Here’s some exciting local news for our readers in our home city of Austin, TX. One of my more praised, but lesser known Sundance 2009 favorites is coming to town — and with it comes writer/director John Krasinski, who you may know as Jim from The Office. The film is Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, based on the David Foster Wallace novel of the same name.

When I reviewed it at Sundance in January of this year, I said that the source material — a favorite book of mine — is on par with Watchmen in its level of difficulty for adaptation. It has long been thought to be a near-impossible work to adapt. And what Krasinski has done with this star-studded affair is nothing short of immaculate, especially for a first time director. It is a fresh new voice telling an ambitious story that delivers dramatic moments that are poignant and deeply affecting, and comedic moments that are true to life.

It’s not the most accessible movie in the world (which I explained in my review), but it is a quality piece of filmmaking. And it’s your chance to do a little meet-and-greet with Krasinski, who will be in attendance for select shows on November 13th and 14th, says the Original Alamo blog. For more information and to buy tickets, head over to the Alamo Drafthouse site.

For more on Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, check out the trailer and official synopsis below.

John Krasinski makes his debut as a screenwriter and director with Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. The film also marks the first big-screen project ever derived from the literary library of the late David Foster Wallace. When her boyfriend leaves her with little explanation, Sara Quinn (Julianne Nicholson) is left looking for answers as to what went wrong. Directing all her energies into her anthropological dissertation, Sara conducts a series of interviews with men in an effort to uncover the secret thoughts that drive their behavior. She thinks she can remedy both her heartache and her academic challenges with a new research project and begins conducting a series of interviews with men. As she records the astonishing and disquieting experiences of various subjects, Sara discovers much more about men and herself than she bargained for. Krasinski also co-stars in this dark comedy.

Related Reading:

• Worth Watching: Brief Interview With Hideous Men Trailer
• Sundance Review: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
• Sundance Preview: Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
• 2009 Sundance Competition Line Up Announced
• John Krasinski’s Directial Debut Could Roll Into Sundance
• This Week In DVD: March 16th
• Breakdown: The 6 Actors on Marvel’s Captain America Wish List
• Kevin Carr’s Weekly Report Card for 12.25.09

If you’re not going to come to Fantastic Fest, you’re only lucky because you’ll still have your eyeballs by the end of the month. We here at FSR on the other hand will definitely lose the damned things along with most of our spinal column and our sanity.

While we can’t prepare for going blind, we can practice losing our minds, so we’re taking a look at the 20 film we’re most excited to see this year at Fantastic Fest. Blood, boobs, gore, nonsensical plots from the Far East, more blood, A.D.D. children’s toys, zombie attacks, strange and unexplained occurrences, and more blood. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It was tough narrowing down the field, and we probably did a crap job of it, but it’s the best we can do when faced with the intensity of a film festival such as this.

Looking forward to seeing you on the other side:

NOTE: CLICK ANY OF THE TITLES BELOW TO READ OUR REVIEWS

Daybreakers

It’s ten years from now and a plague has swept through mankind… only instead of killing us it’s turned 95% of humanity into vampires. The world goes on only now the last humans on Earth have become a primary food source. Ethan Hawke plays a vampire scientist who joins forces with a group of human survivors in the hopes of finding a cure and saving the human species before it’s too late. Michael and Peter Spierig (the writers/directors) have taken the extremely over-done vampire genre and given it an awesome-looking action twist… with a little bit of ethical debate thrown in for good measure. And Hollywood had nothing to do with it. – Rob Hunter

Mandrill

At Fantastic Fest III I saw an incredible film called Mirage Man about a man working as a bouncer who wanted nothing more than to become a super hero. Marko Zaror, the lead, is an amazing martial artist with the fastest kick I have ever seen. But beyond the kick-ass action sequences, this low-budget Chilean superhero flick has so much heart it became one of my absolute favorites of that year. I am therefore ecstatic to see the new Ernesto Diaz Espinoza/Marko Zaror vehicle that has been described as doing for spy films what Mirage Man did for superhero films. Marko will be in attendance, as he was for Mirage Man two years ago, and I am interested to see if he will kick over the top of a man’s head……again. – Brian Salisbury

Bronson

Danish filmmaker (I see a trend) Nicolas Winding Refn switches gears from the shaky camera realism of his drug-themed Pusher trilogy to a gloriously haphazard, allegedly Clockwork Orange-esque biopic of larger-than-life British prisoner Michael Gordon Peterson (aka Charles Bronson). Bronson’s trailer makes the film look like it brings substance back to style-heavy cinema, and rumors of excellence surround Tom Hardy’s method performance as the title character. Even if the film turns out to be lacking on any of these levels, the chaotic stylization and unremitting violence are more than enough to compel me to see Bronson. – Landon Palmer

Solomon Kane

Armed with a rapier and flintlock pistols, Solomon Kane sets out on a mission of pillage and plunder in war-torn North Africa… Okay, stop right there. You had us at flintlock pistols. Director Michael J. Bassett brings to life the story of sword-and-sorcery from the legendary Robert E. Howard, and we’re going to be there. From the looks of things, Solomon Kane is a dark, bloody affair full of action and adventure. And not to sound cliche, but sign me up — dark, dirty and full of death and destruction? That’s why we come to Fantastic Fest in the first place. – Neil Miller

REC 2

I’m still looking for the pants that were scared off of me when I saw REC. Even the American remake, Quarantine, was pretty solid. Now directors Jaume Balaguero and Paca Plaza return with something that promises to be even scarier. The story picks up immediately after the first, so we’re still dealing with the same creepy building, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that the two filmmakers have a few tricks hidden up their sleeves and around some dark corners. – Cole Abaius

Paranormal Activity

Love them or hate them, ’shakey cam’ movies (think Blair Witch) are here to stay. This is actually the second of two such pics at this year’s fest (the other is [Rec]2 (see above)), and both are reportedly shit-your-pants-cry-for-your-mama scary. Paranormal Activity finds a troubled young couple who set up security cameras in an attempt to see what’s happening around their house after they’ve gone to sleep. What they find is an invisible spirit moving things around, crawling under their sheets, and getting a taste of the lady’s thigh meat. Time to call the Realtor… – Rob Hunter

Zombieland

I love zombie movies. If you haven’t gleaned my cinematic taste yet, I’m the type of guy that enjoys B-movies just as much as insightful, arthouse fare. I relish watching cult cinema and I’m very forgiving of less-than-stellar filmmaking when it falls back on unbridled entertainment value; enter Zombieland. Like Shaun of the Dead, this is a horror comedy, which always seems remarkably hard to market to audiences. If it’s too comedic, the hard-core horror fans will pitch a fit over it while if it is too horrific, it will fail to be funny. I think Zombieland’s marketing is spot-on as the trailers suggest a balls-out action film dotted with moments of Harrelson hilarity and undead irony. Woody will actually be in attendance along with various other members of the cast so the Q & A should be a riot. – Brian Salisbury

Fish Story

As with many movies playing at Fantastic Fest, I had heard nothing about Fish Story until I read the synopsis and watched the trailer on the fest’s site. Fish Story concerns a mosaic of interwoven narratives spanning across time and space, centered on a pre-apocalyptic moment in 2012 Tokyo and all thematically based around a 1975 punk song that the film’s title is based off of. So far this movie reads like the Japanese moving image equivalent of a Vonnegut novel, and I’m intrigued to see if the film comes across anywhere near as delightfully absurd as its compelling description. – Landon Palmer

A Town Called Panic

If there’s one thing we look for at Fantastic Fest, it is not only the good, certainly not the bad (because that doesn’t show up there), but also the weird — because the weird can and undoubtedly will appear in the festival line-up. In this year’s weird category, we would like to insert A Town Called Panic. It’s almost impossible to describe — animated in stop-motion with clay models of children’s toys, namely Cowboys, Indians and farmyard animals. It is full of silly jokes and bizarre visuals. It is completely manic and way over the top. It is also Belgian and has a cult following based on a short film from 2001. We are completely sold. Bring on that first screening. – Neil Miller

The Children

One of my biggest pet peeves about movies is the inclusion of children. They are either unbelievable because they survive things they shouldn’t or they are realistic and pose a major liability. A very puntable liability. But The Children looks different – it takes a beloved member of the family and grows a sinister murder inside of him or her. Three families all vacationing in a winter wonderland are confronted with their own offspring turning into blood thirsty killers. I’m gearing up for tiny little hands shoving knives into the torsos of confused, frightened adults. Yes, friends, this time the menace wears OshKosh B’Gosh. – Cole Abaius

Editor’s Note: This list was lovingly put together by the Fantastic Fest Death Squad of Rob Hunter, Brian Salisbury, Neil Miller, Landon Palmer and Cole Abaius. For more information on Fantastic Fest, the films, or the debauchery that will inevitably take place, check out the official website.

Related Reading:

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Trick ‘r Treat is a film of various, entwined Halloween-related vignettes that unfold into one small town’s ultimate nightmare.  Unlike John Carpenter’s Halloween, wherein the eerie holiday serves as merely the setting, Trick ‘r Treat seeks to explore the autumnal celebration as an inevitable, and mythic catalyst for evil and terror.  If you haven’t seen this trailer yet, stop reading these words and click to experience it.

I am terrified of this film, and not because the trailer is uber creepy; nor that I think I will have to sleep with the lights on until Christmas.  I have been waiting to see this film for over two years.  I first became cognizant of its existence in late summer 2007 when it was announced it would play Fantastic Fest III.  I was living in Baton Rouge at the time and Fantastic Fest was to be only my second excursion to the land of cinematic milk and genre honey known as Austin.  But then, as if fate were playing that titular, festive game with me, I was tricked out of seeing it when the film was pulled from the roster.  It got a screening at Butt-Numb-a-thon that year, another Austin film fest of sorts, and then vanished like a ghost into the ether.  It was enough however for every respectable, and even the hack, geek-elite critic to laud it with full fervor.  It was then apparently swallowed by some immeasurable chasm in the Earth’s crust and no one had any idea whether it would ever be seen again.

Advance two years to the “treat” portion of this ordeal as it was nearly simultaneously announced that the film would be released directly to video and would be among the films slated for this year’s Fantastic Fest.  The trailer we present to you, more expansive than any I had seen prior, does little to quench my desire to see it.  But the truth is, with the insane roller-coaster the release of this film has maneuvered, I am terrified by my own anticipation and what it may do to color my enjoyment of it.  Trick-r-Treat now faces the dilemma for me, and I expect many others who have followed its volatile journey, that it cannot fail to be completely spectacular or I will be entirely disappointed with it.

It’s really not fair at all that a small film must shoulder this much hype, and I hope that most people do not have the kind of time to chart horror projects the way I do, but the simple fact is that Trick ‘r Treat’s daunting voyage to release is the stuff of legends.  As such, the film will incur a backlash of horror geek angst if it fails to deliver in even the smallest of areas.   When I see this film at Fantastic Fest, I am going to try with all my might to not expect one of the greatest horror films ever made.  I am going to fight against my expectations and all the hype in order to give Trick ‘r Treat a fair shake.  Until that day, less than two weeks hence, I will keep drooling over the trailer.  Sigh.

Related Reading:

• 31 Days of Horror: Trick ‘r Treat
• Win a Spooky Trick ‘r Treat, er… Treat
• Fantastic Fest Review: Trick ‘r Treat
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• Year in Review: Ten Best Horror Films of 2009
• Brian Cox Considering a Trek to The Lonely Mountain?
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• This Week in Blu-ray: It’s Never to Early to Trick ‘r Treat

ATTENTION AUSTIN REJECTS:

If you’re at all in the loop, you obviously can’t wait for In The Loop. This political satire (a redundant term, to say the least), opens in Austin on August 14th, and is receiving high doses of early critical spooge. It’s a great little film about Britain/US relations and involvement in the Iraq war.

Here’s what you don’t know: In The Loop is based on this fantastic (and also highly critically, and personally, acclaimed) few episodes of a BBC series called “In the Thick of It”. So get hungry, thirsty, and ready to politically rumble. They’re screening these mothers, for freakin’ free, on August 10th and 13th at the Alamo Drafthouse at The Village. 10 PM.

Look, I realize it’s no Wag the Dog starring Willie Nelson, but the Shawshank Redemption is no Red Headed Stranger, either. And don’t act like you’re too busy for the Brits. We’re on to you.

Find out more at the Alamo Drafthouse’s official site: OriginalAlamo.com.

Whaddaya say?

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The Austin Film Festival holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first festival that I covered for FSR. It’s always been an innovative festival that I’ve dug because of its focus on screenwriting and the craft of storytelling. I also plan on covering the hell out of it once it rolls around this year in late October.

And now there may be one more reason to be excited.

Apparently this year’s Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award is going to none other than the narrator from “Arrested Development,” Ron Howard. No touching!

All kidding aside, the guy has spent the last few years trying to erase the good will he earned with Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and about a dozen other films with Dan Brown adaptations. However, the man’s legacy cannot be denied. He’s certainly one of the best storytellers in the business and unafraid to experiment and step outside genre lines. I’m sure anyone would be hard-pressed to think of another working director who has had such critical acclaim while being able to create dramas, character studies, action movies, fantasy epics, comedies and summer blockbusters. Or a working director who’s worked with Tom Hanks as much.

You’ve come a long way, Opie. It’ll be fun to celebrate that fact.

The Austin Film Festival runs from October 22-25 this year, and you can check out more information about it over at their official website.

What do you think?

Related Reading:

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• Arrested Development: Ron Howard Explains the Situation
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I’ve got two questions for our readers that live in Austin. First, what are you wearing? And secondly, what are you doing Wednesday night around, say, 6ish? Wandering around aimlessly near the AT&T Conference Center, asking for loose change and doing your one-man version of “Who’s On First?” for whoever will listen?

Bad idea, friend.

Instead, you should bring yourself inside to listen to veteran filmmaker Kevin Reynolds discuss film, give some advice to budding filmmakers and hopefully explain his eerie attachment to using Kevin Costner in his films. As part of the Austin Film Festival’s Conversations in Film Series, Reynolds will be opening himself up to questions about craft and creativity, followed up by a screening of his debut feature film Fandango – a movie that made me desperately want to go on a college road trip and avoid Vietnam.

It’s all going down on Wednesday, May 13th, at 6:00pm at the AT&T Conference Center down on 1900 University Ave. (the conversation) and 7:30 at the Bob Bullock State History Museum on 1800 Congress (Fandango screening).

How much would you pay for such an event? Exactly $20? Excellent, because that’s the price. If you want to purchase tickets (and I suggest you do so ahead of time to avoid them selling out), you can go to This Website or you can call 1.800.310.3378.

If you just want to go to the screening, it’s $5. Also, there will be sign language interpretation provided for the Conversation with Kevin Reynolds.

So stop drooling all over yourself or foolishly trying to have a nice family dinner – come on down and have a few questions ready for the man who directed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Waterworld, Tristan + Isolde and wrote the screenplay for Red Dawn.

Related Reading:

• Interview: Kevin Reynolds Looks Back at ‘Fandango’
• Culture Warrior: The Paradoxical Importance of Film Festivals
• Anyone Want Their Movie in the Austin Film Festival?
• New Moon Sells More Advanced Tickets Than The Second Coming
• Ron Howard to Be Celebrated for Extraordinary Achievement at Austin Film Fest