s two great scenes involving him and a high-powered rifle actually, but one in particular… I can’t really think of a better way to execute that scene.

exhale.

Random Notes from my notebook:

- “Head on a stick”
- That dude has an awful lot of drool.
- Weird eclipse shots thrown in for no reason.
- They just end it!

For a midnight show, they had Feast, the third Project Greenlight movie. As soon as I came out of the theater from Wolf Creek, I saw producer/Project Greenlight star Chris Moore standing next to a big Feast poster. I went up to him and brought up the remake of Race with the Devil, which he’s directing and AICN writer “Moriarty” is writing. Moore is just as personable, sharp, and witty talking to lowly fans like me as he is in the show. I actually really hope his movie flies and does well. The original is really fun and, while I’m generally against remakes, since i got to talk to Chris Moore about it in person and he was nice to me and thanked me for wanting to see Feast I now want it to do well.

Actually pretty much all of the Project Greenlight guys were there: Gulager, the two writers, the editor, the non-tall producer guy… the tall producer wasn’t there I don’t think, and the casting director of course… It was weird to see them all just standing there and not intercut with them talking into a camera doing an interview.

Again, Harry intro’d the movie, recommending that we all order a bucket of beer because the whole movie takes place in a bar and if we don’t order now we will certainly want some later. He also said that this cut would be VERY early and no way is this movie coming out this year. Again, it’s funny because the movie seemed pretty damn done to me. Maybe there’s a few minor pacing tweaks to make and stuff like that, but the movie played with all the effects and music and everything.

The movie is what it is. Some of the AICN guys didn’t like it at all, but I personally got a kick out of it. Granted I have seen three good movies in a row today and was in a place so open and ready to like a rowdy gorefest midnight movie that I probably could’ve been happy with Madman Marz again, but you know… not every movie has to be the best movie ever made. Some movies are OK just being stupid fun movies.

The film did get a lot of audience response though, I think everyone involved with it was happy that we seemed to like it that much. The clips shown on Greenlight illustrate what kind of movie it is pretty well. It’s quick, it’s sloppy, it’s filled with quick shots and fast jerky movement to hide the fact that it’s really just one set and a guy in a suit grabbing at the actors and drenching them in blood, but I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do: it entertained me for an hour and a half, had some good gore, some hot chicks, and some smart-ass lines. I think maybe my favorite moment comes when one of the hot girls (i guess there are three but I don’t think Krista Allen or Navi Rawat can act their way out of paper bags) is trying to clean up the absolute you-can’t-do-that-on-television full-body coating of blood… so she’s in her aquamarine bra rubbing down her red-stained cleavage and it cuts to Balthazar Getty and his movie-brother just staring at her. It’s a nice little beat that draws out on her cleaning herself up long enough to satisfy all those urges. What’s funny is she catches them looking, makes some comment, then goes behind clear-plastic flappers and gets down to her panties as well.

Anyway, where was I… Yeah, the show was completely right. Navi Rawat fell completely flat with her part… that casting director was a b$#%h.

Afterward with the Q&A, Gulager… who was just as candid and open as he was on the show. Perhaps the funniest thing he said was when someone said that it was nice to see Krista Allen in a starring role even though she’s still playing a slut. Gulager said something like how a lot of actors play roles well because that’s how they are in real life. Everyone starts laughing, Chris Moore covers his face with his hand, the non-tall producer turns away to hide his laugh, the non-skinny writer just laughs out loud. Gulager tries to qualify, saying how some of the classic actors really just play themselves over and over again (definitely a valid point), but then he brings it back by saying “so Krista’s probably a slut, I don’t know.” To call your star a slut twice in one answer… that’s pretty much awesome in my book.

Random notes from my notebook:

- The movie is one of those movies where the first 5 minutes are like a machine gun with action and exposition and music and characters and then it slows down for the next hour and a half or so.

- Probably the best gore scene involved a monster getting his cock caught in a door. They then chop it off and it flops around under the handicapped kid’s wheelchair until someone steps on it and it explodes with cottage cheese white stuff and blood.

Fantastic Fest Wallpapers Day One

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