Fantastic Fest 2008

Some people will go to the greatest lengths in the name of romance. This musical short was nominated for a 2005 Academy Award! Appearing as part of the SHORT FILMS OF NACHO VIGALONDO program. CLICK HERE for details.

Brief Summary: Hildur, a high-society socialite, is left bankrupt and alone after her corrupt husband is whisked off to prison. With no other prospects, she gets a job selling role-playing games and accessories at Astropia, the town's geek Meccas. Full Description: Leave it to Iceland to deliver a charming film in which LARPing could possible save all humanity. If in an alternate universe, Edgar Wright had an Icelandic brother making his own SPACED feature for the fanboy and comic book culture, the ASTROPIA (Dorks and Damsels) is at that film and Gunnar B. Gudmundsson is that brother. A politically incorrect satire that will make you think of Monty Python in THE OFFICE, and manna from heaven for those who have ever LARPed, been to Comic-Con, played a role playing game, bought a comic book or rented CUJO to a kid under 5, this hilarious low budget Indie should find a welcome home in Austin, with audiences that can totally relate to many of the characters in the film. While mainstream media tries to stigmatize fanboys and comic culture, ASTROPIA gives nerds their mojo in a big way. The beautiful thing here is you don't have to know a single dam thing about the culture; its a fully accessible story to all, but with some succulent, juicy bones thrown to the geek-dogs. The beginning of ASTROPIA feels very much like something ripped off the latest U.S. gossip mags, with a self-centered glamor girl hitting the skids. the out-of-control girl beauty here is Hildur, who is riding a dangerously overloaded gravy train belonging to a no good scammer named Jolli (the great Peter Stormare). Jolli pushes his luck too far and gets thrown in the slammer leaving Hildur homeless and on her own to make things work. Hopeless, without a true friend, her salvation comes from an unexpected direction. It's a magical comic book store called ASTROPIA. Through this metaphysical portal, she departs on a nerd odyssey (or nerdyssey) where the fantasy world of hers and others might just save the day, save the world and get rid of Jolli's evil once and for all. Director Gunnar Gudmundsson, screenwriters Ottó Geir Borg and Jóhann Ævar Grimsson and producer Ingvar H. Pórõarson will be in attendance! This screening is sponsored in part by Gamecock Media Group and their new game Legendary. Check it out at www.gamecockmedia.com

Sure, it's a fact that psychopaths love to torture and destroy innocent people. But what happens when your average suburban family gets their hands on a pack of sadistic cannibals? Director Geoff Redknap and producer Katie Weekly will be in attendance.

A self-loathing cat food canner looks for happiness in all the wrong places, especially when he learns that a "female" companion can be ordered by mail. Beautifully animated in a style that proves to be less cute n' cuddly than first glance would have you believe. Appearing as part of the ANIMATED SHORTS program. CLICK HERE for details.

Forty eight hours to make a horror movie - how hard can it be? Get some ketchup, a couple of knives, and invite your buddies over for the weekend. But when one of those buddies shows up dead... Okay, that didn't happen in this year's BLOODSHOTS Filmmaking Frenzy competition. Instead, we've got films made by horror enthusiasts that know the value of investing in blood in today's topsy-turvy economy. We assigned every team a subgenre and a weapon, with genres ranging from First Person Shooter to Road Trip From Hell. Weapons for some teams were simple - a pistol, for example - and for other teams far from easy, but it's really fun to watch the creative solutions people came up with when they had to use gossip/blackmail as a method of killing someone. We'll be screening all of the completed BLOODSHOTS 2008 movies over the course of two programs on two different nights before Fantastic Fest. After those screenings, the results of audience ballots at the theater and online votes at FilmmakingFrenzy.com will determine who the finalists are, and those movies will screen as part of Fantastic Fest on Sunday, Sept 21. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the best in modern homemade horror!!!

The follies of youth are lost on the old. Nacho Vigalondo stars as a man driven over the edge in a gaming arcade. Appearing as part of the SHORT FILMS OF NACHO VIGALONDO program. CLICK HERE for details.

Brief Summary: Under the Christmas tree, unemployed loser François Margin mysteriously finds a jar of face cream that once applied, temporarily turns him into the most famous celebrity in France. WINNER: Best Feature, Fantasy Worldwide Film Festival WINNER: Best Foreign Feature, Oxford International Film Festival WINNER: Best Film, Beijing Film Festival Director Reynald Bertrand live in person! Full Description: As far as I'm concerned, a film like LA CREME is what film festivals are all about: Finding obscure gems that come from out of nowhere and suddenly become new favorites. Reynald Bertand's comedy has one of those premises that sound too simple and too pat - For Christmas, an unemployed family man gets a jar of facial cream that, when applied, makes people think he's incredibly famous - but this is a truly clever, multi-layered thing of beauty, a smart and hilarious farce that proves that all you need is the right idea and clarity of vision to make a terrific comedy. Some might think that a small French comedy might seem out of place at a genre festival like Fantastic Fest, but they couldn't be more wrong. LA CREME is about fantasy itself, about the power of illusion and the power that comes with it and how, once it's applied, takes on a life of its own. It's a very simple "What would you do?" premise, like having the ability to fly, and Bertand works it like a dream. The cream comes into the life of its lead character (played by Laurent Legeay) just when he's struggling to survive with his family on welfare while he's up for a much-needed sales job against the similarly desperate Nicolas Abraham, and with its great power comes not great responsibility but big trouble and tremendous consequences and Bertand's screenplay takes it into risky places directions that pay off wonderfully. Like a great genre film should, LA CREME is about more than what its premise implies - the ease in which people give in to power and celebrity - but also about how we all give in to illusion to make ourselves feel more important. This is not to say that LA CREME is a serious dissertation on this topic, because it's also one god damn funny movie, briskly paced (Bertand is one of France's top editors, here making his feature directorial debut) with barely a single wasted moment. He's helped immeasurably by a terrific cast; the wonderful Legeay makes for a perfect everyman, with top-notch support from Abraham, Marie-Anne Pauly as Leagay's wife, and an amusingly deadpan Rachid Moutsafy as a straight-laced cop who damn near steals the show. OK, I'm sure you guys get it that I really, really like this one, so expect to see me in at least one screening and if you like it, make sure to vote for it in this year's Next Wave competition, because it deserves to become a breakout hit. To me, LA CREME is this year's TIMECRIMES. (Matthew Kiernan) This film is sponsored by Room Service Vintage.

A lonesome, elderly ventriloquist is plagued by his ugly reality and his lil' wooden friend in this unexpectedly comic view of people at the very last rung of society's ladder.

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)