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Festival Reports

B-Side Teams With Sundance: Genius!

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:32:00 EST

Filed under: Festival Reports

To anyone who's ever attended Slamdance, AFI Fest, Silverdocs, Fantastic Fest, or any number of great film festivals, B-Side is a gift from the heavens. It's a remarkably user-friendly website that creates scheduling and ticketing services for well over 200 festivals around the world ... and now they're headed to Park City. This is a big leap for the B-Side boys, not because they haven't dealt with large and excellent fests before, but c'mon ... this is Sundance. She's a biggie.

To get a taste of what B-Side is like, check out the set-up they put together for the Santa Fe Film Festival. Now imagine that for Sundance! Congrats to our friends at B-Side, because I'm sure they've yearned to take on Sundance for a while now. Based on my rather thorough experiences with both Sundance and B-Side, this marriage makes me very happy indeed. If ever there was a festival that could benefit from B-Side's 'Festival Genius' application, it's Sundance. Next stop, Toronto!

Read more on the new partnership right here.

Denver Film Festival: I've Seen 'Troll 2' and Lived

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:03:00 EST

Filed under: Horror, Festival Reports, Fandom

When I was writing the short-lived Horror Virgin series for Horror Squad, I received a lot of messages asking me if I had Troll 2 scheduled as part of my education. I would constantly stress to them that the point was for me to watch good horror movies, not bad ones, but it didn't matter. Everyone still thought I should see Troll 2 right after Halloween or Friday the 13th.

Well, I've seen it and I'm glad I waited to see it at a midnight showing with like-minded people instead of sitting at home with a copy. This is the kind of movie that needs to be seen with a crowd and with a couple of drinks in your system because it's really that bad. I don't know if it's the worst movie I've ever seen (the 1986 Trick or Treat comes awfully close, as does Frogs), but it certainly comes very close. There's not one redeeming thing to be found in acting, the directing, the story, the effects, or the soundtrack but it is absolutely hilarious in its madness. It's bewildering how a movie can be so bad, and the description cited in Best Worst Movie as "the kind of movie aliens would make if they came to Earth and tried to imitate human emotions and interaction" is spot on. Yet I'd have to argue that it's as though aliens had the end of seen one movie, and it was Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, and they tried to amend their failures with a homage. Bad move, aliens, as it suggested you should have known better.

Continue reading Denver Film Festival: I've Seen 'Troll 2' and Lived

DFF: An Evening With Ed Harris

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:27:00 EST

Filed under: Festival Reports, Fandom

It's always very strange to see actors out of costume, dropping character, and sitting in front of you for a Q&A. This is especially true of an actor like Ed Harris, who has such a distinctive voice and presence that it's pretty odd to see him begging Kleenex from the audience so he can remove the fingerprints off his latest award. The man who seems so cool and collected in front of the camera (think of A History of Violence, Nixon, Gone Baby Gone, or any film where he's been unflappably tough) admitted that he lacked social skills, and was dreading the dinner to follow because he never knows what to say.

Well, for not knowing what to say, he still managed to be a very entertaining presence for an hour. When asked when he realized he was "pretty good" at acting, he cited an Oklahoma City production of Camelot which had him playing King Arthur. He had no memory of the performance, but has overwhelming memories of the "roar of sound" that occurred at the end. "You spend your whole life trying to get back to that," he admitted. But thanks to that enthusiastic crowd, he knew he was in for the long haul, and couldn't go back. Harris joked about how unlikely his career had been, since "I think my high school said I should be a forest ranger. And that'd be fun. I don't know how you go about becoming one."

Continue reading DFF: An Evening With Ed Harris