The Screengrab : fantastic fest

Screengrab Review: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

NOTA BENE: My esteemed colleage Scott Von Doviak already reviewed this bad boy when it played at Fantastic Fest, and did a fine job of it. But that was, like, totally a month and a half ago! He might as well have been reviewing that French train movie. So, in the name of second opinions, here we go!

With Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Kevin Smith seems to have set himself two goals: convince people that the raunchy, Seth-Rogen-starring sex comedy isn't by Judd Apatow, and re-establish himself as a scrappy, lovable filmmaker instead of the egomaniacal jerk that half of America loves to hate. The first part is easy -- despite Apatow's near-domination lately of the dudeflick, Smith got there first. The real question is, can he establish that he's a talent to watch out for again after having squandered so much goodwill?

The answer is...yes and no. He starts out with a pretty watertight premise: Rogen and Elizabeth Banks play the kind of platonic roommates that hardly ever exist in real life but are everywhere in movies and TV. They're struggling artist types -- though robbed of the insufferability of that archetype by engaging performances by both actors -- who strike upon the notion of filming a porno movie as a way to get rich quick. (Any resemblance between this plot and the actual economic reality of the porn industry is purely coincidental.) Along the way, this wacky duo discovers that their carnal cash cow may be just the thing to unleash some hidden feelings about each other.

There's a lot to like about Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It's certainly a lot more likable than most of his recent efforts; he's assembled a cast that makes his dialogue sound snappy again instead of contrived. He's hit upon an entertaining plot that lets him generate the usual shitstorm of controversy from the usual bluenoses without seeming too utterly calculating. And while it's certainly not going to win any acclaim as a feminist film, it's certainly the first movie I can recall from him where the lead female character has something more than one dimension. (Judd Apatow, take note.) But in a lot of ways, it's still a Kevin Smith movie: excessively bro-ish, gross when it should be clever and clever when it should be smart, and unable to resist dabbling in gay- and race-based humor while being utterly inept at doing so. Smith has proven that he can be a better filmmaker; now let's see him be a good one.

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Where’s Roddy McDowell When You Need Him?

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, I told you all about my experience watching the restored version of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes at Fantastic Fest, and in the process managed to anger some hardcore Apes fans. Apparently my tone was a bit too cavalier for their liking, and they were particularly offended that I didn’t do a shot-by-shot comparison between the existing version of Conquest and the bloodier, less conciliatory cut that will be released as part of the new Blu-Ray Apes boxed set. As it turns out, I may not have taken the movie seriously enough – but not for the reasons these fans cited. No, it was my skepticism that apes would someday be serving me beer that proves now to be unfounded. Indeed, the events foretold in Conquest – the violent overthrow of human society by an ape revolution – may be mere months away.

Shocking evidence after the jump.

Fantastic Fest Review: “Wild Man of the Navidad”

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Here’s a surefire way to get me to attend a screening of your home-grown, no-budget movie: conceive it as an homage to the grimy backwoods horror classics of the ‘70s and put Bigfoot in it. Make it a Texas Bigfoot movie and I’ll be first in line. (I attended the Texas Bigfoot Conference a few years back, and you can read all about it – I know you saw this coming – in Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema.) That’s more or less what first-time feature filmmakers Justin Meeks and Duane Graves have done (with an assist from original Texas Chain Saw Massacre writer/producer Kim Henkel) in Wild Man of the Navidad.

Sure, you could argue that the Wild Man isn’t technically Bigfoot, but like the “Fouke Monster” of The Legend of Boggy Creek (surely an influence on Meeks and Graves), he’s a big, hairy cousin of our friend Sasquatch. Like Boggy Creek and its other '70s ancestors (including Chain Saw), Wild Man purports to be based on a true story, in this case the journals of rancher Dale S. Rogers of the tiny town of Sublime, Texas. Meeks plays Rogers in the film as a troubled man with a catatonic, wheelchair-bound wife who is cared for (and occasionally molested) by chubby, shirtless Mario (Alex Garcia). After losing his day job, Rogers is forced to open up his family’s land to hunters. This causes a bit of a crisis of conscience, since he knows the Wild Man is out there somewhere (he leaves a skinned rabbit on the back porch each night to placate the creature). Sure enough, those who venture out into the bottoms are later found with their internal organs externalized. Along with the local sheriff, Rogers determines to rid the Navidad of this deadly creature once and for all.

Wild Man is set in the '70s, and in many ways, it’s a masterful recreation of the backwoods horror classics of that era, from the stylized opening credits to the near-flawless production design. (Where did they find those pop-top cans of Lone Star?) The supporting cast members are likewise authentic-looking, right down to their tobacco juice-stained beards, although you wouldn’t call any of them actors. They’re all locals who are pretty much playing themselves, and you won't find any Brandos in the rough here, but at least the accents are right on and you can really believe these guys know how to make a "cactus pussy" (don't ask, just trust me). The design of the Wild Man is also ingenious; instead of the usual suit made of carpet remnants, the creature (or man) is draped in the pelts of animals he's killed, so you don't know what he looks like underneath.

The only thing detracting from the illusion that this is a lost drive-in classic from 1974 is the fact that it was shot on digital video, but unfortunately, that's kind of a big deal. This type of movie should look like it was found in rotting film cans dredged up from the bottom of a swamp, and video doesn't come close to capturing the appropriate texture. The choice is certainly understandable - that's how you get a no-budget movie made these days, after all - but it takes suspension of disbelief to a higher degree of difficulty. Still, if you have a soft spot for the backwoods horror of yesteryear, you'll probably get a kick out of Wild Man.

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Fantastic Fest Review: “Let the Right One In"

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

For a movie I’d never heard of before Fantastic Fest started, Let the Right One In could not have been more overhyped by the time I got to see it. Badgeholders were giving excited testimonials in the Alamo Drafthouse lobby, bloggers were threatening to beat people about the head with broken beer bottles unless they attended the screening, and even the Fantastic Fest representative who introduced the film gushed at embarrassing length about the mind-blowing wondrousness of the movie we were about to see. It’s nice to see the geek crowd expend so much enthusiasm on a low-budget film with subtitles rather than a $200 million superhero epic, but raising expectations to an unrealistic level doesn’t do the movie any favors. At the risk of sounding like the voice of reason, Let the Right One In is a good movie, but a modest one, not the next evolutionary leap forward in cinema.

So what is it? Basically, this Swedish import plays like a Dogme-style coming-of-age movie punctuated by surprising bursts of vampiric activity. Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) is the picked-on kid at school, a quiet, shy, towheaded boy who plays out silent revenge fantasies against his tormenters by stabbing trees in the yard of his apartment complex. He’s doing just that one evening when Eli (Lina Leandersson) appears behind him, seemingly from out of nowhere. She’s the new girl in the complex – she’s pale, a little raggedy, and as Oskar is kind enough to point out, she doesn’t smell so good. He doesn’t know it yet, but that’s because she’s dead, or rather undead (or as she prefers to phrase it, “I live on human blood”).

Tentative steps toward a friendship are taken – Oskar is particularly impressed when Eli manages to solve his Rubik’s Cube – and before long, the two are inseparable. Eli knows, however, that her terrible secret will rip them apart sooner than later. After Oskar strikes back at one of his tormenters during a school outing, the bullies plot their revenge, blissfully unaware that they are picking on the wrong vampire’s friend.

Let the Right One In is a slowly unfolding, intimate drama, except for the scenes where people burst into flames or have their jugulars ripped out of their necks. It works because director Tomas Alfredson has a real gift for staging the carnage in fresh, unexpected ways that don’t rely on elaborate special effects, and because he takes such care at developing the relationship between Oskar and Eli. There are some pacing issues and a couple of dreary patches, but Let the Right One In is worth a look when it’s released on DVD next month. (Please, don’t wait for the inevitable – and just-announced – American remake, to be directed by Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves.)

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Fantastic Fest Review: "Donkey Punch"
Fantastic Fest: "JCVD"

Fantastic Fest Review: “Not Quite Hollywood"

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Granted, I haven’t seen everything, but it’s hard to believe there’s a more outrageously entertaining movie at this year’s Fantastic Fest than Mark Hartley’s “Ozsploitation” documentary Not Quite Hollywood. Virtually the entire history of the Australian film industry from its inception in the early ‘70s to the rise of home video in the late ‘80s is crammed into its 110 minutes, with a decided emphasis on drive-in fare over gauzy period pieces. And what drive-in fare it was – based on the evidence here, the Aussie exploitation movies were faster, cheaper, gorier and downright crazier than their American counterparts.

In the beginning, there was no Australian film industry outside the occasional international production such as Age of Consent with James Mason. With the introduction of the R rating in 1971, all of that changed. It began with lewd and crude sex comedies like The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and the very popular Alvin Purple series, featuring Fosters-swilling Outback yahoos getting it on with large-breasted, very nude women. By the middle of the decade, these movies had given way to action and horror pictures, most of them little-known in America. Aussie Roger Cormans like Brian Trenchard-Smith and Antony I. Ginnane churned out exploitation films with titles like Turkey Shoot, The Man from Hong Kong, Dark Age and Dead-End Drive In.

Apparently there wasn’t much in the way of regulation and oversight in those days; as we learn from interview subjects ranging from Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries to – of course – Quentin Tarantino, the makers of these films had few qualms about staging car crashes on public roads or setting their actors on fire. The stuntmen were up for seemingly anything, as you can see in the trailer below. (The official Not Quite Hollywood site has a number of vintage trailers for these films as well.) As with the Corman factory, a number of “respectable” filmmakers got their starts in Ozploitation, including Simon Wincer, Bruce Beresford and of course, George Miller. A few productions had sufficient budgets to import an American star or two, such as Stacey Keach and Jamie Lee Curtis for Roadgames and (most memorably) Dennis Hopper for Mad Dog Morgan.

Admittedly, this subject matter is right up my alley. As I never fail to remind you, my book Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema (which makes a great Halloween present) deals with the Southern-fried drive-in movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s, so watching Not Quite Hollywood was like stumbling upon a hidden mirror universe of that era. The Aussies even have their own word for redneck – “ocker” – and certainly a fetish for automobile culture to rival our own. (They also have spectacular, desolate locations, great accents and funny words like billabong and didgeridoo, and for these reasons and many others, I plan on catching up on some of these movies by launching a new weekly Ozploitation series here at the Screengrab, starting this Thursday.)

Not Quite Hollywood isn’t perfect – for all its encyclopedic breadth, it barely touches on the Aboriginal actors in Aussie cinema – but it’s a raucous, informative and often very funny roller coaster ride through a neglected time and place in film history.

Fantastic Fest Review: “Donkey Punch”

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Donkey Punch is already notorious for being called “the vilest film I’ve ever seen” by Amanda Platell of London’s Daily Mail. I’m not familiar with Ms. Platell’s work, but having seen Donkey Punch, I can safely say she doesn’t get out much. I doubt it’s even one of the top five “vilest” films playing at Fantastic Fest, even if director Oliver Blackburn proudly announced its provisional NC-17 rating before the screening. The movie clearly intends to shock, but it doesn’t pack much of a…oh no I didn’t.

The first would-be shockeroo is, of course, the title. As our sophisticated readership is no doubt aware, the donkey punch is one of those quasi-mythical sex acts like the Dirty Sanchez or my personal favorite around the holidays, the blumpkin. (And if none of these ring a bell, feel free to google them, although you’ll probably wish you hadn’t.) The general idea vis-a-vis the donkey punch – and I’ll try to put this as delicately as possible – entails a man mounting a woman from behind and, at the brink of orgasm, punching her in the neck in order to achieve what we’ll refer to as a clenching effect. Yes, this act does occur in the movie, and part of the fun – if you can bring yourself to think of it as “fun” – is trying to guess who the eventual participants will be.

The candidates: three lovely young British lasses who look great in bikinis and even better out of them, and four yobs who work as crewmen on a luxury yacht. The guys are varying degrees of loathsome, and the ladies consist of two fun-loving sluts and the recently heartbroken good girl. You won’t need Robert McKee to help you figure out who’ll survive the mess that ensues once the donkey punching goes awry.

Rest assured, there’s plenty of gore and abundant nudity, but that’s true of any number of films playing this festival. Anyone expecting more than a run-of-the-mill Dead Teenager movie out of Donkey Punch – let alone the vilest movie ever – will probably be disappointed. Nice yacht, though.

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Fantastic Fest Review: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"
Fantastic Fest Review: "Surveillance"

Fantastic Fest Review: "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes" - The Unseen Cut

Scott Von Doviak — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 13:00:00 GMT

This is not the first time I've seen Conquest of the Planet of the Apes in a theater. I caught it during its original release, but being five years old, I didn't really pick up on the whole Black Power thing. I was probably just excited to see monkeys running around in jumpsuits and setting people on fire. In fact, that's still about as good as it gets for me, which goes a long way towards explaining why I had so much fun at the Fantastic Fest screening of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes: The Unseen Cut.

Why "unseen"? Well, it seems the first version of the film, which has not been seen in this country since it was test screened back in 1972, was a little too violent and disturbing to earn a PG rating. But as part of the 40th anniversary celebration of the Apes series, 20th Century Fox is releasing a new DVD boxed set containing all five orginal Apes movies in Blu-Ray, including the original version of Conquest complete with the nine minutes of footage that had been trimmed following those test screenings. This is the version that screened at Fantastic Fest.

There are certain drawbacks to watching Conquest in high-definition. The later Apes entries were produced on a considerably lower budget than the original, which means that Roddy McDowell is basically the only actor onscreen who gets the full makeup treatment. It's more obvious now than ever that most of the supporting chimps, gorillas and orangutans are wearing cheap latex masks. But by the time you notice that, you've already had to suspend quite a bit of disbelief. The premise: In the far-off future of 1991, all the dogs and cats have died off from a virus brought back to Earth by the astronauts. Missing their pets, humans adopt cute widdle chimps and such, but the apes prove to be such quick learners, their masters soon retrain them to be servants - or to put it more bluntly, slaves. (Sure, it sounds cruel, but if I could train my lovable li'l chibeagle Maury to fetch me a beer and take out the trash, I'd do it in a heartbeat.)

Unbeknownst to the human government, Ceasar (Roddy McDowell), the son of the chimpanzees who arrived from the future Planet of the Apes in the previous movie, is still alive and living in a circus operated by Armando (Ricardo Montalbon). Sickened by the enslavement of his fellow apes, Ceasar leads an uprising against their human overlords.

This, of course, is a time paradox. If Ceasar's parents had not come back from the future Earth ruled by apes, he would not have been born in the past and thus could not have led the rebellion that caused that planet of apes in the first place. Again, this is something I didn't consider when I was five.

The whole "race war" allegory also flew over my head at the time, though it's inescapable now. That's especially true in this restored version. I can't cite chapter and verse as to the differences between this and the Conquest released in theaters and subsequently on video, but the climactic ape riot is definitely more violent. There's a lot more blood - although it's fakey Technicolor blood - and the shots of gorillas bludgeoning humans to death are greatly extended. The biggest difference is in McDowell's closing speech, which, I am reminded, is just fucking awesome. So awesome I must quote it in its entirety:

"Where there is fire, there is smoke. And in that smoke, from this day forward, my people will crouch, and conspire, and plot, and plan for the inevitable day of Man's downfall - the day when he finally and self-destructively turns his weapons against his own kind. The day of the writing in the sky, when your cities lie buried under radioactive rubble! When the sea is a dead sea, and the land is a wasteland out of which I will lead my people from their captivity! And we will build our own cities, in which there will be no place for humans except to serve our ends! And we shall found our own armies, our own religion, our own dynasty! And that day is upon you NOW!"

Pause. Deep breath. Anyway, you may recall that the theatrical release quickly backs off from this moment. Apparently the test screenings did not go well, so some additional McDowell dialogue was dubbed over the final shot, some crap about "Now we put down our weapons and rise above it all and blah blah blah." Screw that noise. Long live Planet of the Apes!

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Fantastic Fest Review: "Surveillance"

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Surveillance begins in typically Lynchian fashion, with the FBI arriving in a small town beset by violent tragedy. We're a long way from Twin Peaks, however, and this is no David Lynch film. It's the much belated follow-up to Boxing Helena by the Peaks auteur's daughter, Jennifer Lynch, and while it begins as a routine thriller, by the end it has turned into one long sick joke.

The Feds in this case are Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond), taking over for local law enforcement in the investigation of a mass murder on a remote country road. The victims were passengers from three different vehicles: a family in a station wagon, two cops in a patrol car, and a couple of junkies fleeing from a drug deal gone awry. The survivors have all been assembled at the police station and are questioned separately, with Hallaway overseeing it all via surveillance cameras.

Each survivor has something to hide, so nobody is telling the whole truth - except perhaps for the little girl from the station wagon. Bobbi Prescott (Pell James) isn't interested in discussing the drug dealer who expired in her presence, while Officer Bennett (Kent Harper, who co-wrote the screenplay) would prefer not to disclose the full nature of his unorthodox law enforcement methods.

Only those of us in the audience are privy to the whole truth, as the survivors' stories unfold in flashbacks that contradict the testimony being given. At about the halfway point, the movie goes off the deep end - at least it seems that way until the big finale arrives and you realize, "No, now it's really going off the deep end." There's no way to discuss it in depth without revealing some huge spoilers, but if the whole point of Surveillance is to get its viewers thinking, "Dude, this is fucked up!" - well, mission accomplished. If there's a larger point, I'm not sure I want to know what it is.

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Fantastic Fest Review: “JCVD”

Scott Von Doviak — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Baffled. Befuddled. Bewildered. That about sums up my experience watching JCVD, one of the most anticipated movies at this year’s Fantastic Fest. The advance buzz on the film was flush with comparisons to Being John Malkovich, but that’s a reach. Maybe it’s just that I’m not steeped in the minutiae of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s career, or there’s something about the Belgian sensibility that eludes me, but while it certainly has its moments, JCVD mainly left me scratching my head.

Van Damme himself stars as washed-up action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, embroiled in a custody suit in Los Angeles and hard up for cash. It’s been a long time since he headlined a Hollywood movie and now even the low-budget straight-to-DVD action roles are going to Steven Seagal instead. (“He promised to cut off his ponytail.”) Van Damme returns to Brussels, where he’s still regarded as a local hero. While attempting to arrange a wire transfer at the post office, he is taken hostage along with everyone else inside. Capitalizing on a misunderstanding, the real robbers use Van Damme as a front, making the police and his adoring fans believe that it is the action hero who has snapped and taken the hostages.

I guess this is a funny idea, but JCVD isn’t going strictly for laughs. There are moments played for comedy, as when one of the robbers prevails on Van Damme to perform the “kicking a cigarette out of a guy’s mouth” routine. But I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the head of the Muscles from Brussels in more dramatic scenes, such as when his young daughter confesses she’s embarrassed by him. After the screening, I had to check out Van Damme’s Wikipedia page to assess whether the biographical information presented in the film had any basis in reality. It turns out much of it does; the actor had a drug problem in the mid-90s, and his marriage fell apart under allegations of spousal abuse (one area JCVD doesn’t get into, unsurprisingly).

Also per Wikipedia, “In the French-speaking world, Van Damme is well known for the picturesque aphorisms that he delivers on a wide range of topics (personal well-being, ecology, etc.) in a sort of Zen franglais. Most iconic and often quoted was his repeated use of the English word aware during an interview for a French channel, to convey the notion of self-awareness as a key to success.” This sheds some light on the movie’s most bizarre, yet oddly spellbinding sequence, a five-minute monologue Van Damme delivers in one unbroken take midway through the film. It’s a rambling self-examination, surely the most nakedly emotional moment of his career, but it doesn’t co-exist easily with the goofier elements of JCVD. Maybe this experience was therapeutic for him, but the question remains – at least for those of us who have never been fans: Who cares?

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Fantastic Fest Review: “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The tone was set before the Fantastic Fest screening began, as Kevin Smith took the stage and, correctly assessing the prevailing sentiment in the Paramount Theater – “Holy shit, is he fat!” – launched into a scatological monologue about his morbid obesity’s effect on a creaky toilet seat. If his speech scared anyone off, well, they probably had no business being in a theater where a Kevin Smith movie called Zack and Miri Make a Porno was about to unspool.

Rarely has there been a more clear-cut case of truth in advertising. Zack and Miri do indeed make a porno, and that is pretty much the extent of the plot. Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) are employees at a Starbucks-type coffee chain and also roommates, but their relationship is entirely platonic and their combined income isn’t sufficient to keep the lights on and the water running on a consistent basis. They decide to attend their 10 year high school reunion anyway, and are surprised to learn they’ve become viral video stars. Earlier in the day, a kid with a cell phone camera snapped footage of Miri changing clothes in the coffee shop, including a glimpse of her in oversized granny panties and a concluding shot of Zack mooning the camera. Thus a brilliant scheme is born: Why not make a porn movie and use the profits to pay off all the bills?

If you think Kevin Smith would use a premise like this as an excuse to pile up dick jokes like donuts – well then, you are obviously familiar with the work of Kevin Smith. Zack and Miri enlist a cameraman (Jeff Anderson, Randal of the Clerks movies) and a cast, including Smith regular Jason Mewes, Traci Lords, and actual porn star Katie Morgan (you may know her from Phat Ass Tits 4 or Interracial Cum Junkies 3). Their first effort is called Star Whores and features characters named Luke Skyballer and Hung Solo – yes, more Star Wars references, imagine my glee – but when that proves too ambitious, they decide to shoot the down-and-dirty Suck My Cockacinno right in the coffee shop.

Somewhere under all the balls and assholes in Zack and Miri, a heart beats. Zack isn’t thrilled with the idea of Miri having sex with someone else in the movie and vice-versa, and as their own big scene approaches, trepidation builds. Can they still be friends after doing the deed, even if it’s only for a porno? Thanks to the two leads, this question becomes more than just a throw-away. I’m expecting Seth Rogen fatigue to set in any day now, but he and Banks do make an endearing pair, and no one was more surprised than me to end up caring about them in the end. (Heh, heh – I said “in the end.”)

In a way, Kevin Smith has something in common with Tyler Perry. It’s doubtful that either one of them is ever going to progress as a filmmaker, but their loyal fans don’t really care. If you like Kevin Smith movies, this is probably one of the better ones. If you don’t, rest assured Zack and Miri is no quantum leap forward.

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Fantastic Fest Review: “Fanboys”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:00:00 GMT

I think I’ve mentioned this a time or twelve here, but unlike my colleague Andrew Osborne, I don’t have the Star Wars gene. Sure, I loved the movies as a kid – maybe not quite as much as the Planet of the Apes series or anything with Bigfoot in it – but they never became an inextricable part of my life essence and I definitely wasn’t waiting in some smelly tent for Episode I back in 1999. If we’re playing “Star Wars vs. Star Trek,” Kirk, Spock and the gang win out with me every time. So I wouldn’t appear to be part of the target audience for Fanboys, the long-awaited story of four geeks and a gal who take a road trip to Skywalker Ranch in order to be the first to see The Phantom Menace.

Having said that – and despite all the delays, reshoots and controversies over plot points that dogged the movie in recent months – Fanboys proves to be an enjoyable ride for the most part. If you’ve followed the behind-the-scenes machinations, you know the set-up: It is 1998, and lifelong Star Wars geek Linus (Chris Marquette) has terminal cancer. (This is the part the studio didn’t like, but after an outcry from fanboy nation, it is restored.) Along with fellow Force enthusiasts Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel) and estranged best friend Eric (Sam Huntington), Linus sets out in a van to accomplish the one thing he wants to do before he dies: see the long-awaited first prequel to the Star Wars trilogy. (As an aside, and without giving away whether or not he accomplishes his goal – imagine this is your dying wish and the movie in question turns out to be the freakin’ Phantom Menace. Ah well, at least it wasn’t The Clone Wars.) Road trip hijinx galore ensue, including a pit stop in Austin to pick up top secret intel on Lucas’s fortress from Ain’t It Cool News ubergeek Harry Knowles, a night in jail that will have you rethinking your whole approach to prison pooping, and a rumble at a Star Trek convention in Las Vegas. There are cameos galore, including actors from the original trilogy, Seth Rogan in multiple roles and even the Shat himself, William Shatner.

Stylistically, Fanboys is sort of a mesh between the Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow sensibilities (Smith has a cameo and Apatow oversaw the reshoots and enlisted many of his regulars), but its secret weapon is co-screenwriter Ernest Cline, who has absorbed every ounce of nerdy minutiae from the past 30 years and deploys his vast store of useless knowledge for both punchlines and poignancy. Although Fogler still strikes me as a poor man’s Jack Black, the core cast is engaging, particularly Kristen Bell as the one girl who’ll put up with the geeks.

My main problem with Fanboys is that I wish it had actually been made ten years ago (as per Cline’s original plan), before geek culture became so pervasive and satisfied with itself. After another decade's worth of prequels, merchandising and ubiquitous references, I don't care if I never hear about Yoda, Chewie or Ewoks ever again. In a way, though, that's beside the point. Star Wars is the secret language of these characters – the way they always communicated. In that respect, it's no different than if the movie had been about, say, terminally ill Cubs fans taking a trip to see their team win their first World Series in 100 years – they'd just talk about Ernie Banks and “Let’s play two” instead of Darth Vader and “May the Force be with you.” The story is really about the friendship, the journey and the laughs along the way, and on that level it works even if you don't give a shit whether or not Greedo shot first.

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The Rep Report (September 18--25)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:30:00 GMT

AUSTIN, TEXAS: This year's Fantastic Fest, a hearty wallow in horror, sci-fi, martial arts, and other forms of genre mania, kicks off today and runs through the 28th. This year's line-up of feature films include Tokyo!, an omnibus film featuring segments directed by Michel Gondy, Bong Joon-Ho, and Leos Carax; boundary-pushing shockers ranging from the infamous Deadgirl (which tested the limits of the Toronto Film Festival's Midnight Madness venue) to the lovable Jack Brooks Monster Slayer, starring Robert Englund; Your Name Here, a sci-fi fantasy starring Bill Pullman as a fictionalized version of Philip K. Dick; and documentaries on gimmickmeister William Castle, the renegade roots of the Australian film scene, and the efforts of a 12-year-old filmmaker named Emily Hagins to craft her own zombie flick. Local coverage of the event kicks off in earnest with Austin Chronicle reporter Joe O'Connell's visit with the talent behind the homegrown Bigfoot movie Wild Man of the Navidad.

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA: The 11th Annual Antimatter Film Festival kicks off tomorrow and runs through September 27. The aritstically ambitious festival has long been established as perhaps the biggest showcase for short films in North America; this year marks a sort of breakthrough for the degree to which they've stepped up their list of features, but a glance at the crowded schedule their dedication to the underappreciated world of short cinema remains heroically undiminished.

Fantastic Fest Online

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

So you can’t make it down to Austin for Fantastic Fest this weekend? (In case you’re unaware, Fantastic Fest is the Alamo Drafthouse’s annual film festival “featuring the best in new science-fiction, fantasy, horror, animation, crime, Asian, and all around badass cinema.” Be sure to check the Screengrab for reviews, starting later this week.) Fret not – from now through September 20th you can get a taste of the fare that will be on offer, as five features and five shorts from the lineup will be available for viewing online.

The only catch is that you must be a member of the BSide community in order to log in and view the films. I don’t really know what that is, honestly, but apparently it’s free and easy to join. Among the films made available online (“in beautiful high-resolution for those with blazing speed”) are Doctor Infierno, a Spanish film in which a “demented gynecologist discovers a cure for all the world’s illnesses and uses it as leverage to become sole dictator of the earth,” South of Heaven, “a wholly unique and darkly comic id-ride through some of the more questionable corners of the human condition,” and I Think We’re Alone Now, a “fascinating and deeply disturbing documentary” about obsessed Tiffany fans.

Here’s the link. And if you are going to be in Austin for Fantastic Fest, be sure to buy your friendly neighborhood Screengrabber a beer.

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Fantastic Fest Lineup Announced, Donkey Punching to Commence

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:30:00 GMT

It has come to my attention that there are those living outside the Austin area who grow weary of hearing and reading about the enchanted wonders of America’s greatest movie theater, the Alamo Drafthouse. Such individuals should avoid this post, which concerns the slate of “the strangest, the most heart-pounding and the most challenging new genre films” scheduled for the 2008 Fantastic Fest, to be held at said Drafthouse from September 18-25. Here are a few highlights:

JCVD – Jean-Claude Van Damme enters the Shatner phase of his career as he “portrays an aging action star whose career in Hollywood is all but washed up. Returning to his homeland in Brussels, he lands in the middle of a bank heist and may have to actually save the day.”

I Think We’re Alone Now – There’s no shortage of horror movies scheduled for this year’s festival, but this one may be the most terrifying of all. “This fascinating and deeply disturbing documentary takes you deep into the worlds and obsessions of Kelly McCormick and Jeffery Deane Turner, who have been separately stalking 80s pop icon Tiffany for nearly 20 years.”

Feast 2 – Certainly the first sequel spawned by Project Greenlight – unless there’s a Return to Shaker Heights I’m unaware of – this John Gulager opus picks up the morning after the original. “There are more monsters and they are even angrier/hungrier,” as if you couldn’t guess.

Donkey Punch – Described as “the vilest movie ever made,” this Brit-flick named after a sexual act I won’t begin to describe concerns sexy young people “hanging out on a ‘borrowed’ yacht for a day of drugs, debauchery, and ultimately donkey punching. After a particularly jarring donkey punch in a group sex orgy, the girls on the boat realize that maybe they can't trust the guys they just met in a nightclub after all.” The first screening will be followed by the “potentially inappropriate” Donkey Punch Boat Party on Lady Bird Lake. And here we always figured LBJ for a Dirty Sanchez man.

Check out the full schedule at the Fantastic Fest site.

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