Hello my fellow spillious,

Once again I find myself in the greatest genre film festival in the world FANTASTIC FEST. This means I only going to get a few hours of sleep and watch a ludicrous amount of movies. Well let me tell you about my first day at Fantastic Fest

WOOCHI

This Korean wizard movie was a great way to begin the festival. It feels like an old Stephen chow movie. It had the great mix of fantasy with comedy. The premise is about troublemaking wizard named woochi. He comes to the possession of a powerful magical item which evil goblins want take it away from him. The story takes place in two time periods feudal and modern Korea. The actor who plays woochi is really funny and charismatic. He definitely owns the screen every time he appears. The fight sequences are really fun. There is this great fight in the middle of rush hour traffic were the characters are jumping for car to car. They use inventive ways to show all woochi’s different spells. Event thought I like the character of woochi, my favorite characters are the immortal 3 Taoist gods. They behave like the 3 stooges in this movie. Always bumbling around when trying to fight evil. This movie was a great way to start the festival. It definitely pumps me up to continue watching more films.

14 BLADES

This is the first of 3 Donnie yen movies which are playing at the festival. Now you may ask yourself, who is Donnie Yen? Well, let me tell you he is the most bad ass martial artist out there. Is a shame he is not as well know as Jackie Chan or Jet li; he is always displaying a wide mixture of different martial arts style in all the movies he makes.

In 14 blades Donnie Yen plays a general in an elite unit of the Chinese imperial guard in charge of protecting the emperor. He and his unit are frame in a conspiracy to overthrow the emperor. Now he has to go on a roaring rampage of revenge to clear his name

Donnie Yen carries with him everywhere a box which is holds the 14 blades, think of it like Nicholas wolfwood from triguns giant cross. The box is like a giant  Swiss army knife of death. Like a ginsu knives set each blade serves different purpose: Fighting, interrogation, even suicide. He is being chase across the desert by elite assassins.

The movie is shot like a spaghetti western with a mix of more modern shots. The movie is long, but the action makes the movie seems like its moving more swiftly. There is a small moment in the movie were it drags a bit, but I understand they were trying to create more character development. Once this scene is over is back to the neck breaking action. The movie also has a great villain, a female assassin who has this cool whip sword. She moves at the speed of the roadrunner. She also the unique methods of defense were she uses the multiple layers of clothes she is wearing to confuse her enemies.

I give this movie a full price.

LET ME IN

The first movie I had to drive to the paramount theater downtown. Is always a pain trying to find parking, but I really wanted to see this movie.

Tim League, the founder of Fantastic Fest and co-creator fantastic fest, open the proceedings. Curiously, he was dress very conservative, which is unusual when he presents a movie at the paramount. At the end I was proven wrong; Tim took off his suit revealing he was wearing Viking garments underneath. A bunch of FF filmmakers came out dress as Vikings to join Tim league in the singing IMMIGRANT SONG.

After the manly display of Viking prowess, we were given the treat of listening to the Austin Boys Choir. They perform a small sample of the score for Let Me In. These boys have really great voices.

Let me in is a good movie. They basically kept a lot of the pivotal scenes form the original movie. Certain characters of the original movie are minimized or erase from the movie. If you never seen the original you will definitely love this movie. Fans of the original will definitely have problems with how close this movie is to the original. Everyone in the cast gave great performances. The only bad thing about the movie was the CGI. It look like I am legend bad CGI. The vampire looks like bad CGI puppet when she attacks someone. Even with the bad CGI

I give this movie a Full Price

I made it back to the Alamo to watch

CORRIDOR

This is a Swedish thriller about a medical student whose neighbors are making his life a living hell. The movie is trying to be like rear window. He believes a murder has been committed by his next door neighbors. I was hoping the movie would be a transformation of the lead character into a monster. In the end this was not the case it just felt like a man in the wrong place at the wrong time type movie.

I give it a rental

After the screening I made it to the Highball to the 80s theme party. I found myself dancing to some of my favorite new wave songs. The creator of spill Korey Coleman was in attendance doing crazy dance moves on the floor. I stay at the party for a short time; I needed to get my movie fix.

TETSUO: THE BULLETMAN

This is a great way to end the first day of the festival; by watching a mind melting movie. This is definitely not a movie for everyone. If you love movies which give you nightmarish and surreal images, then you will love this movie.

This is the 3^rd Tetsuo movie Japanese filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto. The last Tetsuo movie was made back in 1992, called Tetsuo: the body hammer. You don’t need to have watched the previous Tetsuo to know what is going on in this movie. Each of the Tetsuo movies is self-contained. They all do have the common theme of a character going thru body metamorphosis.

The movie is about an American living in Japan and Married to a Japanese woman. When his young child is killed in a hit and run accident. This causes him to loose his temper, which triggers a transformation on his body were his body begins to be cover in metal. Giant canyons which fire ridiculous amounts of bullets are also growing in his body. He literallys becomes a living weapon.

The movie is shot in a quick cutting documentary style. There are some moments in which the camera is put in some weird angles. It does not bother me; it completely helps the bizarre imagery. The soundtrack helps the atmosphere of the film. Is a very loud techno industrial soundtrack, Mostly Japanese bands, but it does have NIN doing the closing credit music. If you’re a fan of the first movie like you will love this one. It does have a narrative structure, but all those little things which made the first movie awesome are back.

I give this movie a full price as Tsukamoto fan.

This was a great day of Fantastic fest. I got to see a really big wide variety of movies.