The 2011 Viscera Film Festival Celebrates Female Horror Film Makers

Source: Rachel Grubb / Jamie Jenkins

The moment has arrived. If you think women are too soft to make cut-to-the bone horror, then this festival is for you. If you know women can be just as twisted, emotionally grinding, terror-inducing and splatter spewing as men, this festival thanks you. And if you are one of those horror chicks, this festival is because of you.

Join the celebration of contemporary female directed/produced horror films from across the globe at the 2011 Viscera Film Festival. Seating is limited and you do not want to miss this opportunity to help promote equality and creativity within the horror genre.

During the festival you will be witness to some of the most creative and original new short horror films made by women today. Some are terrifying, some are pulse pounding, and some are hilarious. All showcase what can be accomplished when twisted, cool, darkside-proud women get down to business.

Sunday 17, JULY 2011

The Silent Movie Theater
611 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, Ca. 90036
(323) 655-2520

http://www.seeing-stars.com/theatres/SilentMovie.shtml

TICKETS!

http://www.brownpaperticke​ts.com/event/154825

Advance tickets - $15.00
Door Price - $20.00

SCHEDULE:

5:00 PM - Festival begins! Sit in your seats!
8:00 PM - After Party on the back patio.
10:00 pm - After, After Party at the Rosewood Tavern

SPECIAL GUESTS:

ATTENDING GUESTS

Denise Gossett, Brea Grant, Jonathan Tiersten, Elizabeth Stanley, Amanda Diebert, Cat Staggs, Joe Lynch, Mark Hengst, Dave Decoteau, Brinke Stevens, Chris Gore, Anthony Masi, Paul Solet, Jamie Andrews, Michelle Boyd, Peter Cornwell, Michelle Tomlinson, Dai Green, Devanny Pinn, Danielle Harris, Susanna Lo, Gabby West, Reggie Bannister, Gigi Bannister, Hart D. Fisher, Bill Moseley, John Skipp, Emma Jacobs, Tara Cardinal, Elissa Dowling, Jeff Dylan Graham, Rhianne Bergado, Natalie Pohorski, Bill Oberst, Matt Chassin, Rachel Grubb, Kevin Tenney, Paula Rhodes, Stephanie Thorpe, Nicholas Harsin, Devi Snively and Chela Johnson

ATTENDING FILMMAKERS

Annette Slomka, Nikki Wall, Lori Bowen, Karen Lam, Staci Layne Wilson, Marichelle Daywalt, Mae Catt, Tyrrell Shaffner, Molly Madfis, Susan Bell and Rachael Deacon

The films listed below are the reason for all the jubilation. Feast your ravenous eyes, horror fans!

TRAILERS:

American Mary by the Soska Sisters - WORLD PREMIERE
Adventure Girls by Dara Moats and Jon Deitcher
Blood on the Flat Track by Lainy Bagwelll, Lacey Leavitt
The Blood Shop by Annette Slomka- WORLD PREMIERE
WIH Month PSA by the Soska Sisters
You Can Execute Her but You Can't Kill Her by Jasmine Hirst
L.A.G.P. by Susan Bell - WORLD PREMIERE

FILMS*:

2-15-1996 - Mae Catt (USA) - WORLD PREMIERE
Aftershock - Lori Bowen (USA)
Bon Appetit - Kate Shenton (U.K.) - US PREMIERE
Doll Parts - Karen Lam (Canada)
Blood Bunny - Molly Madfis (USA)
A Fever and a River - Rachael Deacon (USA) - LA PREMIERE
Short Lease - Jennifer Eiss (U.K.)
Box - Nikki Wall (USA) - WORLD PREMIERE
The Ghost and Us - Emily Carmichael (USA)

Intermission - 15 Minutes

The Party’s Over - Gigi Romero (Spain) - US PREMIERE
Lump - Faye Jackson (U.K.)
Threnody - Tyrrell Shaffner (USA)
Nursery Crimes - Laura Whyte (U.K.)
The Key to Annabel Lee - Staci Layne Wilson (USA)
The Many Doors of Albert Whale - Marichelle Daywalt (USA)
Daddy’s Girl - Helen Komini Olsen (Norway)

*Mature Content. Parental Discretion Advised

FILMMAKERS Q&A

Filmmakers Karen Lam, Mae Catt, Rachael Deacon, Nikki Wall, Lori Bowen, Molly Madfis, Staci Layne Wilson, Marichelle Daywalt, and Tyrrel Shaffner onstage to answer your questions!

AWARDS!

Winners of Best Film, Best Director, and Best Cinematography announced!

This is some exciting stuff! But don’t grab your hat yet. The fun and festivities don't end there. Immediately following the festival will be the After Party on the back patio until 10PM! Drinks, food, and fun with filmmakers, guests, and more!
And for those who just can't stop the party there is the After, After Party.

Rosewood Tavern
448 North Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, Ca 90036
(323) 944-0980
http://rosewoodtavern.com/

VISCERA SPONSORS

Fearnet.com, Final Draft, Gorilla Software, Fangoria Entertainment, Fangirltastic, The Chainsaw Mafia, 33 Rooms, Women in Horror Month, Malibu Wines, Farmer’s Daughter Hotel, Matt Orsman, Crimson Stained Lace Productions, Kimyoo Films, The Horror Digest, DOA Bloodbath Entertainment, Rotten Cotton, Hot Zombie Chicks, There is No Halo, Annie M. Vickar Dolls & Skellery, Angel City Derby Girls, Zerner Law, Jessica Grundy, Morgue Art Films, Friendly Misanthrope, 1428 Films, Dan Dillard, Mike Merryman, Caisson Films, Hannah Foreman, Nick Goodrick, Assorted Oddities, Jen Morgart, Scary Art, The Big Bad, Lia Scott Price, Amityville Studios, Quirk Films, Philly Chick Pictures, Laughing Vixen Lounge, Brent Schoonover, Irene Langholm, Shannon Rose, Mark Berryman, Cassandra Sechler, Mike Snoonian, Mary Katherine Sisco, Simon Nisbet, Post-Mortem Depression, Susan Bell, Jeffrey Kane, Dreams for Dead Cats, Charon Pictures, Fable & Fury, Entertainment Partners.com, Emy’s Gift Shop, The Womanimal, FoamyWader, Neverland Jewelry, Red Carpet Crash, Kaci Hansen, Fright Rags, Drix Productions, Rude and Reckless, Gabrielle Faust, The Big Bad, The Zombified, Alternative Cinema, Obscure Artifacts, Have a Heart for Horror Cookbook, Terrorscribe and Cryes Creations.

VISCERA PARTNERS

National Horror Festival of Wales
Mile High Horror Festival
All Things Horror
Shriekfest
Fanta Festival
FilmDemic festival
The International Horror & Sci-Fi Festival
Jaipur International Film Festival
ZedFest
A NightMare to Remember Film Festival

For further information regarding the festival please visit http://viscerafilmfestival.com

So what are you waiting for? You know you’re itching to be there. Maybe you even have ideas for films of your own. But seating is limited so you’ll have to hurry!

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It's Monster Movie Madness At The Los Angeles Museum Of Art!

Written By: Ken Hulsey

Sources: LA Times / LA County Museum of Art

The Los Angeles Museum is going crazy for monster movies in July with an exhibit of artwork by macabre movie master Tim Burton plus a series of monster movie screenings suggested by the film maker.

The first in the series of movie screenings is this Saturday (July 2nd) and features "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad"!

Here is the info:

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents a major retrospective exploring the full range of Tim Burton's creative work, both as a film director and as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer.

Tim Burton was born in Burbank in 1958. After studying at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), he worked as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios before breaking out on his own. Taking inspiration from popular culture, fairy tales and traditions of the gothic, Burton has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of a personal vision.

The exhibition brings together over 700 drawings, paintings, photographs, moving-image works, storyboards, puppets, concept artworks, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera, including art from a number of unrealized and little-known personal projects. Many of these objects come from the artist's own archive, as well as from studio archives and private collections of Burton's collaborators. Hundreds of never-before-exhibited artworks and sketches will be joined by a selection of film posters accompanied by music composed for the exhibition by Burton's longtime collaborator Danny Elfman.

Two large-scale outdoor artworks are also installed on campus: a topiary inspired by Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Balloon Boy, an enormous figure based on an amalgamation of characters that Burton first introduced in his 1997 book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories.

This exhibition was organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York.The Los Angeles presentation was made possible in part by LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director’s Endowment Fund.

And on the monster movie series:

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
July 2, 2011 | 2:00pm

“The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” (1958): Directed by Nathan Juran, the film was the first of three “Sinbad” movies Columbia produced that special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen designed and animated with the dazzling stop-motion technique he called Dynamation. It took Harryhausen 11 months to complete the painstaking work on the film, which features creatures including a cyclops and a cobra-woman; Sinbad (Kerwin Matthews) even has a sword battle with a skeleton. The late Bernard Herrmann, who is the subject of several centenary celebrations this year, penned the score. Three years ago, “Sinbad” was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Fantastic Voyage
July 9, 2011 | 2:00pm

“Fantastic Voyage” (1966) Directed by Richard Fleischer, this thriller finds a group of doctors, assistants and a CIA agent miniaturized and injected into the body of a scientist who escaped from the Soviet Union. (The scientist is comatose after an assassination attempt and this experimental effort is believed to be the only way to save him.) Stephen Boyd, Edmond O’Brien, Donald Pleasance and Raquel Welch, in her first major film role, star. The movie won Oscars for art direction (color) and for its then-cutting-edge special effects.

The Thing
July 16, 2011 | 2:00pm

“The Thing From Another World” (1951) Produced by Howard Hawks and directed by Christian Nyby (though for years it has been contended that Hawks actually directed the classic), “The Thing From Another World” is set at a base in the North Pole where six scientists find evidence of a crash by an unknown flying object. A U.S. Air Force re-supply crew is sent to the base where a frozen, tall alien creature (played by a young James Arness) is discovered. Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey and Dewey Martin are among the stars. Time magazine named the movie, which was remade in 1982 by John Carpenter, as the greatest sci-fi film produced in the 1950s

Journey to the Center of the Earth
July 23, 2011 | 2:00pm

“Journey to the Center of the Earth” (1959) James Mason, Pat Boone, Diane Baker and Arlene Dahl headline this film, based on the novel by Jules Verne. The sci-fi fantasy revolves a professor in Edinburgh who leads an expedition to the center of the earth after he receives an unusual rock from one of his students. Bernard Herrmann also penned the score for the film, which earned three Oscar nominations, for art decoration-set decoration, effects and sound

The Incredible Shrinking Man
July 30, 2011 | 2:00pm

“The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957) The great sci-fi writer Richard Matheson penned the film, which is based on his novel; Jack Arnold, who helmed the 1954 3-D hit “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” directed. Grant Williams stars in the title role, playing a businessman who is hit by a radioactive cloud while sailing with his wife. Six months later, he begins to shrink due to the radiation and pesticides. A hit with both critics and audiences, the film won the 1958 Hugo Award for the year’s best science fiction or fantasy dramatic presentation

Jason and the Argonauts
August 6, 2011 | 2:00pm

“Jason and the Argonauts” (1963) Ray Harryhausen considers this to be his best film, and it does feature his memorable stop-motion sequence in which Jason (Todd Armstrong) and two of his men battle an army of skeletons. The sequence took Harryhausen nearly five months to complete. Bernard Herrmann also penned the evocative score

Mothra
August 13, 2011 | 2:00pm

“Mothra” (1961) The female creature first appeared in the serialized novel “The Luminous Fairies and Mothra” before she made her film debut in this Japanese feature. A giant lepidopteron with butterfly-moth characteristics, Mothra has been an ally with Godzilla but often the two square off in combat — with Mothra winning most of the bouts. When the film was released in the U.S. in 1962, it ran on a double bill with “The Three Stooges in Orbit.”

This Island Earth
August 20, 2011 | 2:00pm

“This Island Earth” (1955) Shot in Technicolor and featuring innovative special effects for its time, the film, directed by Joseph M. Newman, stars Jeff Morrow as the intellectual alien Exeter who recruits Rex Reason as scientist Cal Meacham and Faith Domergue as Dr. Ruth Adams for a “special” research project.

Horror of Dracula
August 27, 2011 | 2:00pm

“Horror of Dracula” (1958) The first — and arguably the best — in a long line of Dracula films from Hammer, the film cast towering Christopher Lee as the vampire count and Peter Cushing as his nemesis Van Helsing. It was released in the UK as “Dracula” but was renamed for the U.S. so as not to be confused with Tod Browning‘s 1931 Universal classic starring Bela Lugosi.

The exhibit of Tim Burton artwork runs from May 29th through October 31st!

For more info please visit - http://www.lacma.org/series/saturday-monster-matinees

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Anime Expo: July 1-4

Anime Expo 2011 opens July 1 at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. The Expo runs from Friday, July 1 through Monday, July 4.

Last year, Anime Expo drew over 45,000 attendees. The show began in 1992 that drew 1,750. Previously, Anime Expo was held at the Long Beach Convention Center and the Anaheim Convention Center.

Anime Expo (AX) showcases the latest anime-related products and representatives of anime production companies and manga publishers will be in attendance.

Danny Choo, television personality, blogger and anime enthusiast, will be special guest at AX. He hosts Culture Japan, a television show that presents Japanese pop culture to the world.

For more information on Anime Expo, go here.

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GALACTIC GIRLS Burlesque Set To Invade The 1616 Club In LA

Written By: Ken Hulsey
Source: Jason Romanjuk

Do you like sci fi? Do you like sexy women? Well if your a reader of Monster Island News than the answer to both of those questions is probably "Hell Yes!".

Well So Cal fanboys get ready to get a firm grip on your lightsabres as Devil's Playground Burlesque is about to fill the stage at the 1616 Club in Los Angeles with all the women dressed as sci fi and fantasy characters you can handle.

Here is the info:

Galactic Girls

Devil's Playground at the 1616 Club

Saturday, 11 June 2011
Buy Tickets - HERE

JOIN US AS WE REVISIT SOME OF OUR FAVORITE " STAR WARZ " BURLESQUE CHARACTERS AS WELL AS SOME SEXY SCI FI PERFORMANCES.....

OLIVIA BELLAFONTAINE

DAISY MEADOWS

COURTNEY CRUZ

SCARLET OKELJUS

MIA VIXEN

AND KITTY CADILLAC

PLUS DJ- SMOKEYANTHONY

RAFFLE PRIZES FROM THE PLEASURE CHEST

ART EXHIBIT BY ELVIS RISING !!!

Devil's Playground Burlesque on Facebook - HERE

1616 Club & Restaurant Website - HERE

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Celebrate The 100th Birthday Of Vincent Price With HOUSE OF WAX in 3D!

Source: Downtown Independent

I just wanted to quickly pass along this information on a special screening of the Vincent Price classic "House of Wax" at the Downtown Independent cinema her in Los Angeles on June 11th.

Here are the details:

The Board of the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and the Family of Vincent Price invite you to celebrate
THE ONE HUNDREDTH BIRTHDAY OF VINCENT PRICE and THE GRAND OPENING OF THE VINCENT PRICE ART MUSEUM.

Join us for a 3-D screening of 1953's HOUSE OF WAX starring Vincent Price PLUS "THE LIFE AND ART OF VINCENT PRICE" slide show and talk by Vincent's daughter, Victoria Price.

Proceeds raised will benefit THE VINCENT PRICE ART MUSEUM.

Everyone will receive a set of commemorative 3-D glasses!

TICKET INFORMATION:
$85 VIP tickets or $150 for 2 tickets:
($50 per person is tax-deductible)
includes 6:30PM rooftop pre-screening celebration.
Beer, wine, and culinary selections from A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary & Vincent Price.
Meet Victoria Price, Museum Director Karen Rapp, and VPAM Board Members.
$25 Tickets for: "The Art & Life of Vincent Price" and HOUSE OF WAX in 3-D.

More Info: http://www.downtownindependent.com/events/the-one-hundreth-birthday-of

See Also: The Fly - Bobble Head Figure / Shock It To Me! Brings Two Classic Vincent Price Movies To San Francisco's Clay Theatre / Vincent Price Presents - A Wonderful Horror Comics Anthology From Bluewater / House of Wax (1953)(Warner Bros)

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Kinokuniya Bookstores-L.A. Re-Orders Monster Japan Travel Guide

by Armand Vaquer

Above, "The Monster Movie Fan's Guide To Japan" in the travel section at the Little Tokyo store of Kinokuniya Bookstores.

Good news was received this afternoon.

I received a voice mail message from Kinokuniya Bookstores' Little Tokyo (Los Angeles) store stating they have one copy of The Monster Movie Fan's Guide To Japan left and they wanted to re-order more.

Accordingly, I called them back and completed the sale. So, a new supply of the travel guide will be on their travel section bookshelf this coming week.

Above, Kinokuniya Bookstores' Little Tokyo store entrance.

Kinokuniya Bookstores' Little Tokyo store is located in Weller Court at 123 Astronaut E S Onizuka #205, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Telephone: (213) 687-4480.

Besides books, Kinokuniya also carries Japanese CDs, DVDs, toys and calendars.

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Spotlight On Actress Kyoko Okazaki

by Armand Vaquer



Kyoko Okazaki is a rising young actress who appeared in the play, Utsutsu in Los Angeles this month.

She played the character Otose, who was a tomboy and dressed in male clothing to hide from yakuza's boss, Gonzo.

Kyoko was born and raised in Okayama, Japan and has appeared in several movies this past year, including Mr. Sophistication, The Scenesters, Luster and The Runaways.

She attended the Theater of Arts, College For The Contemporary Actor in Los Angeles.



I first met Kyoko at the press and kick-off party for Utsutsu earlier this month and found her to have a bubbly personality.

She has a natural style to her acting and I found her performance in Utsutsu to be compelling.

Above, Kyoko Okazaki with Armand and "Utsutsu" co-star Masamichi Kanobe.

She graciously put me on her personal list for a performance of Utsutsu.

Here is the link to her IMDb page.

Kyoko Okazaki is one to keep an eye out for!

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