Fantastic Fest 2008

Brief Summary: Fantastic Fest celebrates the great legacy of stomach-churning, blood-spurting movie magic with this interactive showdown party where YOU THE AUDIENCE are invited to join the FF programmers in providing the all-time greatest on-screen headbursts, rib-rips and gutblasts! Full Description: The excitement inherent in the best horror and action movies can be boiled down to three main ingredients: VIOLENCE, VIOLENCE and VIOLENCE!!! From the golden age of goremaster Herschell Gordon Lewis to the innovative new fluid-spurting technologies of the modern effects masters, cold-blooded murder has become a legitimately appealing visual art that deserves it's very own fancy Louvre...and THIS IS IT! Yep, at this year's Fantastic Fest, we'll be celebrating the absolute finest in on-screen annihilation with an interactive celebration of on-screen intestine-ripping, head-bursting and unrepentant baby-mashing! Your faithful FF programmers will of course get the festivities underway started with some of their all-time favorite examples of cinematic savagery, but for the first time ever, we'll be opening things up so YOU can share your most beloved homicide as well. It's easy...just bring along anything good, goopy n' gory that can play on a laptop or all-region DVD player and you'll be called on to nauseate the masses with your ultimate beloved gutblast! Note: This show is intended for the most severe and iron-stomached bloodhounds around, and we accept absolutely no responsibility for lost lunches. Wimps and weekend horrormeisters`, leave the hall...if you can't stand the meat, stay out of the kitchen!! (Zack Carlson)

The First annual AIR SEX WORLD FINALS will be held at the Paramount theater on September 18th, immediately following the Fantastic Fest opening night film. If you've been to any of the Air Guitar shows, you know a little bit about what to expect, except that competitors in this show won't pretend to play an instrument that isn't there; they'll be pretending to make love with a partner that isn't there. Our judges will be watching for the entire presentation, from costuming, to foreplay, to an eventual climax. They'll be looking for believability, sexability, and overall entertainment value (cause what fun is sex if no one's watching?). If you are in from out of town and want to join the fray, come to the Air Sex Dark Horse Qualifying round at the Alamo Ritz on September 17. The winner of Thursdays Air Sex World Championships will be flown to Nevada and receive a gift certificate for ACTUAL sex. With that title under your belt, real sex should now be a cinch! The Rules: Time: Contestants have a maximum of 2 minutes to perform an air sex routine. This can include all phases of an air sex encounter: meeting, seduction, foreplay and intercourse, or you can simply cut to the chase. Rules are tightened for the finals: no props, strict time limit and nudity=instant disqualification. The ticket to the Air Sex world championships is included with admission to ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO. The AIR SEX WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS are sponsored in part by ADULT DVD EMPIRE. Music: Competitors must perform to music, you can either bring a CD of your performance track with you, or you can choose from our selection of air sex music. You may also include an audio prelude to your performance, maximum of 30 seconds. If you have any questions about the show, please email us Read the Daily Texan's AIR SEX coverage! Each show, win prizes from our friends at SINSATIONS! We are uploading photos and video from each competition at the Air Sex Facebook Group . Please join us there and check out the post-game action.

Brief Summary: Part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s patented signature show series, Quote-Alongs heighten the experience of watching your favorite films with props, subtitling of iconic lines of dialogue, pyrotechnics and confetti, always confetti. Full Description: "Groovy." The first time you saw EVIL DEAD II, your life was changed forever. Whether you were 14 or 40 on that fateful day, something inside you would never be the same, and from that moment on you had no choice but to be a fanboy. Since that day, of course, you've seen EVIL DEAD II dozens, perhaps hundreds of times. With each repeat viewing, you find some new thrill, some fun new detail, but haven't quite been able to capture that life-changing glee that came from the first time you realized that Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell are gods. Well, never fear. The Mondo Quote-Along presentation of EVIL DEAD II will recapture that glee for you, bottle it up, and let you take a whiff of it any time you need to remember what it's like to believe in awesomeness again. We'll start with a Blu-Ray presentation of this titan of genre films, then we add in some karaoke-style subtitles for the really big lines (obviously a lot of us don't need them, but still, it helps). You'll know exactly when to yell out "Swallow this," to be timed with Ash and everyone else in the crowd, and I guarantee that you'll get goosebumps down your spine when your voice joins everyone else in the crowd for a low and rumbling, "Jooiin usss." To top everything off, we'll have props for added audience interaction, confetti cannons, and more. Think of it as ROCKY HORROR for the true horror set, and prepare yourself for a fully religious experience. (Henri Mazza)

Brief Summary: Live Comedy, Bad Movies. Master Pancake helmer John Erler has been performing his live comedy stylings along with movies great and not-so-great for the past 7 years at the Alamo Drafthouse. Full Description: In honor of Fantastic Fest, the resident hecklers of Master Pancake Theater ambush the slasher classic, Friday the 13th (1980). The dark entry in the summer-camp boomlet of the late 70’s that included Meatballs and Little Darlings, F13 tells the story of the murders at Camp Crystal Lake and one mother who really made a difference: Pamela Voorhes, founder of M.A.P.C.C. (Mothers against Promiscuous Camp Counselors). This low-budget gem boasts a cast of no-name actors and one future A-lister: everyone’s favorite pug-nosed golden-boy and erstwhile horror star Kevin Bacon (Tremors, Hollow Man). To help them eviscerate the movie properly, the Pancake crew will be joined by special guest-riffer Zack Carlson, host of the Alamo’s Terror Thursdays. Come join the fun as Master Pancake Theater pays its own mocking brand of tribute to this iconic genre classic. (John Erler)

Brief Description: On November 1, 2008, the Alamo Drafthouse will be gunning to break the world’s record for the largest group synchronized Thriller Dance. Practice with us during Fantastic Fest. Full Description: Over the past year or two, YouTube has been filling up with groups of people performing the zombie dance from Michael Jackson's Thriller. There are videos of newlyweds performing that choreography as part of their first dance together at wedding receptions, and of course there's the clip of the 1,500 inmates of the Cebu Prison in the Phillipines. We were watching those videos last winter and thought to ourselves, "What if we could make that even more awesome?" This fall, that's exactly what we're going to do. We've joined forces with Ines Markeljovic, a dance teacher and founder of ThrillTheWorld.com, to help her complete her task of setting a Guiness World Record for having the most people around the world doing the Thriller dance at the exact same time. For the past seven months, we've been hosting Michael Jackson Sing-Alongs at the Alamo Ritz, then following the music video orgy with two hours of dance instruction that gets everyone in the crowd up to speed on how to do the Thriller dance themselves. We've partnered with local theater groups, dance companies, and schools as well, and we're convinced that when it comes time to participate in the Thrill the World dance, on Saturday, October 25th, we'll have more people in one place than anywhere else on the globe. Of course, we're not stopping there. Together with Mexic-Arte and Red Bull, we're taking our Thriller zombies onto the streets of Austin, where we'll be part of the Day of the Dead processional and street party. Our goal is to have upwards of 2,000 zombies walk down Sixth Street, then stop in front of the Alamo Ritz. Thriller will start playing out of speakers lined up and down the street, and all of a sudden each and every zombie will become synchronized, perfectly choreographed zombies. Then we'll march down the street and do it again at the block party. We fully expect these events to become historical touchstones, and we'd like for you to be a part of it with us. We're putting on a special Michael Jackson Thrill the World Sing-Along and dance lesson during Fantastic Fest, and even if you're in from out of town and can't make it to the Day of the Dead parade in person, we'd love to have you come out and learn the dance, then take that back to your hometown where you can put together your own group to join in on the Thrill The World record-breaking attempt. Plus, just the experience of singing along and dancing around the movie theater to all of Michael Jackson's best music videos, sorry - "short films" - is something that everyone should have as much of as possible. (Henri Mazza)