Fantastic Fest begins

For the next few days I'll be posting live updates (so long as my iBook battery and the Alamo Drafthouse's wi-fi connection hold out) from Fantastic Fest, the newest film festival to invade Austin's already film-heavy month of October. (Watch for updates from the Austin Film Festival at the end of the month.) Fantastic Fest was cooked up by a number of local (and not-so-local) film luminaries to soothe an apparent itch for a regional genre film festival. Not that every week at the various Alamo Drafthouses isn't like a miniature genre film fest, but I must admit there is an impressive array of fantasy and sci-fi pictures assembled here, including Strings, Zathura, and Wild Blue Yonder. There's also a sort of "sub-festival" of vintage post-apocalyptic films going on at the Downtown branch of the Alamo, but I doubt I'll make it down there much what with all the action going on at the main festival at the South Lamar location.

First up on the docket: Strings, though I may have to bail out of that early if it seems like the line for Zathura (only one showing of which has a Q&A with Jon Favreau and Peter Billingsley) is going to be a bitch. And somehow I suspect it will be.