In july we brought you the news that the first wave of programming for Austin’s amazing Fantastic Fest had been announced. Now, we’re delighted to tell you the schedule for the second wave of programming has been released as well.

Most of the second wave films are new to most people but they probably won’t be once the fest is underway. That’s just what happens.

Here’s the list of the new films announced. Expect more announcements, and lots of coverage, in the weeks ahead. Fantastic fest runs from September 22-29 in Austin, TX.

MOVIES ON FIRE: HONG KONG ACTION CLASSICS- presented by AGFA

The amazing Grady Hendrix of the famous New York Asian Film Festival will join us and introduce four surprise 35mm screenings of classic Hong Kong grindhouse gems (most not available on DVD) from Hong Kong’s exploitation heyday of the late 80’s and early 90’s, these movies are cinematic crystal meth: cheap n’crazy, they’ll spoil you for everything else. Designed to play to rowdy audiences who threatened mayhem if they weren’t delivered a dose of gonzo delirium every five minutes, they have a total disregard for three-act structure, Hollywood plotting and the lives of their stuntmen. Get ready to burn!

AARDVARK (2010)
Texas Premiere
Director Kitao Sakurai live in person
Director: Kitao Sakurai, Japan, 80 minutes
Larry (AARDVARK’s blind-since-birth protagonist) has an innate curiosity that lands him smack in the middle of a bizarre criminal underworld replete with mixed martial arts, intrigue, murder and pillow humping.

BLIND (2011)
US Premiere
Director – AHN Sang-hoon, Korea, 111minutes
A blind woman narrowly escapes from the clutches of a serial killer. When he circles back to get rid of any witnesses, the woman must rely on her other acute senses to identify and outwit the killer.

CALIBRE 9 (2011)
World Premiere
Director Jean-Christian Tassy & Producer Axel Guyot live in person
Director: Jean-ChristianTassy, France, 84 minutes
A city planner becomes strangely linked to a gun possessed by the soul of a dead hooker.

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I know what you’re thinking. Comic-Con in San Diego is still coming up next week and we need to get through that so how can you possibly be thinking about another event already? Well, as much as I like Comic-Con, I kinda prefer this other event coming up in Austin.

That event is, of course, the amazing Fantastic Fest, which runs from September 22-29 and showcases some of the most interesting, disturbing and awesome films being made today. On that note, the Fest has just announced its first slate of programming and we’ve got it for you below.

According to the release, the first slate of films “spans the globe from Japan, Belgium, Mexico, Russia, Hong Kong, Korea and of course the USA.” The Fest is “debuting digital restorations of Italian horror classics and a stunning 3D epic with more objects flying in your face than Michael Bay and James Cameron combined.”

Here’s the list of films announced so far. Expect more announcements, and lots of coverage, soon.

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Every once in a while, a spec script comes along and gets made into a movie that completely blows the world of formulaic Hollywood films out of the water. This time around, that film is called Rubber and it’s about a tire named Robert who has the ability to blow people and things up with it’s mind. We know, tires don’t have minds, but that’s just the kind of thinking you’re not allowed to do during this flick.

It was the smash hit at last year’s Fantastic Fest, and now Quentin Dupieux’s twisted tale is finally getting a wide release. Here’s the official synopsis for those who just don’t get it.

RUBBER is the story of Robert, an inanimate tire that has been abandoned in the desert, and suddenly and inexplicably comes to life. As Robert roams the bleak landscape, he discovers that he possesses terrifying telepathic powers that give him the ability to destroy anything he wishes without having to move.

At first content to prey on small desert creatures and various discarded objects, his attention soon turns to humans, especially a beautiful and mysterious woman who crosses his path. Leaving a swath of destruction across the desert landscape, Robert becomes a chaotic force to be reckoned with, and truly a movie villain for the ages. Directed by legendary electro musician Quentin Dupieux (Steak, Nonfilm), aka Mr. Oizo, RUBBER is a smart, funny and wholly original tribute to the cinematic concept of no reason.

Needless to say, this flick is going to be a weird one. But don’t take our word for it, check out the trailer after the jump and catch Rubber in theaters on April 1st.

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Edward Norton’s latest film Stone opens nationwide today.  The film was one of the featured Gala screenings at Fantastic Fest last month and you can check out our review of the film right here. We got a chance to sit down with Norton and some other film journalists for  a round-table discussion of the film during that time.

In the movie, Edward Norton plays Stone, a man serving a prison term for arson.  He is going through a series of interviews with a parole officer (Robert De Niro) who is responsible for determining whether or not Stone should be eligible for parole.  Milla Jovovich and Frances Conroy co-star.

Round table: I feel that if a different actor had played the character [of Stone] with the cornrows, and the profane language, that it might have come across as a stunt. Could you articulate how you bring a character to life without falling into any traps like that?

Edward Norton: (laughing) I don’t think I can.  John Curran and I were on the fence about many aspects of the character, but then I met a couple of guys in this prison north of Detroit.  I was really having a hard time figuring out what I felt the specifics of Stone should be.

I got John’s themes and his sense of these characters crossing each other on their path,  in a way, but I didn’t know what we were channeling it through in terms of the character.

Less than a week before we started, I happened to meet a guy I was  hypnotized by and  I had John come over and meet him.  Then we walked out and John was like,”If you can get anything like that, that would be amazing.”  I ended up miming a couple of people in particular, but that look and voice were one guy in particular.

The character, the thing about him,  is that superficially he doesn’t  look or seem like he would  be a strong candidate for a spiritual transformation.  But the thing I think anchored it for me is that the things he is saying are really at odds with that  sort of presentation that you sort of could laugh at or dismiss.

Mainly because his anxiety is so real, and I think the way you can take something so audacious and ground it is if you are not being condescending to the character. His anxiety and desperation are very real, and his conviction that he deserves to be listened to and he deserves to be reconsidered is real.  You’re going to have to look at him from different angles and he is going to be hard to reduce.

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I shudder to think that I almost didn’t go see this film.  The press screening was early in the morning, it was a purported 2 and 1/2 hours long, it was subtitled, and I just didn’t know if I had the stamina that day, as I had four other films lined up.  It ends up that this is my favorite film of the entire festival, and I would go so far as to say it is a masterpiece on its own accord, not just within horror circles.

Director Kim Ji-Woon  has quickly differentiated himself from the pack of talented South Korean directors with exceptional genre films like A Tale of Two Sisters and The Good, the Bad, the Weird.  Here he ups his game with an epic tale featuring one of the most chilling serial killers I have ever seen in a film.

On a snowy night, beautiful Joo-Yun (Oh San-Ha) gets a flat tire on her way home, and is stranded by the side of the road.  A man approaches her vehicle and adamantly insists on helping her.  After she declines his offer of help, he savagely attacks her by breaking out the car window.  She is dragged from her car, leaving a trail of blood across the top of the crisp white snow.

The film wastes no time bringing on the horrific visuals, as poor Joo-Yun is systematically tortured and brutally killed in a nondescript building lined with plastic tarps. Her tormentor is Kyeong-Cheol ( Choi Min-sik), who we come to find out has murdered a lot of people.

The murderer has made the grave error of messing with the wrong woman, though.  She was engaged to federal agent Dae-hoon (Lee Byung-hun), who vows he will hunt down whoever butchered her, and exact a terrible revenge.

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Primal made its North American debut at Fantastic Fest, and was one of four movies featured by IFC Midnight.  The film is available on IFC On Demand until December 22.

In the film six friends are on a trip exploring ancient cave paintings.  Mel (Krew Boylan) decides to take a skinny dip, and becomes “infected” with an ancient entity.  Bad things ensue as the pals quickly realize it is kill (Mel) or be killed.  Primal is a genre bending movie that always has its tongue firmly planted in cheek.

We got to sit down with director Josh Reed and stars Krew Boylan and Wil Traval during the festival for an exclusive interview.

The Flickcast: Josh, you directed the movie, did you write it as well?

Josh Reed: I wrote it from a story that Nigel (one of the producers) and I wrote.

TF: How did you guys come up with the concept?  Did you draw on anything for inspiration?  To me, there were some obvious nods to Cabin Fever, did you guys see that movie?

Krew Boylan: I haven’t seen that.

JR: I hadn’t seen it before, but I have seen it. I’ve seen and really like Cabin Fever, but we’d actually written the initial story, but I hadn’t written the script before I saw Cabin Fever.

TF: So did you have any Australian movies that served as influences?

JR: No, not really.

TF: Well, you have the whole “the water is infected” plot device.

JR: I mean, there were definitely a lot of films that influenced that film, but that specific idea of the water hole becoming infected was more a result of wanting to get that young group of people out camping, and just having fun and messing around and stuff.

Then you have an aspect of things going pear-shaped on a specific one of them, and I guess it gave us a device that we could use later to reinfect another one. It was more that it worked as a really good device for the story. It wasn’t based on any legend or anything in Australia.

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Last week, we ran a review of Corridor, a movie that  played at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX.  It was a nifty, minimalist throw-back to Hitchcock, and the entire movie hinges on the performance of Emil Johnsen, who plays paranoid medical student Frank.

Without his convincing performance, the movie would not be as compelling. We had a chance to sit down with Emil for a one on one interview at Fantastic Fest to talk about the film, his role and what he’s up to next.

The Flickcast: When I came in from the airport for Fantastic Fest, I shared a shuttle with Jonah Storm (the director of Corridor). He said he had a project here, and I told him I would check it out.  You never know how things are going to turn out, and I just saw the movie, and it was really good. Congratulations, very cool.

So, how did you come onto this project? Did you know the directors?

Emil Johnsen: Well, the thing is, yeah.  I went to theater school at the theater academy in Sweden the same time that they were going to the film academy, so me and Jonah Lundberg actually started working together. I was in a short film that he made, then we started developing some other stuff together.  When they got financing to make a feature I was already interested.

FC: Did you have any input on the story development, or was the story completely ready when they came to you?

EJ: I didn’t have so much input, no. I did have a lot of opinions about the script, and as far as I remember there were some things I wanted to change, and I think actually they did change some stuff.

We collaborated a lot. I got the script way ahead, and read it, and I read several drafts of it.  I did, however, want there to be more of a romantic development between Lotte and Frank.

FC: It kind of starts going there…

EJ: It starts, but there’s one thing that is cut out, where Frank comes with a glass of milk, and I persuaded them to have something more romantic or sexual happen, but they cut that out.

FC: Well, it’s insinuated.

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Corridor, directed by Johan Lundborg and Johan Storm (Sweden), is a darkly humorous suspense-thriller, the likes of which would make Hitchcock proud.  Frank (Emil Johnsen), a socially withdrawn medical student, goes about his daily routine with as little contact with people as he can manage - such as declining the invitations made by a classmate to study together and avoiding the other residents in his apartment building.

Frank is reluctantly roped into helping Lotte (Ylva Gallon), his persistently friendly (and moochy) upstairs neighbor with increasing frequency, much to his frustration.  In spite of this, an uneasy friendship forms between the two after Frank notices signs of domestic abuse between Lotte and her boyfriend Micke (Peter Stormare, who is always awesome) and as things progress, they get increasingly more complicated.

Because much of the action takes place out of sight, Frank makes assumptions based on what can be overheard from his downstairs apartment and his conclusions and actions set up a chain of events that topple into calamity.

I was reminded a bit of Rear Window while watching it, though Frank – unlike Jimmy Stewarts’ proactive voyeur – desperately tries to avoid social interaction and involvement with the people living in his building. The use of sound in the film is hugely important, as Frank’s perception of Lotte’s relationship with Micke is informed almost entirely by what he overhears from his flat.

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When I read the synopsis for Rubber - an experimental film about a psychokinetic, automobile tire that goes on a killing spree in the desert – I thought it sounded like an awesome idea for a short film.  Then I read that it was, in fact, a full feature length film (85 minutes, to be exact) and my curiosity was piqued even further.

The premise is pretty high concept, I wondered how director Quentin Dupieux would pull off a story with so much potential to end up being one-note. The short answer is that he made an engaging, funny, acerbic and captivating story about a murderous tire –  and he did it so brilliantly.

By predicating the film on the conceit that many things happen in life for no reason, the story about a tire which comes to life and possesses psychic powers (and a penchant for destruction!  And blood lust!  And vengeful rage!) can exist without any need for an explanation. It simply is what it is and as a spectator we are able to accept this and let the story tell itself without fighting the implausibility of it.

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A trio of schoolchildren are bound by a shocking secret in Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go.   Although it has been couched as a sci-fi thriller, the movie is actually a beautiful and bittersweet love story between two of the central characters.  It’s as poignant and tragic as any great love story out there.

Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield), and Ruth (Keira Knightly) all attended a sprawling English boarding school when they were children.  Apparently they were orphans, and they were treated well by their caretakers and teachers.

However, there is a sinister aspect to the school.  A “no tolerance” rule  is strictly enforced for those for those who wander off the school’s property.  They never have any visitors.  Broken, discarded toys are brought in for the children to “buy” with currency they have earned.  The whole institution seems completely devoid of joy or any emotion, for that matter. It seems like a horribly lonely existence, particularly for a child.

Kathy finds herself drawn to Tommy, a gentle, quirky boy.  The two develop a deep rooted friendship, and it is clear that they are destined to be with one another. Kathy’s beautiful friend Ruth feels threatened by their special relationship, and callously drives a wedge between the two.  Tommy is easily captivated, and Kathy is easily defeated. The star-crossed children never realize the potential of their feelings for one another.

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Mother’s Day, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III, IV), is loosely based on a horrific, true story that took place in Wichita, Kansas 10 years ago – as well as the 1980 Charles Kaufman film by the same name.  The setting changes from an ill-fated camping trip to a tale of home invasion in the remake – we meet the Koffin brothers when they return to their mother’s house after their attempt to rob a bank goes horribly wrong, leaving the youngest brother seriously injured from a gunshot wound.

Upon their arrival to their childhood home, they quickly discover that their mother is no longer living there (having lost her house to foreclosure) and end up crashing what will become The Worst Birthday Party Ever, which is being thrown by the new inhabitants, Beth and Daniel Sohapi.

The brothers hold the home-owner’s and their guests hostage – alternately beating them, threatening to rape them and robbing them of their money, belongings and dignity as they attempt to gain control of their situation.  It doesn’t take long for Mother (Rebecca De Mornay) and their little sister to arrive on the scene, at which point things swiftly make the shift from being merely terrifying to unfathomably shitty.

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If you’ve been following the marketing for Stone, you are no doubt poised to see a psychological thriller, of sorts. Unfortunately, Stone plays more like a  psychodrama than a psychological thriller.  The movie does a bang-up  job of establishing that something very, very  bad is going to happen.

Through music, imagery and a frightening  flashback we are conditioned to believe that there will be a showdown between good and evil.  I found myself on the edge of my seat, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, but it never does.

A strangely meandering story just sort of sputters out, and the film ends abruptly, prompting a “huh, you mean that was it?” It’s a pity, because there was a lot of potential in the movie.

Robert De Niro stars as Jack Mabry, a parole officer who works in a prison, reviewing cases to determine which inmates are qualified for a parole hearing.  He pores over the minutiae of each case, studies the files and conducts in-depth interviews with the potential parolees.  He is about to retire from his position when he is given one last case to review.

Edward Norton plays Gerald Creeson, who goes by the moniker “Stone.”  He is Jack’s last case. He has served ten years for arson, and he is starting to lose his mind within the confines of prison.  He is desperate to get out.  His sex-kitten wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) is also eager to have him back in her bed, and she is more than willing to use her sexuality to influence Jack’s decision.

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