Today is the first day of Austin’s Fantastic Fest – undoubtedly one of the coolest film fests in the country. Set at the game-changing Alamo Draft House Cinema, Fantastic Fest features best genre and foreign genre flicks of the year. The mission is to show fun, scary, gross, hilarious, and just plain weird movies that you might not get a chance to normally see in the theater. Unfortunately, I won’t be there this year – but here is a quick look at what’s playing.

13 Assassins by Takashi Miike had its debut at Toronto and is a fitting closing night film for the fest. Other flicks playing at Fantastic Fest that I have mentioned here before include Japanese thriller Cold Fish by Love Exposure‘s Sion Sono, the stylized star-studded actioner Bunraku, and trip fest fave Enter The Void. Pretty much every HK action flick at TIFF will be at Fantastic Fest. This includes Dante Lam‘s Fire of Conscience, Andrew Lau‘s Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, and Wilson Yip‘s Ip Man 2. Finally two other festival faves that might make their way to a theater near you, the Korean thriller The Housemaid and Matt Reeves‘s very well received Let the Right One In remake Let Me In.

The Cool

I’m not sure why but the Mel Brooks classic Spaceballs keeps coming up in conversation recently. If I was at the fest, I’d be sure not to miss this raucous Spaceballs Quote-A-Long. Another cool looking flick is the documentary Nerdcore Rising about the new brand of videogame and pop culture reference filled hip-hop known as Nerdcore. Guillermo Del Toro is involved with two Spanish language thrillers at the fest: Julia’s Eyes and Agnosia. The Butcher Bros. out-there horror which I had the pleasure of seeing at Sundance, The Violent Kind will also play.

The Kick Ass

Along with the actioners I mentioned above, there are plenty of cool martial arts flicks at the fest. Tony Jaa returns with his Muay Thai stylings in Ong Bak 3. Action choreography legend Yuen Woo-ping directs Michelle Yeoh in True Legend. Gallants is a martial arts comedy that stars a whole bunch of HK legends. Donnie Yen stars in Black Mask director Daniel Lee‘s latest, 14 Blades.

The Rising Sun

Fantastic Fest always brings in the best in Japanese Cinema – especially when it’s wacky. Co-directed by three of Japan’s wackiest, Tak Sakaguchi (Samurai Zombie), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, Tokyo Gore Police), and Noboru Iguchi (RoboGeisha), Mutant Girls Squad promises to be an absolute crack up. On a bit more serious note, Yoshihiro Nakamura follows up last year’s Fish Story with the suspense thriller Golden Slumber. And a film I am very excited about: Takeshi Kitano makes his return to Yakuza films with his ultra-violent Outrage.

The Just Plain Weird

Machete Maidens Unleashed is a hilarious sounding docu about the world of 1960s-70s exploitation films in the Philippines. Norwegian Ninja tells the possibly true story of a ninja sent to spy on the USSR by Norwegian King Olav. Naan Kadavul is a “music-infused Tamil epic about a dope-smoking Vedic superman and a group of beggar slave children.” …wow. Finally – be sure not to miss the action-sci-fi-horror-sfx romp of the season, Sharktopus

Lemme know if you makes it to Austin.