Here’s footage of Dominic Monaghan preparing for his fight against Elijah Wood:Īnd here’s footage of James McDonagh prepping for his fight against Tim League (which, yes, he won):Īll in all, my second day at Fantastic Fest 2011 was an absolute blast, but I’m completely wiped out this morning. I would’ve been thrilled to catch either of these, but the Fantastic Debates are incredibly difficult to get into (before I landed that ticket to You’re Next, I had a pass to the Debates…but found out later that I wouldn’t have been able to get in, anyway thanks to another snafu with the online ticketing system).
The other big-name fight was between Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan (Monaghan reportedly whupped Frodo’s ass). This year, the headlining fight was between Tim League and the aforementioned James McDonagh. I have no regrets about attending You’re Next, but if I did, it would be that I missed the Fantastic Debates.
Urban explorer 2011 full#
Yesterday, I was downtown at the Drafthouse for nearly 15 hours, running from one end of the South Lamar compound to the other in order to get everything I needed to done: in the morning, I picked up my “boarding passes” for the day, met up with Best Worst Movie’s Andrew Matthews for lunch, interviewed Tom Six and Human Centipede 2 star Laurence Harvey (both were extremely nice, and Six was gracious when I told him I didn’t like Centipede 2 nearly as much as the first one that interview will be posted October 2 nd), checked out the Fantastic Arcade, and then-finally-got around to seeing some movies.Īfter that, I met up with a large group of people to attend the You’re Next screening (you can read my full review for that awesome flick here), and once that wrapped, it was two in the morning and time to head home. Make of all that what you will.īut let’s move on. If you’re playing along at home, that means that Fantastic Fest’s online ticketing system has something between a 50-75% success rate, depending on how you wanna look at it. So, day one was a success, days two and three were a bit of a wash (though I ended up seeing almost everything I wanted to yesterday thanks to some string-pulling), and day four was a runaway success.
And lemme tell ya: if you end up 417th in line for anything, chances are you’re not going to end up getting what you wanted.Īll of that said, I managed to end up #8 in line this morning, which means that I landed tickets to everything I wanted to see today.
Under the online ticketing system, a random number is generated for those “standing” in the virtual queue, which means that-even if you’re in the right place at the right time-bad luck might mean that you end up being 417th in line (as I did this morning). With the old system, getting in line early meant landing tickets that corresponded with your willingness to get up early and stand in line: if you were a die-hard fan (or really looking forward to something), you could all but guarantee your entry into the film-in-question by getting in line early. Now that we’re three days into the Festival, I can confirm that this sentiment has not changed: online ticketing seems like a good idea, but in practice? It’s been the source of some pretty serious frustration for those attending Fantastic Fest 2011 (particularly journalists and online bloggers). All I knew was, I didn’t wanna go through all that again, and the idea of being able to secure passes online seemed like a massive improvement. At least, that’s what I thought when Fantastic Fest 2011 got started.