Mondo- https://twitter.com/MondoNews

Original Alamo Drafthouse- http://twitter.com/drafthouse

Tim League- https://twitter.com/timalamo

Lars Nilsen- https://twitter.com/larsalamo

Henri Mazza- https://twitter.com/HenriMazza

Brad Parrett-https://twitter.com/alamobrad

Caitlin Stevens- https://twitter.com/caitlinestevens

Air Sex- https://twitter.com/airsex

Fantastic Fest- https://twitter.com/fantasticfest

Rolling Roadshow- https://twitter.com/rollingroadshow

-Justin

Go here and vote for Alamo as “Best Place for a Parent Date Night” in Austin.  Please.  You don’t even have to be a parent!  Hell, you don’t even have to live in Austin or be old enough to vote.  Go to Schlotsky’s and work your way down each computer, vote vote vote, then go to the library, then your home computer.  I’m not saying engage in voting fraud, but I AM saying that.

While you’re at it, please vote us as “Best Swim Class” and “Best College Prep”.  Alamo Drafthouse is to the 200m Butterfly Event as Higher Education is to ___________.   See?

If we win this thing, we’re flying in Dora the Explorer and you will all get to tickle her.  Five minutes each.

Vote.

Thanks.

WHERE: Alamo Village on Andersen Ln
WHEN: Sunday, July 12 at 10:15 PM
HOW MUCH?: FREE!!!

There’s a rumor going around that REC is one of the most terrifying films of all time, and we’re pleased to report that those rumors are incredibly true. This film has long been on our Fantastic Fest wish-list, but circumstances have delayed an Austin premiere until now, a mere two days before it’s official U.S. release on DVD and Blu-Ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. No matter, because we’re psyched as hell to finally screen this new terror classic at the Alamo (for FREE), and we insist - insist! - that anyone and everyone who loves horror films and loves to be scared witless in a movie theater must attend this special one-time-only screening. It may sound like we’re overselling this one, but trust us when we say that die-hard horror lovers the world over have loudly voiced their approval of REC, and to finally share it with you at the Alamo Drafthouse will be an experience in horror that no one who attends will ever forget. Believe us on this one.

Special thanks to our friends at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

This show is FREE, first come first served, but priority seating will be given to current Fantastic Fest badgeholders! Please bring confirmation of your FF badge purchase to the show to be admitted first!

We released the 2009 Fantastic Fest poster and t-shirt artwork to you about a week ago and the response was tremendous! Now we are offering the Fantastic Fest shirt in a limited edition colorway that will ONLY be available online HERE at MondoTees.com.

Limited to only 50 pieces worldwide, we hope this tides all of you rabid genre hounds over until this years festival.

-Justin

“Skirts the edge without going over, and judging from the raucous reception, twisted auds clearly do exist for such blatantly ‘wrong’ material.” -Variety

“Teenagers face unique psychological and physiological disruptions that are ripe for tales of horror…DEADGIRL mines the recesses of the hormone-wracked mind to create one of the most original American horror films in recent memory.” -Rodney Perkins, Fantastic Fest

One of Fantastic Fest 2008’s most well-attended and controversial films returns for a special limited engagement at The Alamo!  Exploring an abandoned sanatorium while ditching school, two high school burnouts discover a seemingly incapacitated girl strapped to a gurney in a secluded chamber. As time passes, the teens make a series of questionable decisions that put them, their friends and the audience itself on the spot. Debut directors Gadi Harel and Marcel Sarmiento craft a new breed of teen angst drama set against a backdrop of humor black enough to make John Hughes retreat to a fetal state.

Director Marcel Sarmiento in attendance on July 24!

Get tickets here.

Instead, check out the new montage of EXCITEMENT and AWESOMENESS that will make you leap out of your seat, pump your fist in the air, and say, “Yes! I will see that! And that! And oh my god, that looks amazing!!!”

Here we go:

The song in this one is “Gifted (Treasure Fingers Remix)” by N.A.S.A. Download it and pretend like you’re at the theater whenever you want! Be warned, though, Caitlin edited out some foul language, and the original song isn’t as prude-ish as our big screens are…

“Holding it all together is an unnerving lead performance by Alfredo Castro, who looks nothing like Travolta, and a lot like Al Pacino marinaded in embalming fluid. I can recall few screen presences as off-puttingly ratty, but [Castro's] opaque, tight-lipped sullenness is hideously, inscrutably magnetic.”
-Johnathoan Romney, The Independent

4th of July weekend usually means huge 100 million dollar CGEye-sores that star Will Smith.  Luckily, we dodged the Big Willie bullet this year, but there are still plenty of no-expense-spared behemoths roaming the theaters to satiate even the most spray-on of appetites.   But I’d like to suggest an altogether different way to celebrate America this year.

With an independent film from Chile.

The title of Pablo Larrain’s darkly comic psycho-thriller references John Travolta’s disco-sick lead from SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, and you can not get any more American than that.  In the hierarchy of Americana, it goes Tony Manero, bald eagles, 0% financing, apple pie and then that scene in RETURN OF THE JEDI when the speeder bikes are going through trees (sorry baseball).  The fact that our culture has spread so far as Santiago to be used as allegory for a foreign sociopolitical climate should be worn on all of us like a badge of goddamned pride.  I may be reaching, probably am, but just because this one doesn’t have robots doesn’t mean it should be sloughed off as un-American, okay McCarthy?  At the very least, we should celebrate the free society we live in where great films from around the globe are so readily available for our enjoyment.

TONY MANERO plays July 1st, 5th & 6th at Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar.  To read more about it and to get tickets, click here.

Happy 4th of July!

The film opens for a full run at the Alamo Ritz on Friday, July 10.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who made you laugh till you puked as BORAT, returns to the big screen, this time as Bruno, the gay Austrian fashion show host on a mission to strike it rich in America. Just as Borat wandered America, making people everywhere feel uncomfortable, so does the unstoppable Bruno.

And get there early for a huge preshow of Bruno’s best TV clips and publicity whoredom.

Over the course of my non-stop flick-hoppings, I’ve become a small and unofficial cog in the Fantastic Fest machine. (Let’s say I’m half-consultant and half-cheerleader.) Tim League and his Alamo team scour the globe for the best in horror, sci-fi, action, etc., but I’ve been known to drop those guys a line when an interesting flick crosses my path. (Or when I’m just really bored. Curse you, caller ID!!) So here’s some exciting news for those who A) live in Austin, B) love new horror movies, and C) are sure they can tolerate my presence for two consecutive hours:

July 22nd! 10pm! Alamo Ritz! THE COLLECTOR with Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton in attendance!! And they’re nice guys! Yes, the guys who wrote FEAST, SAW 4, FEAST 2, SAW 5, FEAST 3, SAW 6 and THE COLLECTOR will be at the theater to A) eat cheese fries, B) drink beer, C) watch their movie on the big screen, and D) stand up for a Q$A thingy! It’s going to be fun. I decree it to be so.

THE COLLECTOR, as you may know, was recently known as MIDNIGHT MAN, but it switched titles when it jumped over from Dimension to Freestyle. The plan is for the film to hit theaters on July 31 (which is why they couldn’t just hold it for Fantastic Fest: September is after July), and I’ve already heard from the likes of Ryan “Rotten” Turek, Rodney Perkins, and (yes) Tim League that this is one kick-ass horror show! And now a few words from first-time director Marcus Dunstan: “Well, we just received our R rating after four trips to the MPAA, and I’m happy to say that none of the film’s impact has been lost. Matter of fact, their notes made some scenes hit even harder! We’re beyond lucky to be a part of Fantastic Fest again, even if it is a few months early this time. Austin welcomed FEAST with open arms, and I am over-the-moon excited to bring THE COLLECTOR to a city that loves movies so much.”

In response, Tim League had this to say: “This movie rocks.”

Important notes:

Admission to this screening is free. 2009 Fantastic Fest badge-holders can RSVP in advance by emailing brad@originalalamo.com with “THE COLLECTOR ROCKS” in the subject line. Badge-Holders who rsvp will be seated first come, first served. Non-badge-holders are welcome to attend subject to availability; simply arrive at the theater 45 minutes before the show. For more information on Fantastic Fest, please visit the official website at www.fantasticfest.com.

The first wave of content for Fantastic Fest will be posted there on July 13!
-Scott Weinberg, the Horror Squad

We’re also super excited about our brand new Badass Cinema shirt. ZOMBIES! Not just ZOMBIES, but PUNK ZOMBIES! Zombies are wild to begin with, but add a punk rock soundtrack to the mayhem and forget about it!

These are available online or in-store now!

-Justin

This is one of my favorite times to be working for the Alamo.  Harry Potter was one of our first big feasts, selling out five  shows  way back when for the Goblet of Fire.

Now with the Half Blood Prince, our third Potter menu, I am given another opportunity to prove to all the doubters that all English food is not some sort of boiled meat or stuffed entrail.  We will be pairing each course with some tasty British ales and a

first

scallop-mushroom pie

Second

cauliflower and carrot terrine, mustard vinaigrette

third

chilled leek soup

fourth

roast pheasant supreme wrapped in house cured bacon, Cumberland sauce, potato-stilton gratin, fresh peas

fifth

bramble berry pudding, lavender cream

Our first feast is up and selling out quickly.  We will add more dates to meet your mugglish demand.

What do you all think? I can tell you that when I first saw the linework for the poster I said “shit” really loud. When I saw this final with color, I said something much worse.

Many of you might be asking, “Well, if it’s 3D, where are all the red and blue lines?” You will find none of that here. We used a very special process called Chromadepth. With your poster you will receive a pair of glasses. The special specks react with the colors and stretch the image to make it 3 dimensional. You can read more about the process here, but essentially, warm colors shoot out at you and cooler colors fall back into the background. If you have 3D Chromadepth glasses with you right now, feel free to put them on and take a gander. If not, feel free to stop in at the Mondo shop anytime and ask to use ours.

Not only did Jon destroy the poster, he did an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT image for the shirt.

So there you have it. This is just a taste of what you can expect from Fantastic Fest this year. We will no doubt have more announcements and surprises for you soon, so stay tuned. The Fantastic Fest poster and shirt will be on sale at Mondo soon!

-Justin

P.S. If you can’t wait to get your hands on the Fantastic Fest shirt from Jon Vermilyea, you can order a DEADLY SPAWN shirt right now! The last run sold out quick so we brought it back in two new colorways…black and slime!

We had a last minute tribute show to honor the King last night and to say the least…it was EPIC! We’ve scheduled more shows for tonight and this weekend and have also decided to bring out our commemorative Michael Jackson shirt one last time!

This shirt is going to be super limited and only available here at Mondo! Click on the shirt above to purchase!

Thomas Humphreys clued me into the existence of this little beauty made with John Landis, in 1997, Michael Jackson’s Ghosts:

Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy, the pop duo the world DEMANDED:

That one will destroy your brain, so watch a your own risk.

But my personal favorite, and one that makes me sad to watch today, is Roberta Flack and teenaged MJ singing about who they’ll be when they grow up.

While we mourn the loss of Michael Jackson, a silent vigil doesn’t feel quite right for a man so steeped in the extreme. Instead, come join us  at the Alamo to celebrate the life of an American legend.

There are three shows left:

Alamo Village, Saturday, 6/27 10:45

Alamo Ritz, Friday, 7/3 midnight

Alamo Ritz, Saturday, 7/4 midnight

After that, we will be retiring the show until September when we start gearing up to break our own world record Thriller Dance in October.

FOOD, INC
Opening Friday, June 25, at the Alamo Ritz
Advance tix available here

How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

In FOOD, INC., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA.

Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli–the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, FOOD, INC. reveals surprising — and often shocking truths — about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

Simon’s last feature THE LIVING AND THE DEAD won top honors at Fantastic Fest 2006, winning best actor, best director and best picture trophies.  His next film RED WHITE AND BLUE is set in Austin and we need some folks to stand around in country duds and drink free Lone Star.  For me, that is method acting, so Karrie and I will definitely be there to help reduce the beer inventory.  We’ll also have some door prizes to give away!

If you want to be onscreen in a very cool new film by one of my favorite London filmmakers, please join me and Karrie at the Broken Spoke on Tuesday, July 7 at 1 PM.  If you can make it, please contact Melissa at 512 484 4651 or by email, melissadalley@hotmail.com.

Also, if anyone knows where I can get that shirt that Roy Rogers is sporting above, I’ll pay $100 for it.

We collaborated with our good friend L’amour Supreme and our favorite streetwear brand Mishka to create this Scourge and it couldn’t have turned out better.

Like I mentioned before, this is definitely a first for Mondo and I wanted to document every step. First things first, we needed a design. I had a rough idea for what I wanted so I sent L’amour, designer of the S7 Mongolion and the Mishka x CURE Boogieman, a sketch. He sent the below file to me and made my inbox explode. I freaked! Now we needed someone to sculpt it for us!

We had the legendary Jim Rogers sculpt the ring for us. If you’ve walked down a toy aisle in the last 20 years, you’ve seen his work. If you had a toy in the 80’s, I’m willing to bet that he had worked on at least one of them. Don’t take my word for it, though. Jim’s site boasts that he has sculpted over 400 Starting Line-up heads, action figures for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Wars, and Disney! He even helped sculpt the original run of Madballs! Here’s a pic of the prototype that Jim sent us:

Next, we needed someone to be able to cast the ring. We hooked up with the best foundry in the state, Deep in the Heart Art Foundry. They really did a wonderful job. Here’s a pic of the first three we pulled out of the mold.

We decided to cast the three samples in solid silver. We didn’t cheap out by hollowing the back out either as the ring takes over 2 ounces of silver to produce. You’re going to love the versions we release at SDCC this year. Stay tuned to the Mondo blog and also check out the Mishka Bloglin for updates.

So, we have the ring finished and now needed a way to package it. For whatever reason, the first thing that popped into my head was when kidnappers use body parts to prove that they have REALLY taken a loved one.  There are tons of movies where they demand some kind of ransom and every day the parents or whoever are late, they send a new body part out to prove they mean business. I always love it when they send a severed finger with a ring on it, so that’s what we decided to go for…severed fingers.

I journeyed to Hawgfly here in Austin, TX to have them make some fingers. Hawgfly is a local special effects company that have worked on countless movies. Some of the highlights include PLANET TERROR, TEETH, and Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming MACHETE feature film. If I’m not mistaken, besides EL MARIACHI, this is the first time Rodriguez isn’t using KNB for his practical effect work. That is really a testament to awesome Hawgfly is! Good luck guys and congrats!

After we finished with lunch, Meredith from Hawgfly explained the steps in molding my hand:

Step 1: Making a negative mold

Like with most fun things, we started by lubing up.

Meredith covered my hand and hair on my arm with a thin layer of vaseline so my hand would release from the alginate easier. She then mixed the alginate and had me place my hand in a big tub of it for maybe 3 minutes. It was really cool. Felt like Nickelodeon Gak! When it begins to dry, it starts getting cold and hugs your hand tightly. After it had set, I began to wiggle my fingers and pulled my hand out. This is what a mold of my hand and fingers looks like:

Step 2: Making a positive out of clay

While all of the alginating was going on, Meredith had a crock pot full of oil clay heating up. Immediatly after I pulled my hand out, she poured the molten clay into the alginate to make clay versions of my fingers.

After this step, I had to leave for another appointment, but the next steps will consist of cutting my fingers off of the clay hands and sculpting the ends to make them look like they have been severed in gnarly ways. Another way we are going all out on this project is the fingernail on the finger. We’re going to pour a resin that will harden and create a hyper realistic fingernail. The actual fingers will be made out of a silicone product and will be painted to look real. Meredith had a baby’s foot in the shop that used the silicone to it and trust me when I say that I’ve touched tons of babies and even I couldn’t tell the difference.

So, there ya go! I’ll post pics of the final product soon, but rest assured that every Demon Scourge ring will be shipped on a real fake severed finger! Who said jewelry had to be boring?!

-Justin

Christina Lindberg

SINSATIONS, Austin’s most crucial source for adult toys, lingerie, fetish accessories and much more is in trouble…and YOU can come to the rescue! Recently, store founder Morgan Sloane was told that the store would need to relocate or disappear, and we’re doing all we can to make that possible. But we’ll need your help.

All we ask is that you come pay a couple bucks (or more if you like) to watch one of The Great Sexploitation Films of All Time, and ALL PROCEEDS from the box office go directly to saving the store! Pretty good deal for assisting a local independent business, no?

THE SWINGING CO-EDS
If you’re like most people, when you think of Germany the subject of sex doesn’t immediately come to mind. It’s there, but it has to wait in line behind Hitler, bratwurst and David Hasselhoff. So it may come as a surprise that Germany was a hugely prolific source of sexploitation films for the international market. Particularly popular were the “report” films, exposes of deviant sexual behavior among different groups of attractive young women. The proclivities of housewives, stewardesses, secretaries and milkmaids were thus explored, but the movies that really brought out the raincoat crowd en masse were the ones that focused on the student body. The long running SCHOOLGIRL REPORT series is the best known but there were many others. THE SWINGING COEDS is one of the funniest and sexiest. It also has two long, shapely legs up on the others in the form of Swedish sex goddess Christina Lindberg, who has a much more substantial role in this than her usual walk-ons.

Get your tickets here.  It’s your good deed for the day.

FOOD, INC. opens Fri 6/26 at The Ritz

Just kidding. He actually doesn’t care what we  eat. Eric Schlosser (writer/producer of FAST FOOD NATION and co-producer of FOOD, INC.) really just wants to let us know what exactly we’re eating. After watching this clip (below) and deciding to write this blog entry, I suddenly feel very uncomfortable about the delicious, delicious McDonald’s cheeseburger I just put in my belly. According to this film, it may not have actually been a cheeseburger…

We’re opening FOOD, INC. at the Alamo Ritz this Friday (June 26th), so if you think you’ve seen The Hangover enough, you should stop by. Fortunately we’re a city that loves it’s organic, all natural products! So come on out and eat one of our cheeseburgers instead! Our food won’t kill you! GET TICKETS TO FOOD, INC. AT THE ALAMO RITZ HERE!

Stephen Colbert grills Eric Schlosser on food