Nevermore Film Festival

This weekend, as part of my wife's birthday, we trucked up to Durham to attend the annual Nevermore Film Festival at the Carolina Theatre. I had only recently heard about the festival for the first time and while Annie slowly continued to make other tenative plans (like hosting a small party or driving to Charlotte for Ru-San's), she eventually decided to brave the meteorologists' predictions and catch some of the festival.

I will spare you the anti-Durham rant for another post. For now, let me just focus in on one of only three bright spots about our trip up to Durham: the aforementioned Nevermore Film Festival.

The Carolina Theatre rocks, there's just no two ways around it. The lavish Fletcher Hall has balcony seating, box seating, the works. Meanwhile, the Cinema One auditorium is a bit more modern and they even let you walk in with a beer (or two) to wash down their popcorn.

We caught the special Friday night showing of Darkness: The Vampire Version where director Leif Jonker was in the house and fielded questions after the credits rolled. He told some great stories about filming, like when the local Wichita police arrived during the car wash scene with guns drawn having received several unnerving phoned-in reports. He was, like, 18 when he made that movie. For $5,000! He had never meant for it to be released at all, it was more of an attempt on his part to show film studios what he could do. But he released it anyway and now it has this international cult following. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a cinematic tour de force, but when you throw in all the backstory...the budget...the size of the director's cajones (his name appears about a hundred times during the credits: make-up, editting, music, directing, producing, etc. etc. etc.)...you must give this movie some serious props. It is gore-splatter at its best, rivaled by Rami's Evil Dead and Jackson's Dead Alive.

Early Saturday afternoon we went to Ong-Bak, which we thoroughly enjoyed. Could Tony Jaa be the next Jackie Chan? I know that will probably be the popular question doing the rounds after more people catch this movie, but you really can't blame them. No wires, no animation; all the stunts are solid, exciting, and real. I'm not taking anything away from movies like Hero and Crouching Tiger, they have their place. But Jaa is a young, Muy Thain', elbow smashin', knee-droppin' star-on-the-rise that you will want to pay attention to.