Second Wave of Films announced for FANTASTIC FEST 2011

29 more days to go until Fantastic Fest 2011 takes over Austin Texas!  I cannot wait.  17 more films were announced late last week.  Only one of those 17 films was on our “Film Guestimation” list for Fantastic Fest 2011.  They still have yet to announce Opening & Closing films along with other Gala screenings so hopefully we won’t look like total fools.  All we need is maybe half of our films that we listed to show up.  Anyway, beyond the break, you can check out what is playing.

Apparently, more films will be announced this week.  We will try to get those out as soon as we hear about it.

EVENTS & CONTESTS

100 BEST KILLS

One of the greatest long-running traditions of Fantastic Fest is the 100 BEST KILLS PARTY, where we sit in a theater together and turn the spotlight on the Grim Reaper of movieland as he disembowels, detonates and decapitates again and again and again. We’re not watching for character development or thematic resolution or any of that garbage; just the most life-defying acts of human extermination in film history. We need your help to make 2011′s 100 BEST KILLS the most mayhem-congested homicide-fest of all time. Just submit your optimum kills to us and the show’s best murder-slinger will receive 100 DVDs and Blu-rays from Fantastic Fest as well as partners including Blue Underground, Well Go USA, and others. Submission details here – http://www.fantasticfest.com/blog/2011/08/now-accepting-100-best-kills-entries/

FANTASTIC FEST BUMPER CONTEST

It’s that time again! Every year Fantastic Fest hosts a bumper creation where we invite YOU to create the most outrageous video that you can come up with. We use as many entries as we can and put them on screen at the start of each screening. The theme this year is “Altered States” – feel free to interpret that how you wish and go in our bumper any direction you can imagine.  Go here for additional submission rules and deadline – http://www.fantasticfest.com/blog/2011/08/2011-altered-states-bumper-contest/

FEATURE FILM PROGRAMMING

MOVIES ON FIRE: HONG KONG ACTION CLASSICS- presented by AGFA

The amazing Grady Hendrix of the famous New York Asian Film Festival will join us and introduce four surprise 35mm screenings of classic Hong Kong grindhouse gems (most not available on DVD) from Hong Kong’s exploitation heyday of the late 80’s and early 90’s, these movies are cinematic crystal meth: cheap n’crazy, they’ll spoil you for everything else. Designed to play to rowdy audiences who threatened mayhem if they weren’t delivered a dose of gonzo delirium every five minutes, they have a total disregard for three-act structure, Hollywood plotting and the lives of their stuntmen. Get ready to burn!

AARDVARK (2010)
Texas Premiere
Director Kitao Sakurai live in person
Director: Kitao Sakurai, Japan, 80 minutes
Larry (AARDVARK’s blind-since-birth protagonist) has an innate curiosity that lands him smack in the middle of a bizarre criminal underworld replete with mixed martial arts, intrigue, murder and pillow humping.

BLIND (2011)
US Premiere
Director – AHN Sang-hoon, Korea, 111minutes
A blind woman narrowly escapes from the clutches of a serial killer.  When he circles back to get rid of any witnesses, the woman must rely on her other acute senses to identify and outwit the killer.

CALIBRE 9 (2011)
World Premiere
Director Jean-Christian Tassy & Producer Axel Guyot live in person
Director: Jean-Christian Tassy, France, 84 minutes
A city planner becomes strangely linked to a gun possessed by the soul of a dead hooker.

THE CORRIDOR (2010)
US Premiere
Director Evan Kelly live in person!
Director: Evan Kelly, Canada, 100 minutes
Five friends stay in a remote cabin for the weekend and uncover a supernatural anomaly in the woods.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL (2011)
US Premiere
Director Nacho Vigalondo and Producer Nahikari Ipina live in person
Director: Nacho Vigalondo, Spain, 90 minutes
A man wakes in a strange apartment after a long night of drinking. When his unfamiliar bedmate tries to usher him out, they both discover that spaceships are hovering over Madrid.

HEADHUNTERS (2011)
US Premiere
Director: Morten Tyldum, Norway, 100 Minutes
Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie) is good at two things: hiring people and stealing from them. He’ll risk it all when he meets a former mercenary who owns a painting worth millions.

THE INNKEEPERS (2010)
Director Ti West live in person
Director: Ti West, USA, 101 Minutes
Luke and Claire work the desk at a quaint, failing hotel. On their last night, these two amateur ghost-hunters try to capture definitive proof that their workplace is haunted. THE INNKEEPERS kicks off a Ti West retrospective at the Alamo Drafthouse sponsored by the Austin Film Society.

LET THE BULLETS FLY (2010)
Regional Premiere
Director: Jiang Wen, Hong Kong, 132 minutes
The highest grossing domestic Chinese release ever, LET THE BULLETS FLY features the hilarious and bloody antics of a band of thieves traveling by train in this 1920s-set western satire.  Writer/Director Jiang Wen stars opposite screen legend Chow Yun-Fat.

MELANCHOLIA (2011)
Regional Premiere
Director: Lars von Trier, Denmark, 130 minutes
The man who brought us Fantastic Fest hit ANTICHRIST creates a very different type of genre film – an incredibly personal science fiction story about the end of the world.

MICHAEL (2011)
US Premiere
Director: Markus Schleinzer, 96 minutes
Setting the record for the darkest of character studies, Markus Schleinzer’s compelling and surprisingly humorous directorial debut follows five months in the lives of a pedophile and the ten-year-old boy he keeps in the basement.

PASTORELA: A CHRISTMAS PLAY (2011)
World Premiere
Director: Emilio Portes Castro, Mexico, 90 minutes
Fantastic Fest again hosts another untraditional Christmas movie; this time Santa Claus is out and Satan is in. When Chucho (Joaquin Cosio) loses the beloved role of Satan in the town’s Christmas play and tries to reclaim the part, all hell breaks loose and an epic battle between good and evil begins.

PENUMBRA (2011)
World Premiere
Director Adrian Garcia Bogliano and Producer Andrea Quiroz live in person
Director: Adrian Garcia Bogliano and Ramiro Garcia Bogliano Argentina, 85 minutes
A beautiful young woman is trapped in her apartment with a nervous realtor and an expanding cast of unsettling characters in the latest from the director of COLD SWEAT.

SLEEP TIGHT (2011)
US Premiere
Director Jaume Balaguero live in person
Director: Jaume Balaguero, Spain, 102 minutes
The location is familiar (a vertical shaft Barcelona apartment building) but the story is markedly different in Jaume Balaguero’s (REC; REC 2) solo feature debut. Lonely doorman Cesar must do whatever is necessary to keep the neighbors from uncovering his dark, disturbing obsession for his favorite resident Clara.

SNOWMAN’S LAND (2011)
US Premiere
Director: Tomasz Thomson, Germany, 95 minutes
Tomasz Thomson’s SNOWMAN’S LAND is a bleak comedic thriller from Germany about an over-the-hill hit man who gets sent to the remote snow-covered wilderness to handle a job that may be his last.

THE SQUAD (2011)
World Premiere
Director: Jaime Osorio, Columbia, 107 minutes
Haunted by memories of their last mission, a feuding special ops unit is tasked to uncover the mystery of what happened at a desolate military base in this tense and claustrophobic South American thriller.

SUMMERLAND (2010)
North American Premiere
Director: Grimur Hakonarson, Iceland, 85 minutes
Oscar and Lara have an entirely normal family other than the fact that Oscar runs a haunted house in their basement and Lara speaks with elves.

YOU’RE NEXT (2011)
US Premiere
Director Adam Wingard live in person
Director: Adam Wingard, USA, 95 minutes
From the team behind the Fantastic Fest award-winning film A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE, YOU’RE NEXT traps a family inside secluded mansion in the middle of nowhere. Outside the home is a group of animal-masked killers who take a stab at making sure none of them leave alive.

For the latest developments visit the Fantastic Fest Facebook & Twitter.