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So it's 4pm on Sunday and Fantastic Fest is drawing to a close.

Day 3, last bit

Last night after I posted I went and saw Dark Hours with Melissa (my girlfriend). This was the first Fantastic Fest movie she's come to - and boy, did I pick the right one. The poster sold it as a "psycho has you and yours trapped in a house in the woods and tortures you" vibe, but that isn't even half the story. I don't want to give away too much, but I definitely feel this will probably be the best movie I will have seen during Fantastic Fest. Smart, well shot, well paced, very intelligent, with an ending that still has me actively thinking about it and wondering "oh, so THAT'S what that meant" well into the next day. There have been several films that I've really enjoyed (Strings, Feast, The Big White, Zathura), but none that have stayed with me i quite this way. The lead actress was compelling, and the whole thing was very intelligent, mature, compelling....and utterly gripping. The symbolism and allegory used throughout was also one it's major high points. I really can't recommend this film highly enough for anyone wanting to see a taut, gripping, intelligent psychological thriller.

But after, that, rather than go see another scary movie, we decided we needed a break, and instead of going to go see Pulse, we decided we needed to go to a Shiny Happy Place and saw the new Wallace & Gromit movie, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit instead. It was fun and cute (claymation bunnies waving are awfully tough to beat) and definitely appealing to the whole family - as adults there were plenty of in-jokes just for us, and for the kids plenty of eye candy too. However, I'd have to say it feels like it has too much of Dreamworks fingerprints on it - a little too much intentional cuteness, and the gags aren't as clever as some of the older stuff from their short films. The cleverness of the sheep, the motorcycle, the chase, the plane, and the robot dog in A Close Shave was smarter and funnier than this movie. I don't read this as a shortcoming of Aardman to do long form work, just that this one seemed to lack the zingy wit of their past work. But still entirely enjoyable.

After that, we were too tired to make it to a midnight movie.

Day Four

So we got up bright and early and just managed to get to Alamo Drafthouse by noon for the Sin City: Recut & Extended showing. Dissapointingly, Rodriguez didn't show, but it was still great that they had it there. They were also showing what looked like standard def video - perhaps this was mastered at standard def and not high def? I saw a lot of aliasing lines, it wasn't as sharp as the theatrical version. In any case, it ran about 2:20 or so in length, not the three hours that it looked to be on the program. There was a little more detail added to all of the stories, and each story ran linearly instead of intermingled with all three. The new stuff that popped out the most to me (after seeing the DVD when it was released and the movie at the Austin premiere earlier this year) was that they filled in some of the blanks in That Yellow Bastard and The Hard Goodbye as to why/how the leads were coerced into admitting guilt for killings that the Roarke clan had committed. Marv in The Hard Goodbye goes home and we meet his Mom, and learn why his pistol is named Gladys (after a nun from school), and we see why Bruce Willis' character is willing to take the rap to protect Nancy (played by Jessica Alba at a later age). Overall good but not stunning - a few new shots to fill in the holes, and nice to see each story play as a standalone, but not a profoundly new experience at all. I'd probably want to have both original and recut in my DVD library.

I've got some work to catch up on, so I'm going to unfortunately skip the Bloodshots screening, but I am hellbent on catching Hostel at 7 as it is supposed to be as gory as gory can be. Let's see if they can out-grim Feast, a tall challenge indeed.

More on Hostel, and hopefully The Birthday (directed by Eugenio, whom I've been hanging out with a bit) later tonight or tomorrow.

-mike