Back at last year's Fantastic Fest, I was privy to a conversation between Scott Weinberg and screenwriter Marcus Dunstan about the latter's latest project (he'd just done some Saw sequels and was in town for his Feast follow-ups). It was called Midnight Man at the time, and if I could remember what it was about, I'd tell you. (Honest!) I just remember being vaguely psyched for it.*

Well, the film's done now, under a new name of The Collector and accompanied by a bunch of solid buzz from genre sites all over and none other than Alamo Drafthouse head honcho Tim League himself. Thusly, Fantastic Fest and our own Horror Squad have teamed up to bring an early screening of the film to Austin before its July 31st theatrical run.

For more details on this free (!) sneak peek, head on over to Horror Squad.

*"Vaguely psyched!" - Go ahead, put that on the poster.

Mike Dougherty's horror anthology film Trick 'r Treat has been bumped back by Warner Bros. for going on two years now, since its premiere at Austin's Butt-Numb-a-Thon back in December of 2007. We wrote up a piece last December wondering where it was, and we shant need to write one up this December, because not only is TrT scheduled for a home video release in October, but it's working up to a roadshow run starting in July.

According to Bloody Disgusting, the film will hit several genre festivals -- from FanTasia to Fantastic Fest (squee!) -- and hopes to be booked in other theaters along the way. Those who know of any ideal venues to show the film have been encouraged to contact Dougherty himself through either his Twitter account or his MySpace page.

Now, I know several colleagues who loved or at least liked it, though one cautions not to get our hopes up too high. I'm all for keeping expectations in check, but if anything, I'm slightly more for supporting apparently good and genuinely original horror offerings. It's like my equivalent of asking you to prevent forest fires, only instead of forest fires, we're talking Prom Night sequels. Ya dig?

(Trailer's after the jump...)

Since last September, at Fantastic Fest, it became immediately apparent that Repo! The Genetic Opera was due for a cult following, and a successful roadshow run last November and December seemed to confirm as much. I wasn't the biggest fan of Darren Lynn Bousman's goth-rock horror musical at the time, and don't exactly see myself giving it another look any time soon, but when its DVD release hasn't prevented fans from organizing summer screenings with shadow casts far and wide, it's futile to deny that it has at least an audience beyond home video and into the realm of true theatrical cultdom.

Meanwhile, the sheer sloppiness of Tommy Wiseau's infamous The Room has it similarly garnering underground popularity. I settled for seeing it on Cartoon Network when Adult Swim aired it as their idea of an April Fool's joke, and it became much more of a chore to sit through than I could've possibly imagined (and it's not like the constant commercial breaks weren't helping).

Would it have been much better with a crowd? I couldn't say, as the appeal hasn't quite reached Central Florida yet, but I ask: just because a film has reached the ranks of something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, does that mean it truly deserves to? What are your personal criteria for a proper cult classic? What's your fondest memory of audience partici... pation, and what other films do you feel stand to join the ranks of the modern midnight movie that maybe haven't quite crept up on the ol' cultural radar just yet?

Writer-director Rian Johnson burst onto the scene when his high school-set noir riff, Brick, took home the Originality of Vision prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Now, after bouncing around Summit's release slate like the proverbial beach ball, his follow-up -- the romantic, romanticized con man caper, The Brothers Bloom -- is finally receiving a NY/LA bow this Friday before rolling out to more markets in the weeks to come.

Johnson obliged us to do a follow-up interview this week to complement our original chat from last November, and between the two, the filmmaker discusses everything from making the festival rounds and absorbing critical response to the glory of talking monkeys and just where he likes to stick his tea kettle...



Download Part 1 (31 mins.) by clicking here



Download Part 2 (12 mins.) by clicking here

-Score samples by Nathan Johnson, the film's composer and the director's cousin.-

They claim that Seppuku Paradigm did the score for the harsh-as-hell horror flick, Martyrs (now on DVD -- beware the Blockbuster cut!), but I don't remember hearing any music... just Scott Weinberg screaming and squealing and squirming about when we saw it at Fantastic Fest last year. It was pretty much like watching The Love Guru with him all over again.

Well, those handy-dandy fellas over at Twitch say that the film's composers, Alex and Willie Cortés, have made their score for the film freely available online. In fact, their only other score -- for the unseen-by-me sci-fi mystery Eden Log -- has ALSO been made available to all. It's a veritable festivus for soundtrack junkies!

And why? Hell if I can tell, though tempted as one may be to throw around the phrase 'economic generosity' these days, I won't. Maybe these are just two cool guys who made two cool scores that they'd rather have people to listen to than pay for. It's a downright hippie stance, if you ask me, but we'll let it slide this time -- but only because, y'know, it has something to do with movies.

I'll confess to being in the dark as to why certain DVDs don't boast an audio commentary by the filmmakers when they actually want to do one, so while I won't strike out blindly against The Studios for getting in the way, I instead admire those who see fit to give their fans what they want.

Case in point: Following in the footsteps of Darren Aronofsky and The Fountain, director Ben Rock and some of his cast and crew members have come together for a full commentary track, now posted over on Dread Central to accompany this week's release of Alien Raiders. The film -- which, and I think Ben will agree with me, is nothing like The Fountain -- concerns a team of specialists (led by none other than 24's Tony Almeida) who lock down a small-town supermarket for reasons that you may be able to deduce from that title (a title that's frankly more campy than the flick is).

Scott and I both saw this at Fantastic Fest last year, and I don't think it's any great stretch to say that it's probably the best thing put out under the Raw Feed label to date, and given the film's exceedingly tight production schedule, I'm willing to bet that this might make for a pretty informative listen.

And boy does it taste awesome! As you probably know, and with all due respect to the Austin Film Festival, the two coolest film festivals in Austin have combined their cinematical magic ... and the result is six more flicks that will tickle the eyeballs of any self-respecting genre fan. This is the first year that Fantastic Fest has contributed to the SXSW slate, and it sure looks like the partnership is off to a great start.

The six flicks are: French action flick Black, Thai mayhem sequel Ong Bak 2, the world premiere of The Haunting in Connecticut, a blisteringly good Aussie thriller called The Horseman, the awesome-sounding British import Lesbian Vampire Killers, and the Canadian zombie effort Pontypool, which played Toronto last September and got some rather good notices.

Of the six, I've only see The Horseman, and I think it's a damn good film. DAMN good. It's about a father whose runaway daughter is found dead after appearing in a homemade porno flick, so he goes on a ruthless road trip of revenge. Only he didn't expect to pick up a young female hitchhiker along the way. (It's not a comedy.)

For more info on these flicks, I refer you to post-jump and / or the official SXSW website.

Yes, that's a printer on the red carpet for the 10th anniversary screening of Office Space at the Paramount Theatre in Austin on Sunday night. The guys swinging baseball bats are the same ones you saw attacking the printer in the 1999 movie -- Ajay Naidu and David Herman. We like our red carpet scenes lively here in Austin.

Mike Judge, who wrote and directed Office Space (and played the manager at Chotchkie's), appeared at the event with nine other actors who played major characters in the movie -- everyone except Ron Livingston and Jennifer Aniston, essentially. The theater was sold out, and watching Office Space with 1,200 people who've seen it before was amazing and hilarious. Everyone frequently contributed cheers, whoops and applause for certain actors or memorable bits of dialogue ("Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately." "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob.").

This had been hush-hush for a mild while now, but it looks like Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom has been bumped back yet again to next May. Back in September, I had mentioned that the crime caper had moved from October to a NY/LA qualifying run next week and a wide release in January. The difference between that post and this one is that I was fortunate to see the film at Fantastic Fest a couple of months back, and it was good enough to make me equally anxious to just see the film again.

Writer-director Johnson confirmed the rumor on his message board, then joking that his own December birthday had been pushed back by Summit to May, when there are less of them to contend with. All kidding aside, Bloom is now scheduled to bow in limited release on May 15th -- opposite DaVinci Code sequel Angels & Demons and Borat follow-up Bruno -- and then wide on May 29th, up against Sam Raimi's return to horror Drag Me To Hell and Pixar's anticipated-by-default Up.

It's tough competition, to be sure, but believe me (and Eugene, and James) when we say that The Brothers Bloom will be well worth the wait.

Back in September, standing outside of Austin's Paramount Theatre, myself and a couple of others listened to Darren Lynn Bousman as he talked about the challenges he was facing in getting Lionsgate to properly release his Repo! The Genetic Opera. The studio had taken down rave after rave after a select screening several months before, and now the next night's Fantastic Fest screenings were as good a chance as any to prove the film's worth.

Well, I saw the film the following night amidst an impressive turn-out of die-hard fans, so while I may have already made my own thoughts clear, I cannot deny its growing (and all but inevitable) cult following, and it seems that neither can Lionsgate. Following a limited release and successful road tour, Bloody Disgusting reports that each will be expanded in the weeks to come to include the likes of Phoenix, New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, and Houston.

As for everyone else, you can either keep your fingers crossed for a third tour (though Bousman and co-creator Terrance Zdunich may want to see their families for the holidays, who knows) or just wait for the DVD, which will apparently still hits stores in January.