Yuen Woo Ping hasn't directed a film since 1996, but his groundbreaking fight choreography has been featured in movies like The Matrix, Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This film was picked up by newcomers Indomina Releasing after Fantastic Fest last year and this weekend it becomes their first theatrical release. more ›

There is, quite literally, something for everybody at theaters across Austin this weekend. It's the way it should be all the time, but at the beginning of the year we're not always so fortunate. As we say hello to April, there are almost too many films to choose from, but we're confident that one (or more) of these films will keep you entertained. more ›

Last fall, Kim Jee-woon's I Saw The Devil was one of the secret screenings at Fantastic Fest. It had just played at the Toronto Film Festival and was booked to premiere at Sundance, so the FF screening had to go officially under the radar. It turned out to be the best film we saw that week. more ›

A series of Midnight screenings at this year's SXSW festival are yet again handpicked by the Fantastic Fest staff. An anthology film called Little Deaths from the UK will be making its North American Premiere for SXFantastic. more ›

Fantastic Fest is knocking on the door of being, against all odds, one of the world's most important film festivals. That's not just hometown pride talking -- that shit comes from Variety and Texas Monthly. But there's more to it than just movies, and the recently concluded 2010 edition of the festival was a fine example: In addition to the film portion of the festival, attendees buzzed about the Fantastic Arcade, which featured independent games from around the world at the Highball. Less heralded, however, was the new inclusion of theater as part of the Fantastic Fest program. more ›

The visiting production Nevermore, a new stage work by old Re-Animator collaborators (director Stuart Gordon, writer Dennis Paoli, and star Jeffrey Combs), offers an entrancing glimpse of the talent, ego, folly, and shattering sadness of one of America's most famous writers, Edgar Allan Poe. Staged in an unlikely space (the Alamo Drafthouse) and as part of an unlikely festival (Fantastic Fest, which focuses on film and throwing Austin's coolest parties), Nevermore...An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe enters the second half of its four-night stand in Austin tonight and tomorrow at the Drafthouse on South Lamar. more ›

Legendary Japanese director Takeshi Kitano returns with an ultra-violent yakuza movie. more ›

Wouldn’t it have it been lovely to see Ryan Reynolds and Won Bin compete shirtless in the ring Sunday night during the Fantastic Debates? more ›

When a group of college students decide to cross the border with a group of illegals as part of their thesis film for school, they find themselves held captive by these patriots and forced into filming the horrific activities on the compound—an abandoned cattle slaughterhouse. more ›

Fantastic Fest 2010 is starting to wind down, but for the next four nights, the festival presents an event that makes a unique connection between literature, theater, and the festival's special brand of weird, hard-to-find entertainment. runs Wednesday at 6:15 and Thursday through Saturday at 7 pm. at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar. more ›

Over the weekend, Fantastic Fest hosted the regional premiere of Im Sang-soo's The Housekeeper. Already a box office hit in South Korea, this is a remake of Kim Ki-young’s 1960 classic of the same name, which has been hailed as one of the all-time greatest Korean films and has recently been fully restored with the assistance of Martin Scorsese. more ›

Bedevilled is the debut feature film from Korean director Jang Cheol-so. The Fantastic Fest guide referred to this movie as “art slaughterhouse” and it's difficult to argue with that tag after seeing the absolute chaos that this movie descends into. more ›

• Among the films playing Fantastic Fest is the fantastic stop-motion/ animation mash-up In the Attic about a bunch of Czech toys. The film screens at 6:55 today!
• Texas’ students need protecting’ from a pro-Islam, Anti-Christian version of history…at least according to a guy from the Odessa school board.
• That recent massacre in Tamaulipas might indicate that the drug-gangs in Mexico are expanding their reach into people smuggling. This is not good news.

Here in Austin, the weekend in film will certainly be dominated by Fantastic Fest. We'll have several staff members on hand, filing reviews over the next several days. In addition, there are a few exclusive titles making their way to town this weekend for limited runs that you may want to investigate further. We've got the rundown below. more ›

Nerds, geeks, dweebs. You can call them whatever you want Texas Monthly, but the fact of the matter is that the denziens of Fantastic Fest devotees are not only determining what hits the mutilplexes across the nation, but they are also having more fun than you are, and today the already simmering anticipation for this year's fest has been given an extra shot of heat as the first slate of programming was released. more ›

This French speaking, stop-motion animated feature took home the Audience Award at last year’s Fantastic Fest, where it first won the hearts of Alamo Drafthouse program directors as well. They loved this film and they think you will, too; that’s why they have “jumped through flaming hoops” to bring it back to Austin. more ›

• The New York Times blogs ACL.
• Cat fancier near Waco may have her home torn down because of the smell!
• This 97 year-old dude got a follow-up visit from the real estate lady who’d sold him his house…and she’d sold it to him in 1956! Talk about customer service!

• The seventh annual World Championship Corny Dog Eating Competition has a winner! The State Fair of Texas has everything!
• Slackerwood photo set from Fantastic Fest’s opening-night gala-premiere of “Gentlemen Broncos” at the Paramount Theater. (Scroll down for a great shot of the scruffy’n’hip actor Jemaine Clement from .)
• Apparently, being a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader requires the ability to study. (Not so much if you are an actual Dallas Cowboy!)

This Saturday at the Paramount you can get a sneak peak of Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Apprentice, the much buzzed-about film starring John C. Reilly, William Dafoe, and Salma Hayek, among others. more ›

The third wave of content for Fantastic Fest was recently announced, and it totally rocks. That's especially true if you dig vampires, ninjas and super scary stories about spooky things. We couldn’t be more enthused about the programming if we’d been abducted by an alien ship and had the special "Fantastic Fest souvenir mind control device" implanted in our brains. more ›

Over at the Fantastic Fest website, they've made their second big announcement about what to expect at the Fest this fall, and it looks like zombies and the apocalypse are ruling. Nothing wrong with that. more ›

In a blitz of blood spatter and body counts, the Alamo Drafthouse and Ain't It Cool News today released a portion of the sure-to-be incredible program for the 5th annual Fantastic Fest, which will burn down the South Lamar location in a cinematic firestorm September 24 - October 1, 2009. more ›

"Oh, that's cool," we thought, "Leonard Nimoy showed up for the screening of The Wrath of Khan that the Alamo Drafthouse and Fantastic Fest had set up for last night." We were so naive to think that the Alamo didn't have some subversive trick up its sleeve. Suddenly, our mobile phone exploded as millions of geeks from inside the maroon-swathed walls of the Alamo South Lamar simultaneously flooded the internet with word that, no, Nimoy had not showed up for TWoK, but rather he had shown up with a never-seen-by-pedestrian-eyes print of the soon-to-be classic J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek. more ›

Fantastic Fest and SXSW are having a baby and Woodstock will be relived during SXSW Film 2009. more ›

This Friday is the LAST DAY to get your festival badge at a discounted rate. The Film badge is still the cheapest in the bunch and you get 10 full days of awesomeness. Save yourself some ducats and register today. more ›

Following last night's Fantastic Fest/U.S. premiere of Zack & Miri Make a Porno, the Alamo Drafthouse hosted the final round of their year-long Air Sex Championships. The result was anything but ordinary. more ›

Okay, okay, so you were asleep at the switch, and you forgot to secure a badge for this year's Fantastic Fest (you know, the best genre film festival in the country?). You're right to be upset and ashamed. But don't be too hard on yourself--you can still have a taste of the festival without having a badge! The folks at Fantastic Fest have been thoughtful enough to include some fun events geared towards non-badgies like yourself, and we've rounded up all the info below (in roughly chronological order) for your perusal. more ›

If you didn't snag a Fantastic Fest badge in time (all regular, VIP, and second-half badges are sold out, slowpoke), or if you're just not sure the fest is your cup of tea, you're in luck! This year, the folks at Austin-based B-Side Entertainment have teamed up with America's best genre festival to present Fantastic Fest Online--a chance to watch 11 of this year's official selections for free, over the internet. more ›