10/30/09: The 2nd Annual Vermont Horror Fest frightened a sold out crowd Friday at the Outer Space Cafe.

Two local directors, Mike Turner and Owen Mulligan and a recent Hollywood transplant, Rob Schmidt, entertained the crowd with their terrifying films.... Read more

Scientific studies have told us two things about optimists. First, they’re more apt to delude themselves than pessimists. Second, they’re also more likely to succeed.... Read more

Many reviewers appear confused or at least forgetful in their attempt to place this documentary in its proper historical context. The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt is typical of the memory challenged, writing that This Is It “can be called the first concert rehearsal movie ever.” Um, Kirk, maybe you’ve heard of a little film called Let It Be?... Read more

Seen enough Saw sequels? For horror fans, this Halloween weekend offers some alternatives to the standard big-screen fear-mongering. On Thursday, the Firehouse Center For the Visual Arts kicks off a weekly series of David Cronenberg screenings with Videodrome, the 1983 conceptual chiller that gave cinema the indelible image of James Woods popping a VHS tape into his abdomen ... and playing it.... Read more

About halfway through Paranormal Activity, a twentysomething guy (Micah Sloat) who’s investigating weird happenings that scare his live-in girlfriend (Katie Featherston), decides to ask the possible supernatural culprit why it’s being so coy. “Hey,” he yells, “we haven’t had anything interesting happen for a while!”... Read more

I remember once reading an article about a technique with which author William Burroughs experimented: He’d scissor a manuscript or magazine story into strips, toss them in the air and piece together a new work reflecting the random pattern in which the scraps had landed. Something tells me that Guillermo Arriaga read that article, too.... Read more

Charlotte-based documentary filmmaker Fritz Mitchell says in the intro to his latest work, “Like fishermen, gamblers are known for stretching the truth.” That’s a provocative statement, especially considering that the film’s subject matter — and narrator of sorts — is the late gambling icon Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder.... Read more

A few years ago, you wouldn’t have gone to the Vermont International Film Festival expecting to see Troll 2, a hilariously inept “horror” film from 1990, and a documentary exploring its status as the Best Worst Movie. Or The House of the Devil, a campy-looking satanic scarefest.... Read more

Most children’s movies combine dumbed-down versions of adult plots with kid-friendly pacing, loud noises and bright visuals. Spike Jonze’s riff on Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book Where the Wild Things Are does the exact opposite.... Read more

ESPN. Great filmmaking. Not exactly synonymous. At least, not until now. A couple of years ago the sports network’s Bill Simmons had a brainstorm. “I was watching an old HBO Sports documentary,” the columnist recalled recently,” and got mad that HBO had this monopoly ...... Read more