Fantastic Fest: The Seventh Inning Stretch

With the major craziness of the weekend of Fantastic Fest behind us, it's time to look at what films you can--and should--still catch at the festival as of Tuesday afternoon.

 The films are listed in the order of the effort that you should spend on getting to see them:

I should totally call these "Half-Dead Reviews." They aren't proper reviews, just a guide to where you should park yourself during the rest of the festival.

I Declare War: this low budget film with child actors is amazing. Well paced and tight, it feels far fresher than anything else at Fantastic Fest this year! See it now, as it doesn't have distribution. Doubt you'll see it on another big screen in America with the children swearing like they do.

Berberian Sound Studio: Sure, being released onto the Internet  in a couple of weeks, but trust me, if you are into eye candy and atmosphere you want to catch this one on the big screen. This beautifully shot film isn't about the the plot, it's about the creepy sounds and visuals. (If you are a fan of 70's Italian cinema, this should be at the top of your list.) 

The American Scream: A great solid documentary focusing on three families in New England who create their own "Haunted Houses." It's airing on the Chiller network in late October, if you have the Chiller network.

Looking forward to the DIY Wackiness at Fantastic Fest!

Never mind the hella-awful Austin allergy forecast (which features the four icky horsemen of the achoopocalypse riding into town on their microscopic horses) ...but today is the first day of Fantastic Fest, 2012. It's a good thing.

While I'm most certainly looking forward to the films--and maybe even having a Heathers moment with Winona Ryder in the ladies' after Frankenweenie -- I'm super stoked about seeing my friends and seeing the DIY weirdness that always comes out at the festival!

True confession: I'm all about the costumes and the fun to be had at a horror movie festival.

A couple of years ago, the Fantastic Fest opening film was the wee-vampire film Let Me In (2010) the American remake of the amazing Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2009).

Yet the opening night craziness featured not only a children's choir, but dudes dancing in Viking horns, and an oath sworn while drinking a green vial of liquid. This was all nonsense tied to Let Me In in the most tangential ways.

Tim League as a Viking.

Summer Sound is coming up...and I can't help thinking of last year...

This weekend in Liepaja, Latvia is the second Summer Sound festival. I was there last year.

While I've only been to Liepaja twice--once for the Baltic Beach Party and once for Summer Sound-- my impression is that it feels a lot like New Orleans- a port city with a constant party.

Both times I've been to Liepaja, I've stayed at the Fontaine Hotel, which seems lovely overall, but decorated with a rather unique eye for what goes together. (It's also one of the hotels in the world that gives you a feeling that you are in a certain place, rather than swimming around in a world dominated by corporate interests.)

Dude lives at the Fontaine hotel!

While I won't be at the festival this weekend, you can catch acts like Ewert and The Two Dragons, whom I stood in the rain to hear play a set at Summer Sound last year. If you know me, you know that I don't stand in the rain by choice very often!

Since the festival is right on the beach, some of the events are on grass and some are on sand. The beach at Liepaja has some of the nicest sand in the world!

Since I don't enjoy standing outside in the rain, I didn't have a fantastic time at Summer Sound last year.  I can only hope the festival has better weather this year than it did last year!


Below are a selection of pictures from Summer Sound 2011.

In Liepaja, on the way to the festival.

I seem to be taking my husband to the Positivus Festival.

One of the things that surprises me about my life is that I've been to the Positivus music festival in Salacgriva, Latvia more than once. I've written extensively about the festival. I've seen American and European acts there, I've slept (briefly) backstage and I've been out way past the time when the sun came up. (Then again, since the sun comes up around 4 a.m. during the festival, it isn't too hard to stay up past dawn.)

This year my husband Paul Sicard said he wanted to come with me to the festival. I was a bit surprised to hear this.

While @psicard has met plenty of Latvians--and we've had plenty of Latvian houseguests--I'm curious what he may see this year that will strike him as unusual.

While a lot of Americans have passed through the festival as acts, I only know one other American who has gone to Positivus as a plain ol' guest without any official ties to the festival.

Last year at Positivus, I met Tama Carouthers, 25, from New Orleans, who was traveling around Europe when she decided to come to the Positivus Festival.We met just as she was finishing painting her Royksopp fan flag, and was waving it in the air trying to dry the paint.

"It's unique. I love the Latvians, the blond men. It's a beautiful festival, a beautiful vibe, "  Carouthers said.

"This place, it's pretty, its so pretty." Carouthers told me, as I followed her to her tent last summer to stash her newly made Royksopp flag. Along the way we attracted a bit of notice by speaking English with American accents, accents that are still unusual in that part of the world.

Of course, my Kansas-bred, Tallinn-based journalism-professor friend Scott Abel came to the Positivus festival in 2009. Yet since he ended up conducting Moby's Latvian press conference on the fly, I don't think that he counts as a typical festival guest.  Still, I have a vivid memory of walking down to the beach at Positivus with Scott, and drawing a crowd  just because we were speaking American English. We soon went and hid backstage, because it wasn't much fun to be a festival attraction because of our accents.

Praha (Prague) Aug 2, 2011

My brother-in-law is going to Prague for the first time later this month, to do a bit of work for his company. It's his first trip to Eastern Europe. This post is for him.



In August 2011, I had a travel layover in Prague. While the layover has mostly gone the way of the telegraph, the hatbox and the white cotton glove, it still exists, especially when you are trying to get from one out-of-the-way place to another out-of-the-way place. Trying to get to/from the US to Riga, Latvia, one often encounters a layover.

Since I was spending a long afternoon in Prague, my Latvian pal Marija (aka @Swiluma) who used to live in Prague, told me where to go eat in the city.

Knowing that I hadn't been in Prague in over a decade, she sent me on a bus from the airport to the Dejvická metro station (metro line A - green line). Then told me to go 4 stops until Můstek. This is what the stop looks like:




At the metro station, she told me to look for the exit mentioning Stavovské divadlo.

"This will directly lead you to the street, called Provaznická. Just after the exit slightly on right there is a pub Restaurace U Provaznice."

Alas, the Můstek station is HUGE to someone from Austin, Texas who doesn't take the subway very often. I got so very lost looking for the proper exit.* Once I gave up looking for the right exit and just left the station, I got even more lost.

Luckily, it was a beautiful day and I ended up walking around for hours and taking lots of pictures of people taking pictures in this very pretty area of Prague.







Walking around Prague that afternoon, I took pictures of the Prague tourist attractions, and noted that things seem to have cleaned up in a big way since I was there in 2001.**