by Steve Dollar Most film festivals are just film festivals. Fantastic Fest is a different beast. The premier American outpost on the global "fantastic cinema" circuit of festivals-devoted to all things action, horror, sci-fi and cult-FF spurts forth like a bottomless fountain of arterial spray for a week every autumn. This mutant brainchild of gonzo exhibitor Tim League and Ain"t It Cool News geek guru Harry Knowles has evolved over the past five years into a singular cinematic freak magnet. What other major American film festival gives its prize for "best film" to something called The Human Centipede? Where else do audience members inquire of a director at the post-screening Q&A (in this case, for Yoshihiro Nishimura"s romantic splatterfest Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl) not details of budget or shooting ratio but: "Is there any body part you have still not weaponized?" (Answer: "Yes. Nose hairs.") And what sane festival director promotes as a late-night party attraction a debate between himself and a filmmaker guest (German exploitation iconoclast Uwe Boll) that ends in a boxing match? Can you imagine the New York Film Festival"s Richard Peña staring down, say, Steven Soderbergh in the squared circle? I think not (eventhough Clooney might be up for it). Of course, it helps that the fest"s host city is Austin, Texas-a.k.a Slackerwood-where League and his wife Karrie run a sprawling mini-empire of drafthouses (theaters that serve beers and bar food while you watch). A town stuffed with thousands of University of Texas students, homegrown auteurs like Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez, and a legacy of pop-culture eccentricism that gave the world the Butthole Surfers, Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson, Austin is the perfect petri dish for Fantastic Fest. To paraphrase League, it"s like a big-ass nacho platter "drizzled in bat-shit crazy syrup".

Posted by: ahillis    Source

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