Screen Rant Invades Fantastic Fest

[Guest writer (and all around cool dude) Kevin Kelly will be covering Fantastic Fest for us - enjoy!]

Have you ever enjoyed a movie while having dinner and beer… at an actual movie theater? That’s the main claim to fame of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse. But if that wasn’t enough, they’ve gone above and beyond by creating special programming that caters to the geek in all of us. Things like quote-alongs with The Big Lebowski and Office Space, outfitting an entire audience with Flint Tropics uniforms for Will Ferrell’s Semi-Pro, and tailoring their menu to match what’s on-screen. For example, right now you can enjoy root beer extract cookies while watching Mike Judge’s Extract.

How do you top all of that? By creating a film festival made entirely for movie geeks. This year marks their fifth annual Fantastic Fest, which was originally conceived by Drafthouse founder Tim League, among others. It’s an eight day celebration of movies that appeal to the geek in all of us, ranging from sci-fi, to horror, to anime, to weirdness from Hong Kong and more. That’s not to say it’s all obscure strange stuff like the four hour Japanese bizarre upskirt movie called Love Exposure – movies like Zombieland, Daybreakers, and Jared Hess’ new film Gentlemen Broncos will all be screening over the next week.

And we’ll be watching. Stay tuned to Screen Rant for all of the weirdness of Fantastic Fest and more as we bring you capsule reviews, photos, and more from what Variety calls “Geek Telluride.” Fantastic Fest officially begins today, so check back tomorrow for a roundup. First on the block tomorrow: First Squad, an animated feature that pits Hitler’s secret occult division of the SS against Russia’s own clandestine magic squad. Only from Japan. We also managed to catch Zombieland last night, and you can look for something on that tomorrow (although Vic will be writing a full review next week). Here’s a preview: “It’s awesome.”