What is FANTASTIC FEST' When Is It' Where is it' Will it Rock' Most Egregiously!

Hey folks, Harry here... Austin. For me, it's a movie loving heaven. Take this past weekend. Tim, me and the Alamo Drafthouse's team of badass programmers threw together a Horrorthon with rare as hell prints of killer past horror films - plus with the help of LIONS GATE we got a gorgeous print of THREE EXTREMES which kicked unholy ass on the big screen with phenomenal sound. And then the indie horror film THE ROOST by Ti West that was made on shoe strings and masking tape - but managed to be one helluva entertaining fun horror film that harkened back to an honest to goodness creature feature. And we don't see nearly enough of those for my money. But you combine that up with Bava (SHOCK), Bob Clark (DEATHDREAM) - some Chinese freaky as hell flick called DEVIL FETUS which unleashed 7 hells of kickass on our audience... a film I'd never heard of called DEATH TIMES FIVE that showed a Piranha eating a girl's ass out in a bathtub as 5 kids cheered the fish on. Plus tons of trailers and a helluva good time by all.

Well - for quite some time - in fact - ever since I came back from Sitges a few years ago - I've been droning on about how Austin needed a film festival with a concentrated two-fisted passion for films of the fantastic. Horror - Fantasy - Sci-fi - Animation. In the 1970's, my father started the very first film festival in Austin called THE AUSTIN FANTASY FILMFEST. I long wanted to start it back up again, but it takes a ton of planning and logistical work to pull off a great film fest. Well - parallel to my thinking was Paul Alvarado-Dykstra (aka Robogeek) and Tim McCanlies (director of SECONDHAND LIONS & screenwriter of IRON GIANT). For the past year, they've been ringing each others' ears about the need to do this. Paul began talking to me about it - and the two of them began ringing Tim League (genius behind The Original Alamo Drafthouse). They began to look at the calendar - and began to plan out the early stages of finding the time to dedicate a 3 day window and some screens to this genre-lover's film festival here in Austin, Texas. Why 3 days - well, ideally we'd have a week long to 10 day festival - but - the thought was... We have to begin, and it'll begin with 3 glorious days of the fantastic. Well... 3 days - 4 nights. When? Well, if you were planning a Fantastic Festival which days would you be thinking of, if you were us? That's right. October 6-9th DUDES!

The full on credit for the fest rests on the brows of Paul Alvarado-Dykstra & Tim McCanlies. But - the pulling off of this monstrosity will rest on the mighty shoulders of Tim League and his mighty team of programmers, projectionists and ya know the sweat & blood types! In addition to all of them - you'll have myself & the lead programming genius at SXSW Matt "Mayhem" Dentler. The fest will endeavor to program the coolest new works - plus to find amongst the world's finest unknown filmmakers & known filmmakers... the cool fantastic finds. There will also be a program of the fantastic films of the past. In all - it will rule from Olympus here in the heart of Texas. The Alamo Drafthouse!

Want to learn more? Click over to FANTASTICFEST.com!!! The folks at MilkShakeMedia.Com banged out a fine site for the fest! You gotta a film you want to have be a part of this? The details are there. Want to take part? Volunteer? Sponsor? All this info and a nifty eyeball are waiting for you.

Oh - and very soon - I'll have all the details for the 6th Quentin Tarantino Film Festival - coming... this year! And then... I'll begin to have the details for the 7th Annual BUTT-NUMB-A-THON - the king of em all! Muahahahhaaha! I love getting to write this stuff. Heh. Even better, I love attending all of this! See ya there!