This guy on the right is Scott. He graciously allowed my friends and I to invade his boat at Marina del Rey. Scott makes movies. It would behoove you to get to know him while he is still an indie filmmaker. See what is up at Sirena Studios.

As you can tell from the pictures, it is impossible for us not to document our activities to the rest of the world via Twitter and digital photos.

That was a good time. Chilling on a boat, drinking beer, talking movies and games.

Two moments really touched me and filled me with joy:

1. Glen and Marketa winning best song. “Falling Slowly” has haunted me since I saw Once, which was a wonderful film. They came and played here at Stubb’s this past November, but I was out of town.

2. Diablo Cody winning best screenplay.

LINK

9 Lives is a series of 9 loosely connected vignettes about various women. Each vignette is a single, uninterrupted take. Each woman in the film was complex and multi-layered and yet they were just a facet of all women, a different face for a different day.

The men in the film seemed brutish and awkward by comparison, even the most gallant failing to share a plane of equality with any of the female characters.

I was pleased to see Holly Hunter again, nuanced and wonderful. If you need to be reminded of Robin Wright Penn’s acting caliber, this is the film to check out.

The final story, a simple tale of mother and daughter, enacted by Glen Close and Dakota Fanning, cut me to the core. I thought I was observing a simple slice of life, but the reveal, accomplished with the simple rotation of the camera showed me the truth.

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On Thursday Mandy picked me up at the airport. Mandy and Colin were kind enough to let me stay with them at their swanky new loft. I got to meet Hank, their adorable little dog. We got along splendidly and there was much fetching and petting. I went into work and met some of the new people I had only interacted with virtually. I got caught up with my attorneys and hung out with everyone at a lunch party they held for all the December birthdays. After a meeting, I headed out.

I stopped in at Addicted to Comics and dropped off a few copies of House of Whack. Kevin was very encouraging while I was working on the game and I thought it would be great if his store carried the game.

Later on, I had a fantastic dinner with Deborah. She introduced me to High Noon, an excellent steak restaurant in Old Town. They had an upside-down Christmas tree on the ceiling! I got her all caught up with what had been going on in my life since I started participating with Landmark Education.

On Friday I went into work for a bit and then met my friend Halli for lunch at Yasmine’s. We ended up going over to Vivace for some wine and lamenting about love and life. Then Mandy and I went to the ABQ Uptown shopping center so I could get a gift for the gift exchange game at the Christmas party.

The party was at the Hyatt Tamaya resort. I’d been there a couple times before. It is pretty swank. There was an open bar and I indulged in a Grand Marnier and taught the bartender how to make a Dirty Girl Scout. There were Dirty Girl Scouts all around! After a ridiculously good meal, we played the gift exchange game. My contribution, the Transformers DVD, was fought over with great ferocity. I ended up with the movie Smoking Aces, but I didin’t realize it was the full screen version until it was too late! Then we played House of Whack! It was interesting to see how non-gamers responded to the game. They came up with some pretty amusing rules. Then I went to bed in a big clean bed with lots of pillows.

I woke up Saturday morning to discover that I was in a strange hotel bed! I grabbed breakfast at IHOP and then headed over to Tall Tales Comics. This was the other store in town that helped me out with HoW. Jeff was enthusiastic about carrying the game, but he feared they were going to discontinue board games in January. So all you ABQ peeps go buy the game soon!

I hung out at Mandy and Colin’s pad for a while before going to meet Jaimi at Copper Lounge. Jaimi is someone I met through random circumstances. I actually first met her when she was visiting Austin and I invited her and her friends over for drinks with my friends (after several hours of Rock Band!). Jaimi is gorgeous and fantastic, but is currently going through a difficult time. Not the best time for some strange guy to be making eyes at you! We had some drinks and a great conversation about hope and Joan Jett.

Saturday night was my birthday party at Terran and Susan’s. A bunch of people showed up and we had great food and wine. There was also cake and the cake was not a lie! I loved seeing everyone again and getting caught up with people’s lives. We also played House of Whack later. Beware Terran’s might Dragon Spear! Fortunately, he did not unleash Ape Sex on any of the players.

Sunday afternoon found me back at Terran and Susan’s where I reprised my role as Titus Pinkerton in Terran’s Victorian Horror game. It seems that since I last played, Titus had joined forces with the evil Baroness who was bent on summoning tentacled evil from beyond space and time. He even got to have a mad scientist lab in the basement of her manor! I had conspired with Terran a few weeks before my arrival, coming up with clever traps for the players. During the final conflict, Titus burst onto the scene with a steampunk tank!

I then caught a late dinner with my friends Bob and Sari. We went to Taj Mahal! Yum! We discussed the writer’s strike and the impact on our favorite shows.

Monday was my birthday! Dave called me up in the morning so he could be the first person to sing happy birthday to me. I had a birthday breakfast at Flying Star with Mandy and then went into work. Mandy picked me up again for lunch and, after realizing some ancient Japanese tradition mandates that all sushi restaurants must close for two hours in the middle of the day, went home instead. We had a victorious sushi dinner though! Then I went over to Lesley’s and introduced her and John to the wonderfully bizarre film The American Astronaut. I also helped Lesley get her XBox 360 online and loaded with Carcassonne!

I worked some more on Tuesday and did some more House of Whack deliveries. That afternoon Lesley and I went to see I Am Legend, which was a really great movie. I hadn’t read the book or the graphic novel, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. But I found it well put together and thoughtful. Then we played more Carcassonne!

And on Wednesday, I came back to Austin. Overall, I enjoyed being in Albuquerque again. I didn’t really miss it and it reaffirmed my decision to move to Austin. There is a quiet earthiness to Albuquerque that I miss, though. It isn’t as busy there.

I really like the original novella and the audio drama, and I was a little dubious about how they would stretch the content to fill an entire film. Well, they did it with needless exposition and wooden dialogue.

This is B movie quality, direct to DVD fare. Darabont said he had a $17 million budget, so he embraced the B movie aesthetic. While the creature designs were interesting, the actual CGI execution was poor. I never felt that afraid of the creatures.

There are a few neato moments. There is a scene near the end which is pretty much exactly what I pictured in my head when reading the story. But otherwise, I was pretty bored and annoyed with the dialogue and acting.

Darabont asked us not to spoil the ending, and of course I won’t. But I will go so far to say that it is controversial.

To celebrate, we got to see an advance screening of No Country for Old Men, which I will say right now is the Coen’s masterwork. And, by the way, Javier Bardem is utterly terrifying and I’d book passage to the moon if I knew his character was pursuing me.

Then Quentin Tarantino showed us some old Japanese monster movie from his collection: War of the Gargantuas. He was obviously a bit inebriated and he geeked out for quite some time before getting off the stage. He’s great.

Diary of the Dead – I didn’t actually see this movie as I don’t usually like zombie movies. George Romero was hanging out with the fans afterward and he seemed like a cool guy. Diary was not part of his “of the Dead” series of movies. It presupposes a world where no zombie movies exist, so when a group of college kids stumbles across a zombie outbreak, they must learn about it the hard way.

Wicked Flowers – Japanese indie film about a group of people trapped in a series of rooms. They have to watch a short play in each room and piece together the answer to a question before a time-released toxin kills them. It’s David Lynch meets “Cube.”

Time Crimes – One of my favorite films of the festival. The world premiere of Nacho Vigalondo’s first film. A clever, tightly constructed, no special effects time travel story in the vein of Primer, but more accessible. Nacho is a really great guy and he hung out for the entire festival. He told me he was very worried that no one would like his movie, but it was a festival favorite.

Aachi and Ssipak – Completely insane Korean anime about a future world where the only fuel left is human feces. Wildly original and hyperviolent.

The Entrance – Awful B movie about a cop who investigates a bunch of criminals drawn into a deadly game by a fallen angel. They actually do the scene where the rookie cop makes the late night call to the detective on the case: “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve been doing some digging on the Internet and there might be something to this demon thing after all!”

Spiral – Genius thriller/black comedy. It’s The Office, but Tim might secretly be a serial killer.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – Satisfying anime tale of a high school girl who discovers she can leap back and forth in time. Not as wondrous as a Miyazaki, but still well done and touching.

Southland Tales – Reviewed elsewhere. It’s growing on me.

Sex and Death 101 – Daniel Waters (Heathers) film about a man who discovers a list of every woman he’s ever had sex with as well as every woman he *will* have sex with until he dies. Very funny black comedy with a slight sci-fi element. Renewed my crush on Winona Ryder. The director and most of the cast were there, drunk out of their minds. Winona thought it was next week and didn’t show up.

Sword Bearer – Long-winded Russian film about a man who can spontaneously eject a sword blade from his palm, a la Wolverine. I was never clear on what the film was trying to be.

Moebius Redux – I was only peripherally aware of Jean Giraud’s art before this movie, but now I’m a fan. He’s the artistic genius behind the visual design of Tron, Alien, The Fifth Element and one of the founders of Heavy Metal magazine. Fantastic documentary which I highly recommend. It has been playing on Canadian and British TV recently.

Retribution – Boring J-Horror crime drama which tries to be so unlike The Grudge, The Ring, etc. that ends up being really ordinary.

The Cold Hour – One of the best sci-fi movies I’ve seen in a while. I won’t say anything about it at all. You need to walk in to this with no information. You will be richly rewarded. This is a must see.

The Orphanage – Guillermo del Toro presented the two first time writer and director of the film. It was a very atmospheric Spanish ghost story which I enjoyed. There was an especially grisly scene in the film which the writer later explained as his message to the American writer’s workshop that suggested they sanitize the film for American audiences. The message was “Fuck off.”

Death Note – I loved the anime and I was pleasantly surprised at the live action adaptation. It definitely shuffled the story around to make it work for the movie. The characters all remained intact, though: Light was an arrogant, evil bastard and L was a semi-autistic genius who ate nothing but sweets. They were showing Death Note 1 & 2 back to back, but I was too sleepy to stay for the second movie.

There Will Be Blood – I didn’t make it into this one, but apparently this was a big movie for some people. I was waiting in line and PT Anderson walked by. Two guys next to me started flipping out. I was relieved that I wasn’t missing Darabont’s the Mist. I even tried to make Anderson into Darabont with a scruffy beard.

And that was my Fantastic Fest experience. I went ahead and bought a VIP ticket for next year (already sold out) so I wouldn’t have to put up with this waiting in line for three hours and not getting in nonsense again.

I waited in line for three hours for Ain’t It Cool News’ first secret screening at Fantastic Fest. I had no idea what I would be seeing. I just squeaked in to the showing, and by some twist of fate found myself sitting in the VIP seats with Richard Kelly and his entourage, about to watch his follow up to Donnie Darko.

This is in no way a review. It is a reaction, my attempt to deal with what I saw. I had only heard the name of the film and had no idea what it was supposed to be about. At first, I thought it was meant to be taken seriously. It was a serious movie being done very badly. But then I considered that it was a farce. So it became a farce done very badly.

Southland Tales stars The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Seann William Scott, Justin Timberlake and a Saturday Night Live reunion party. Everyone has been cast against type, something the director did on purpose.

For the most part, I sat there with my jaw literally open because I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. I’m not talking about a David Lynch flavor of bizarre. I’m talking about a Plan 9 From Outer Space-esque “Did he really just say that?” vibe.

I spent the entire movie thinking that I had just taken a bullet for all of you, for everyone I knew who had not seen it. I was pretty sure I was watching something really bad. But that’s the thing: It’s like it did something to my brain to make me think that maybe it was good. I thought I could give a definite recommendation about it, but I can’t.

If these things intrigue you:

SPOILER ALERT

1. Sarah Michelle Gellar as a porn star
2. A near future Neo-Con nightmare of America
3. An SUV growing an animated dick and fucking the vaginal muffler orifice of another SUV
4. Kevin Smith disguised as a scientist
5. The short dude from the Princess Bride as a transsexual wizard mastermind
6. A rift in the Time-Space continuum which threatens to destroy the 4th dimension
7. John Lovitz as a bloodthirsty racist cop
8. Justin Timberlake as the narrator who quotes from Revelation and then injects himself with an alternate fuel source so he can perform a Killers music video
9. Seann William Scott as the messiah
10. Moby

…then you will have much to love about Southland Tales.

END SPOILERS

When Richard Kelly got up and spoke about the themes and the symbolism in the film, it retroactively made the movie cool. The movie is part IV, V, and VI of the Southland Tales. Parts I, II, and III are each graphic novels, which we all received as we left the theater.

But most people will not get the benefit of the director’s commentary until the DVD and they won’t know to read the graphic novels first. And I’m not sure if what he was talking about was actually up there on the screen.

So I’m still not sure what to tell you. It may be an awful movie or it may be a work of genius.

Right now I’m part of Discovering Austin, a couple wine/coffee/singles Meetup groups, a sushi group, two Landmark groups, and two movie groups. One of the movie groups is the Alamo Drafthouse Fans, which I am an assistant organizer for. That means I get to pick movies, schedule events and get people to come to the Alamo to have a good time!