Another ActionFest 2011 review: Asheville beginning to cotton to chainsaw assassins

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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From GreenCine Daily:

There’s something to admire in an event that aims to return Southern moviegoing to its drive-in roots. The roster of films ranged from titles that have enjoyed wide festival exposure, including Takashi Miike’s masterful 13 Assassins and Evan Glodell’s flamethrower-scorched romance Bellflower, to a notable revival of Battle Royale, and martial-arts docs Films of Fury and Fightville. Programmed by Colin Geddes, who runs the Midnight Madness series at the behemoth Toronto Film Festival, the lineup scored points for ferreting out a batch of overlooked foreign-market titles for US premieres.

Yet, as these kinds of things go, ActionFest is still trying to find its footing in that niche-within-the-niche of festivals devoted to genre moviemaking, which include Austin’s Fantastic Fest and Montreal’s Fantasia—firmly established cultural phenomena that are buzzing social occasions in those cities and irresistible magnets for every kind of cult-film freak. Hanging out at the Carolina Cinemas about 15 minutes south of the region’s most charming downtown, it was difficult to have any sense that Asheville (at large) really gave a hoot about claiming ActionFest as its own. But maybe this left-leaning city of free spirits was beginning to cotton to monster trucks and chainsaw assassins. Attendance was up from the inaugural program, a sign that the event was finding its audience (not surprisingly: indie hipster kids, of which bohemian Asheville has a supply as boundless as its marijuana, craft-beer, and vegan biscuit gravy resources). And the movies kicked ass.