Fantastic Fest 08.

As of today, Fantastic Fest is off and running through next Thursday in Austin. The first item to mention is Jette Kernion's terrific guide to sources of "Last-Minute News and Info."

"The novice in search of enlightenment studies at the feet of the master," writes Joe O'Connell in the Austin Chronicle. "The wannabe horror filmmaker goes to Kim Henkel. That was exactly the path that led Austin's Duane Graves and Justin Meeks to make The Wild Man of the Navidad [site], a Texas bigfoot tale that arrives in Austin for Fantastic Fest, perhaps its perfect venue."

Updated through 9/24.

And again, Marc Savlov has your guide to the fest's films you can watch right now for free through Sunday, while last week's issue ran the big overall preview.

"Throughout Fantastic Fest, we programmers place little Easter Eggs of goodness and geeky joy." Harry Knowles tells a few secrets at AICN. Also: Massawyrm's must-sees.

Updates, 9/20: Twitch's Fantastic Fest 2008 category is picking up.

Wiley Wiggins is sending capsule reviews from his iPhone.

Updates, 9/21: "[I]ts standout quality remains that it's such a rowdy, jovial and mind-blowingly unceremonious good time, with filmmakers, talent and fans milling around the strip mall-centered headquarters, sipping pints of Shiner Bock during the screenings and taking off for excursions to eat BBQ and shoot skeet," writes IFC's Alison Willmore.

Matt Dentler's got pix.

The Austin Chronicle's Marc Savlov has a fun roundup of the highlights so far.

Updates, 9/22 "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," writes Alison Willmore. "Like, she eats someone whole."

"It would be an exaggeration to suggest that JT Petty's The Burrowers goes miles deeper than the hastily-dug graves that play a central role in its plot, but it's nonetheless one of the more pleasant surprises of Fantastic Fest thus far," writes Karina Longworth at the SpoutBlog. "Beautifully shot and tightly scripted, it's the rare Hollywood genre film (bought and paid for by Lionsgate) that's more concerned with human relationships and behavior than the mysterious supernatural forces that sets the action in motion."

Updates, 9/23: "The ongoing Fantastic Fest has announced this year's winners. The Japanese sci-fi horror Tokyo Gore Police took home the top prize in the AMD Next Wave competition, while the Audience Award went to the much-heralded The Good The Bad and The Weird. Let the Right One In took home the honor of Best Horror Feature." Matthew Odam has the full list at the Austin Movie Blog.

Online listening tip. IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore report on "a rollicking good time."

"It's not hard for one to speculate the causes for Fantastic Fest's monumental amount of growth in the past year," writes Michael Lerman at indieWIRE. "Between the number of distributors that have opened up to releasing genre films and being noted publicly by Variety President Charles Koone as being one of the ten festivals that they love, Austin's premiere genre film expose, perhaps best known for world premiering last year's best picture nominee, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, has certainly broken out of the 'fanboy' shell and caught the attention of the outside world."

Posted by dwhudson at September 18, 2008 12:57 PM