Friday, June 29, 2007

2nd Wave of Fantastic Fest Titles Announced

Check out the official Fantastic Fest website for a list of the next round of confirmed shorts and features. We are bouncing with excitement about how the 2007 line-up is shaping up and simply cannot wait to ignite your eyeballs with this volatile Molotov cocktail of films. Plus, off the record, we have confirmations of several truly amazing titles and events that we will not be able to announce until right before the festival. Expect more strange, wonderful and occasionally horrific cinematic treats in the months to come.

Please take a few minutes to scan through the new roster of features and shorts and tell your friends that may not already know: Fantastic Fest is the ONLY place a true movie geek is going to want to be from September 20-27. If you are considering it, you should commit now. First, because there are only a limited number of badges available and we will almost certainly sell out before the festival. Also, as our current badge holders can attest, we have been offering up a vast array of special events that are available exclusively to Fantastic Fest attendees...the Transformers opening night with Robosaurus live, the Eli Roth premiere of Hostel and the Patton Oswalt sneak of Ratatouille to name just a few. We'll have more of these as the summer marches on and to be eligible for tickets, you must be a confirmed Fantastic Fest badge holder.

Below is a brief summary of some of the newly confirmed titles:

Blood, Boobs and Beast: John Paul Kinhart's fascinating documentary on the criminally unsung hero of the video generation, Baltimore gore auteur Don Dohler.

Crazy Thunder Road:
An incredibly rare screening of this legendary sought-after violent punk biker masterpiece from revered filmmaker/brainmelter Sogo Ishii!

Five Across the Eyes: On their way home from a high school football game, five girls accidentally hit a parked car and decide to flee from the scene. As the driver of the damaged SUV begins one terrifying assault after another, the five girls will lose their innocence and possibly their lives in this brutal and shocking thrill ride.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time: Winner: 2007 Japanese Academy Award: Best Animated Film. Jaw-droppingly beautiful animation accentuates this funny, charming story of a vivacious high-school tomboy who inadvertently masters the art of time travel.

La Hora Fria:This fascinating new twist on the sci-fi genre is also loaded with plenty of horror thrills. La Hora Fria has been getting rave reviews on the European Melies Fantasy Film Festival circuit.


La Belle Bete (The Beautiful Beast):
A love triangle between a mother, son and daughter, LA BELLE BETE (THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST) is a dark drama on the themes of jealousy, vanity, emotional incest and, finally, murder.

Offscreen: Winner: Young Cinema Award: 2006 Venice Film Festival. Nicolas Bro reigns supreme in the role of Nicolas Bro – a man intent on making a film about himself. His friend Christoffer Boe lends him a camera and tells him to record everything, a remark which Bro takes a little too literally. If all you know about Danish cinema is Lars Von Trier, prepare yourself for a whole new breed of Danes.

Postal: Uwe Boll live in person! A completely unhinged assault of a movie, touching on terrorism, anger management issues, religious cults, Nazi-conspiracies and full-frontal Dave Foley nudity. Guaranteed to offend.

Spiral: 2006 Fantastic Fest fave Adam Green returns with his new film, a taut, Hitchcockian thriller about a dysfuctional office worker living out a possibly homicidal fantasy alter ego.

Summer Scars: From Last Horror Movie director Julian Richards. When six fourteen year old kids truant school to play in the woods they are befriended by a drifter (Howarth) whose behaviour becomes increasingly abusive. Held hostage in their den they are forced to embrace the dark side of human nature if they are going to survive the ordeal.


Uncle's Paradise:
Terrified of falling asleep, Takashi desperately gulps caffeine drinks and seduces every woman in sight. To heal him, his nephew Haruo must go on a trip to the underworld, guided by giant squid... Imaoka balances the subtle portrayal of human relationships with a crackling firework of feverish Japanese absurdity.

Wolfhound: The scale of the project for Wolfhound is unprecedented in post-Soviet cinema. No previous movie in the fantasy genre has been made in Russia, and certainly nothing based on national culture and history. Wolfhound marks not only the first 'Slavic fantasy' in Russian film production, but also the introduction of a new kind of positive hero.

Zibahkhana (Hell's Ground): A collaboration between Pakistani director Omar Ali Khan and British producer Pete Tombs (author of the "Mondo Macabro" book on international horror cinema), Zibahkhana is the first modern horror film to be shot in Pakistan. In the spirit of the EC horror comics of old, the film tells the story of five teens who get lost on their way to a rock concert, are menaced by flesh eating mutations and then fall into the clutches of a family of backwoods killers.

The next wave of titles will be announce on July 15. Check back again soon!

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