Indieville : Fantastic Fest 2008

Fantastic Fest 2008: "Ex Drummer."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 22:30:31 GMT

Interesting that at a festival that celebrates visceral cinematic shocks -- the over-the-top splatter of "Tokyo Gore Police" and the "we dare you to walk out" boundary pushing of "Martyrs" and "Deadgirl" -- the two most disturbing films I saw weren't horror at all. The first is "I Think We're Alone Now," and the second Koen Mortier's feature debut "Ex Drummer," which wins the prize for moral decay. It's been compared to "Trainspotting...(read more)

Fantastic Fest 2008: "I Think We're Alone Now."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:42:33 GMT

Like "American Movie" and "Billy the Kid," Sean Donnelly's "I Think We're Alone Now" makes you squirm at its relationships with its subjects and its audience. I wouldn't say that, as a documentary, it's unethical, but it does focus on two people who suffer from unknown degrees of mental illness and, watching it, you have to wonder why they ever agreed to be filmed in the first place. Jeffery Deane Turner and Kelly McCormick are obsessed with, and in the...(read more)

Fantastic Fest 2008: "JCVD."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:42:59 GMT

Centering your film on the tragedy of being famous is a iffy proposition -- it's not a topic to which the majority of the world will relate, and from any normal and honest perspective, the benefits of celebrity far outweigh any downsides. But director Mabrouk El Mechri has as his star the Muscles From Brussels himself, Belgian action icon Jean-Claude Van Damme, a man whose legitimate claims to fame were staked decades back, and who's now a figure of ridicule with a history of cocaine problems...(read more)

Fantastic Fest 2008: "The Substitute."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:44:56 GMT

Paprika Steen, the Danish actress best known for her roles in Dogme films like "Festen," "The Idiots" and "Mifune," is to die for in Ole Bornedal's horror-comedy "The Substitute." Like, she eats someone whole. She plays the forbiddingly named Ulla Harms, a substitute teacher who takes over sixth grade class 6B and whose hair-raisingly cruel instruction technique is augmented by what seem to be the abilities to read minds, balance pencils on their sharpened...(read more)

Fantastic Fest 2008: "Seventh Moon."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 19:03:35 GMT

There was an episode of "The Maury Povich Show" in which people confessed to serious but laughable phobias -- birds, pickles, balloons -- after which, for scientific purposes, you understand, a PA would come out and confront them with their object of terror. As I watched a housewife be chased around a sound stage, shrieking, by an intern wielding a balloon, it occurred to me that the segment was one of the most awesome things I'd ever seen on TV, and also that, in a far-off way, I could...(read more)

Fantastic Fest 2008: Opening Night, "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 02:34:37 GMT

There's incredible (and welcome) cultural whiplash in sneaking away from the middle of the determinedly highbrow New York Film Festival to head to Austin for Fantastic Fest, an event that's most certainly not. Dedicated to horror, sci-fi, fantasy, cult and general genre fare, Fantastic Fest is the brainchild of Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League with support from Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles, with a line-up of international fanboy sprawl that this year includes everything from...(read more)

Zack and Miri go to Austin.

IFC.com - Indie Eye — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:41:20 GMT

I've never been to the Toronto Film Festival. We've traditionally left it the realm of IFC Canada -- but this year I am headed to Fantastic Fest in Austin, and couldn't be more pleased. The country's fiercest genre festival has already announced two waves of films; among the selections the U.S. premieres of "Ong Bak" director Prachya Pinkaew's "Chocolat," meta Muscles from Brussels mockumentary "JCVD" and "Deadgirl." The most recent round...(read more)