| — | Fantastic Fest 2024 |
Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or for Austinites, Master Pancake) and you get the idea. Comedian Doug Benson and some friends, with microphones, cracking wise during a movie. Except we all chose which movie to screen from suggestions made by the audience and the panelists.
Out of several choices from across the spectrum, the winner was 1995’s Hackers. It was pretty funny on its own (unintentionally). And the panel was more sparse with their heckles than I expected, as in I could hear most of the dialog and follow the plot. But they got in some funny jabs and made me laugh.
One audience suggestion got general agreement from the audience: we didn’t want to screen it this evening, but maybe everyone should check it out on their own sometime if they can find it. This was the 2008 Rambo movie, but a “cleaned up” version with all swearing and violence removed. Benson characterized the original movie as one half genocide followed by one half Sylvester Stallone taking down the perpetuators, so no one was sure how long the sanitized version would actually be…
