Fantastic Fest takes place each year in the awesome city of Austin, Texas, and is the largest genre film festival in the U.S. With a focus on horror, sci-fi, fantasy, action and anything else the festival considers “fantastic” it is a film nerd’s dream. Especially when you factor in the world premieres the Festival has held for films such as There Will Be Blood, Apocalypto and Zombieland among others, and that it has hosted a guest roster comprising the likes of Mel Gibson, Bill Murray, Dolph Lundgren, Jemaine Clement, Paul Rudd, Bill Pullman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, Jon Favreau, George Romero, Darren Aronofsky and Mike Judge.
Joining these esteemed ranks of folks heading to Austin for Fantastic Fest, and earning our undying envy in the process, are Kiwis Andrew Todd and Steve Austin. They’ll be filing reports from Austin over the next week, letting us know about the cool things they are up to and we aren’t. With Fantastic Fest commencing in roughly 24 hours, now’s a great time for them to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about what they are looking forward to. The bastards.
Andrew: Hi there, I’m Andrew Todd. Filmmaker, reviewer, movie geek and manager of V48HOURS in Christchurch. I like movies of all shapes and sizes, but especially the weird ones, having been raised on The Rocky Horror Picture Show and given a copy of A Clockwork Orange at the tender age of thirteen by my possibly irresponsible mother.
Steve: I’m Steve Austin. Film geek, jumped-up video-store clerk, reviewer and former manager of V48HOURS in Christchurch, now residing in Auckland. My interest in film is broad-ranging; I enjoy high-brow art films as equally as a good Saturday night popcorn flick right through to low-rent trash. Brought up on a solid diet of Star Wars and James Bond movies in my formative years, somewhere along the way my taste got horribly warped.
Andrew: Over the years, we’ve both frequented events like the New Zealand International Film Festival, Incredibly Strange Film Festival and the Fatso 24 Hour Movie Marathon, but this year we’re taking our movie-nerd squee to the next level.
Both Together: We’re going TO AMERICA!!!
Andrew: Specifically, we’re going to Austin, the Texas state capital, named for its original governor, Stephen F. Austin.
Steve: No relation.
Andrew: It’s the 31st most walkable city in America, and is well known for its music festivals: there’s even a recently erected statue of Willie Nelson joining the Stevie Ray Vaughan Memorial statue. That’s more statues of musicians than Christchurch and Timaru combined.
Steve: “Austin has a humid subtropical climate, characterized by hot summers with prevailing humid winds from the Gulf of Mexico and mild winters”*. And then there is its famed public transport system [one component of which locals have been heard to “affectionately” call “The Loser Cruiser” – Ed].
Andrew: Best of all, Austin is home to the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Dell Computer’s world headquarters, and the world’s largest population of Mexican Free-Tailed Bats.
Steve: Wait… that doesn’t sound like a very likely holiday destination! And why is this being covered on Flicks, I hear you ask?
Andrew: Good question, Steve. Because, gentle reader, the principal reason for our visit to Austin is Fantastic Fest: the largest genre film festival in all of The America. A film festival that prides itself on a lack of bullshit and a veritable cornucopia of crazy.
Steve: This is an eight-day festival that specializes in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and, as the name suggests, fantastic movies from all around the world. It features World, Stateside and Regional premieres of new and up-and-coming films from across the whole spectrum of quality and a nice sidebar of retrospective re-issues to add flavour. Just the sort of stuff we watch on a regular basis and love to bits! In the past they’ve presented the world premieres of There Will Be Blood, Apocalypto, and Zombieland, and guests have included Mel Gibson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Kevin Smith, George Romero and Darren Aronofsky. There are also heaps of cool events running alongside the festival: video-game arcade displays, themed parties…
Andrew: Karaoke nights and rap throwdowns…
Steve: And, famously, several debates between industry insiders and heavyweights that end in participants donning gloves and entering a boxing ring for a face off!
Andrew: It’s based at the legendary Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar cinema, a little south of the central city. They’re known for programming incredible and off-the-beaten-path films and presenting them in the best possible manner. They run midnight sessions of rare films as well as the latest movies; turn their amps and projectors up; and famously don’t tolerate texting or talking in the cinema.
Steve: As decided non-fans of the cattle-class multiplex cinema experience, suffice it to say that we’re super pumped.
Andrew: Here are a few of the big titles we’re looking forward to seeing there:
Dredd 3D – Local boy Karl Urban’s outing as the 2000AD comic character (last seen on screen in the terrible Sylvester Stallone flick) has been getting a lot of good buzz for its no-holds-barred action and stylish bloodletting. Looks like a sci-fi The Raid.
The ABCs of Death – 48HOURS and Incredibly Strange head honcho Ant Timpson and Drafthouse Films co-founder Tim League brought together twenty-six of the hottest directors in horror filmmaking and told them to let loose for this alphabetical anthology film. If there’s one film in the fest that screams “squirrel-fucking insane”, it’s this one.
Looper – Rian Johnson directing Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in a mind-bending time-travel flick. Nuff said?
Frankenweenie – The story of a boy who brings his dead dog back to life through mad science, Tim Burton’s latest is rendered in black-and-white 3D stop-motion animation. It’s based on a short made by Burton in his early days, so let’s hope this return to his roots also returns him to glory. Glooooory!
Wrong – Quentin Deupeux’s nutty follow up to the sublimely bizarre Rubber seems to be aptly-titled, given the contents of its trailer.
The Shining: Forwards and Backwards – If you saw Room 237 – also playing at Fantastic Fest – at the New Zealand International Film Festival, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about! (This one’s probably more of a guilty pleasure for both of us though!)
Steve: We’ll be checking in here every two or three days with a report of what we’ve been up to, reviews of movies we’ve seen and general impressions of the festival experience. There might even be a celebrity or two show up!
Andrew: And if we ever escape from the cinema for more than a few minutes, we’ll be posting about Austin itself: the wide range of music, arts and culture on display; its equal-parts delicious and artery-hardening cuisine, and all the craziness we get up to, including those bats. Definitely got to visit the bats.
Steve: Before we go, and just so you know who we are, we thought we’d post photos of ourselves that we had to take for our film badge, needed as part of entry into the fest itself.
Andrew: So in time-honoured Fantastic Fest tradition, here are the photos that will serve both as ID while at the fest, and a sort of target for how we’ll endeavour to melt our brains with some of the craziest films in the world.
Steve: We give you…SHAKEY-FACE!!
* from Wikipedia, because real journalists don’t fact-check. ;-P
