Hey folks, Harry here... it's strange how I seem to be on a totally different schedule than everybody sending in reports on FANTASTIC FEST - like from this report, the only movie I've seen is the Danish THE SUBSTITUTE which is fucking phenomenal! Just amongst the best. I hate that I had to miss the Bill Pullman stuff - and that I'll have no chance to see any of it, but that's the problem with FANTASTIC FEST, our programmers do way too good of job finding films we all want to see that there's just not enough room to show those 60 features enough times in 8 days, to where I can see them all. Here's the trip that Augustus Gloop has sailed on...
Hi Harry, back with an exciting start to a fourth year of Fantastic Fest coverage. For Day 1, I saw Zack & Miri and Fanboys. Loved both of them. Now it's 5:30 am, and I'm crashing hard. Don't know how I'll manage that 10am screening! For Day 2, I saw the following: The Substitute -------------- This exactly the kind of film I come to Fantastic Fest to see. Smart, funny, and suspenseful, think Teri Garr does "The Faculty". The Substitute is a sci-fi monster feature of the best kind. Not a moment of film was wasted, and the score was superb, but the acting was superlative. I've heard directors complain that child actors can be difficult, and an entire group of them nearly impossible to work with, but these kids all come out looking like seasoned pros. The shining star in this, however, is the substitute teacher, aka Ulla Harm, who can plays super-sweet and then goes to full monster-bitch in the space of a single frame. The dialogue was funny and engaging, especially a moment of double-entendre that left me in stitches. Special effects, used sparsely, are perfect. They add to or illustrate but they are not the point of the film, and it has a good story to back it up. It's always a pleasure to find a film that manages to be scary or suspenseful without resorting to cheap thrills or gore. This might not be recommended for the really young, but I think it would be fine for kids 10-12 and up, while still being a lot of fun for adults. Everyone else who I spoke with loved it, and it seems to have been the favorite for its timeslot. Surveillance ------------ Surveillance follows two FBI agents played by Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman as they interview the survivors of a deadly serial killer attack. This is a film that I think gets better with repeat viewing. It's very slow to get moving, and I feel the pacing was its biggest weakness. It felt like too much time was spent exploring the dynamics between characters in the police station, playing the juris-my-diction game before getting into each of the victim's stories. Once we get into a recounting of events, things get a little more interesting as we're shown what actually happened while the characters tell a sanitized version for the record. Each story leads to the eventual crossroads where they all meet and are attacked, and here we find out what is the real basis of the film, namely that the killer could be one of the characters actually in the police station. Key shots of the attack are kept from the audience in these flashbacks until after the killer is revealed. Unfortunately for me, this felt like a cheap trick. Rather than giving the audience the full attack, showing the killer (in disguise) and hiding information in plain sight, the important information is simply omitted from our record. It wants to make you play a guessing game, but there's just not enough background on the different characters to make it fun. You're guessing it's the Michael Ironside character, because he always plays a badass, or you're guessing it's Bill Pullman, because he's always the good guy and wants to step outside that mold, or it's one of the other characters for similar reasons. The eventual outcome is unsurprising, if only because there's such a small cast of characters. Repeated viewing will allow you to more easily pick up on the nuances of performance and how particular lines of dialogue reveal the outcome, but the initial slow pacing is a large obstacle to a second viewing. Your Name Here -------------- I'm not sure what to say about this one. This could only vaguely be called a biopic of Phillip K Dick. It's more like someone's imagining of how Dick might film his own autobiography. At times I was reminded of "A Beautiful Mind" as the Dick analogue, "William J Frick" (Bill Pullman) suffers maddening drug-induced delusions. Like a Dick novel, it is impossible to tell at times whether you're seeing what's actually happening, or if it's a hallucination. When you reach the point that it's obviously a hallucination, the dialogue is so paranoid-schizophrenic that it's impossible to maintain interest. That is, once you realize just how far over the rainbow the guy has gone, you just want to pull back to reality, because the ride is no longer fun. I think it's a monumental acting achievement for Pullman, and I really don't know how he managed to make this, because just watching it completely exhausted me. Hours of incessant, meaningless, directionless dialogue. This one is recommended for the most avid Phillip K Dick fans, and for the clinically insane. Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds ----------------------- Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow. I SO wanted to love this movie, but I was so disappointed. The original Feast is still one of my favorite Fantastic Features through all four years. The film was tight, fast-paced, funny as shit, and unafraid to break the rules. Feast 2, however really is a sloppy follow up to that. Made for somewhere south of half the budget, Feast 2 failed to recapture the magic of the first. I can't recommend against it, because it is by no means a bad film. It just didn't capture the same energy and feel. Much of this film is set outdoors and in broad daylight, 90% of the kills aren't the monsters (who are significantly less scary this time around) but instead due to bumbling accidents made by the humans themselves. Feast 2 starts with a great premise, namely that the sister of the biker chick from the first one shows up and sets off on a rampage to find out what happened, and get revenge on her killers (or the poor saps who sacrificed her to save themselves). Diane Goldner (Harley Mom) returns as her twin sister 'Biker Queen' and kicks serious ass, leading a T&A squad of Charlie's Hell's Angels. As with the first, each character is introduced with a 'nameplate', but instead of one of the sub-captions that I thought worked so well in the first (along the lines of "This man will be dead in 3 minutes") we get a short intro-video that could have come from You-Tube. Since they largely changed the paradigm in terms of location, monsters, and kills, it would have helped better tie this to the first if they could do without the videos and return to the captions. In fact, that could help shave a few minutes off a slightly bloated film. One of the things that worked best for me in the first film was that a large cast was quickly whittled down, as the kills kept coming at a furious pace. It made for a sense of urgency in the remaining victims, and absolutely NOBODY was safe. It was very likely watching Feast that every single character would eventually die, but that would have been OK, because a feast is exactly what was going on, a feast for the monsters, and a feast of kills for the audience. Feast 2, however plays more like an appetizer at a macrobiotic restaurant. Do not go into this one expecting to see the same kind of film that was Feast. DO go to see it and expect a film that will still entertain and push the boundaries of good taste. -Augustus Gloop
