Fantastic Fest 3.

Austin's Fantastic Fest opens today for a week-long run and the Chronicle's Marc Savlov has quite a bundle of previews, all unstrung out on the same page:

• A talk with Tim League, "Alamo Drafthouse Cinema bigwig and prime mover" behind the fest, in which he picks a Top 5 must-sees.

• A chat with George A Romero about Diary of the Dead: "There's always a chance there'll be another Dead film as long as I'm still walking. And then after that, maybe I'll come back and do another one."

• Ryan Thiessen's co-directed Five Across the Eyes with Greg Swinson. "This pair of kidhood pals parlayed a whopping $4,000 and a love of the genre into what's probably going to be the only five-cheerleaders-in-Mom's-minivan-meet-hell-on-a-budget feature-length white-knuckler - shot in real time, no less - to snake out of the foothills of Tennessee's Smoky Mountains... ever."

• "Together with his childhood friend Marko Zaror, aka 'the Latin Dragon' (best known stateside as the recipient of the 2004 Stuntman of the Year award for his work doubling the Rock in The Rundown), [Chilean director Ernesto Díaz] Espinoza has helmed two of the most exhilarating martial-arts films ever made: Kiltro and Mirageman."

• "Canadian filmmaker Karim Hussain's third feature film, La Belle Bête, is a thing of immense, rapturous beauty, a dreamlike tale of children, parents, incest, love, and, yes, death, that's as far from the simplistic, retro-cool wave of current film horror as Lucky McKee's May is from Marquis de Sade's Justine."

• "I'm going to go out on a very short limb here and tell you right up front that Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is the most disturbing film you'll see at Fantastic Fest 2007." And Marc Savlov's got a quote from Stephen King to back him up on this.

Also: Wayne Alan Brenner on Shusuke Kaneko's Death Note, which "functions best as a sort of extended trailer for the manga."

Matt Dentler points to Chris Garcia's big juicy preview for the Austin American-Statesman: a bit of history, a lot of quotage, a genre breakdown, a guest list and more gotta-sees.

More sites to keep an eye on through September 27: Ain't It Cool News and Cinema is Dope; the Austin Movie Blog and Slackerwood.

Updates, 9/21: At Twitch, Peter Martin takes in Diary of the Dead, Hell's Fever, Timecrimes and The Ferryman.

"Aachi and Ssipak is the movie my friends and I would have made if you had introduced us to psychedelics before we hit puberty and then put us in charge of an animation studio," writes Wiley Wiggins. "That's not meant as an insult either, it's unrestrained, juvenile, raunchy, violent fun, with some genuinely well choreographed action scenes."

Jette Kernion reviews selected shorts for Cinematical.

Blake Ethridge has a few recommendations.

At the Austin Movie Blog, John DeFore: "The three films of No Borders, No Limits may not be enough to turn Nikkatsu's stable of stars into local celebrities, but maybe it'll whet Austin's appetite for future, non-festival screenings - which one suspects the Alamo would happily book, if they thought a receptive audience was out there."

Jette Kernion's got an opening night entry at Slackerwood with lots of pix.

Updates, 9/23: "So far my annual Funky Forest Award for sheer insanity in asian cult cinema goes to Korean WTF-fest Never Belongs to Me," writes Wiley Wiggins.

At Twitch, Peter Martin has capsule reviews of Moebius Redux: A Life in Pictures, Five Across the Eyes and Flight of the Living Dead.

Watch the Alamo Drafthouse's Henri Mazza chat with George Romero over at Matt Dentler's place.

Jette Kernion reviews more shorts for Cinematical.

More from Peter Martin at Twitch. First, briefly: "Princess immediately engaged me with its storytelling and I was moved rather than offended by the subject matter; Flash Point looks smashing on the big screen and the action sequences more than make up for the dramatic shortfalls; Postal is so funny that it renders critical opinions pointless." And then more extensive notes follow on "the very funny Maiko Haaaan!!! and very challenging Offscreen."

Updates, 9/24: "The Austin audience tonight for Crazy Thunder Road was amazing," writes Blake Ethridge. "For what I guess is basically a college senior project makes for one hell of a nice little punk film that can."

"To say that screenwriter Daniel Waters has had an 'up and down' career would be a very accurate observation," notes Scott Weinberg at Cinematical. "After penning the cult classic comedy that is Heathers he moved on to The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (ugh) and Hudson Hawk (whoa) before earning a credit on the excellent Batman Returns. Then he co-wrote Demolition Man, vanished for eight years, and made a small comeback with an indie comedy called Happy Campers, the movie that marked his directorial debut. So which Waters would show up in Sex and Death 101? Well, let's just say we're not nearly in Heathers territory, but Waters's latest represents his very best work in a very long time."

Peter Martin's latest roundup at Twitch: Uncle's Paradise, "a stew composed entirely of oddball scenes, yet somehow it all hangs together," Wolfhound, "a serious Slavic swords and sorcery epic that's heavy on the slashing blades and light on the fantasy," and Crazy Thunder Road, "another 'Blake Special,' as he's been raving about it since he saw it at a European festival months ago. I hate to feed his ego, but he was absolutely correct about this little-known movie."

Scott Weinberg on Wrong Turn 2: Dead End: "This flick is a whole lot of good, gory fun."

Updates, 9/25: "It may only be year three for Fantastic Fest, Austin's very own premiere fantasy, action, horror, sci-fi festival, but they seem to have ironed out many of the kinks in event planning very quickly," writes Michael Lerman at indieWIRE. "Located all in one central location of the world famous Alamo Drafthouse, Fantastic Fest boasts a myriad of premieres, guests and screenings, not to mention a homey atmosphere that would put any film geek in heaven. Unlike other premiere festivals, Fantastic Fest not only celebrates its cinema, it also celebrates the communal viewing process."

Wiley Wiggins compares and contrasts The Girl Next Door and Offscreen.

Wiley again, with a snappy, to-the-point entry on the Nikkatsu Action Retrospective.

"A Colt is My Passport, the kick-off to the three-film Nikkatsu Action series, was every bit as good as I hoped it would be. It was so good that about halfway through I was thinking how much I wanted to see it again," writes Peter Martin at Twitch. Also: Aachi and Ssipak and The Rug Cop.

"I looked forward to seeing Aachi and Ssipak just for the weirdness factor, and I wasn't disappointed," writes Jette Kernion at Cinematical.

Update, 9/27: Jette Kernion rounds up all of her reviews (so far).

Posted by dwhudson at September 20, 2007 1:35 AM