Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a quick word before Monki's SXSW wrap-up. This is for our Canadian readers.

I'm told that FIDO was released this week up in the Great White North. I'm also told that this great movie's success in Canada will impact how it is released here in the States. So, I must implore our Canadians to go out and see this flick. Do it for your little angry brothers down south... The movie's great, but I can see why a studio would be scared of it. A zombie comedy that's more in line with PLEASANTVILLE or IRON GIANT than gory Romero? Hard sell for the studio, but if they get behind it and don't puss out, I think they could be surprised by this little flick.

Anyway, Monki will tell you all about FIDO and a few other of his favorites from SXSW in the write-up below. Enjoy!!!

Greetings humans, Monki here with a few quick reviews from the last days I spent in Austin at SXSW.

SXSW was an unexpected treat for me. Saturday night at 6:30pm I was sitting in my apartment looking for something to do. By 7:30pm I was sitting in the convention center watching my first film of the festival. I tried to tell myself that there wasn't going to be anything too spectacular at South By this year, but of course that was just me trying to convince myself that I had made the right decision to take this year off. Thank you Harry for getting me off my ass and seeing some really excellent films.

Okay, when I said excellent films...I wasn't talking about this one.

Other people have already talked about this one, so I won't go too in-depth. Someone I met in another line had the perfect analogy for this film. He said that the movie felt as if it were the opening credit sequence that never ended. It starts slowly, you wait for the opening title card, but it never comes.

The movie creeps along with narration from various members of the event in question but never really finds itself going anywhere. The visuals are dark for almost the entire movie except for one post-modern sequence where an actor from the film is interviewed about his knowledge of the actual event and his experience with death. I think that interview was shot in the same white room they shoot the "Mac vs. PC" commercials. Really strange and off-putting.

When it comes down to it, this movie is about horse-fuckers. I'm not sure if the director meant for you to empathize with the men involved or if he just did a poor job of vilifying them, but personally I can't get over the fact that they were getting boned by a horse...and digging it. Eeesh.

This film is awesome.

Inside the Circle follows a group of breakdancers from Texas as they try to build a reputation as being the best in the state. It starts off as a movie about a few separate crews of incredibly talented dancers and ultimately ends up following two individuals, Josh and Omar. Josh and Omar grew up as very close friends who were both into the same things, including breakdancing. As they grew older, Josh started getting into trouble with the law and the two boys started parting ways.

By the time the movie starts they haven't been close for a couple of years and separately they are known as some of the best dancers in the state. They end up on rival crews and end up meeting a few times in competitions. Once the movie starts focusing on these two, it really soars.

At first when you hear the term 'breakdancing' you get mental images of people wearing Adidas jumpsuits and doing the robot. This film smashes those images and presents an art where your body can contort and bend in ways I previously thought impossible. The competitions in this movie are unbelievable, these guys can absolutely destroy a laminate floor in just a matter of minutes.

Find this movie and watch it. You won't believe what you are seeing. The story is great and the competitions will have you gasping for more. At the time, this was my favorite doc of the festival.

Every year at SXSW I get my 'festival crush.' Okay, at every festival I go to, I get my 'festival crush.' Two years (or three?) ago I fell madly in love with Zoe Bell from Double Dare. (Zoe is now in Tarantino's half of Grindhouse.) At Fantastic Fest this year I fell in love with a worker at the festival who looks just like Linda Cardelli. (My favorite Freak.) This year I fell in love with a radical blonde lesbian activist in Itty Bitty Titty Committee.

I'll get back to her in a minute, but really briefly let me go over the film. IBTC is a film about woman empowerment. A young girl working at a plastic surgery clinic stumbles upon an agent of 'Clits in Action' one night after work. Imagine Clits in Action as the female equivalent of Tyler Durden's group in Fight Club. The CIA gets their message out by general mischievous acts carried out by their members. Spray-painting clinics, defacing mannequins, distributing literature...that kind of stuff. A love triangle forms between the new girl and my crush and my crush's live-in girlfriend. Wackiness ensues.

The movie was just kind of 'meh.' It was fun, but I never really got a sense of whether or not the film was supposed to be a true call out for women to fight back in female stereotypes or just a fun lesbian movie. The occasional empowerment monologue will eventually get overshadowed by jokes about the Washington Monument being 'erected.' Giggle...giggle...

The lack of consistent vision hurts this film. One minute we get Fight Club, the next we get Chasing Amy. All over the place. I will say though, there is a love scene in the film that was incredible.

So, my new crush, Nicole Vicius... she plays Sadie in this movie. She is like a cross between Joey Lauren Adams and Elisha Cuthbert. Wow. So beautiful. Ahem....

King of Kong was my favorite film of SXSW 2007. If you've read anything I've written, you know I'm going to be a slant bit biased towards anything having to do with video games, especially ones based on one of the best/hardest games ever made.

I know you've probably read up on this one already, but I'll give you a quick synopsis. Billy Mitchell set the world record on Donkey Kong in 1984. He grew up into a glorious douchebag. Steve Wiebe, a family man from Redmond, WA, decided in the mid 00's to make a run for the world record high score. What followed over the next few months includes taped records, taped records being stricken, manipulation of the system, Mr. Awesome, hot sauce, an arcade on the east coast, more manipulation, Q-bert, success, failure, and one hell of a good movie.

The King of Kong is a perfect documentary. You root for the good guy, you boo the bad guy, you ache along with the hero and you grow hatred for the villain. The film is shot like a sports movie INCLUDING the montage! Sports training montage!!

In the Q&A director Seth Gordon mentioned that the story rights had been purchased and that he would be directing the narrative feature, I can't wait. Go see this one when it hits theaters. It is brilliant.

Fido was of the films that I was really excited about seeing during SXSW. I ended up finishing off my festival with this being the second punch of my The King of Kong followed by Fido one-two. I can't imagine a better way to have ended my festival.

Fido takes place in an alternate universe 1950ish time frame where a great zombie war took place after some radioactive dust settled over the planet. None of that really matters though, what matters is that zombies exist in this world, and people have become used to them. People die and then come back. In one scene, a commercial played stating, "Help! Grandma's fallen and she is getting back up!!"

Zombcon, the giant company that controls the zombie population, has created a necklace that zombies wear to tame them down and not want the fresh brains of the living any more. Zombies do mindless tasks like deliver milk and the newspaper, help with shopping carts, write reviews for movie websites...ahem...

The Robinsons are the last family on the block to get a zombie, and when mom (the insanely hot Carrie-Anne Moss) finally picks one up, the family takes a bit of a tilt. The father has an aversion to zombies and the son just doesn't care for their new servant.

Ultimately the zombie helps out little Timmy and the two become best of friends. Timmy names his zombie Fido and the rest of the movie deals with the oppression of poor Fido and the adversity he has to deal with.

I hope this movie does really well when it is released later this year. It is a clever, fresh take on an old genre. Billy Connelly is excellent as Fido, only grunting and groaning to vocalize his pain and happiness, well done. Carrie-Anne Moss is awesome as the mother who is also kind of a badass, like Mimi Rogers in Ginger Snaps. (How odd that I'm referencing one of my first SXSW films with my most recent...awesome.)

So, that one will end up in theaters soon, go see it and bring a bunch of your friends with you. You'll love it. Think "Pleasantville meets Night of the Living Dead" and you have Fido, an excellent film.

That wraps up my SXSW 2007 coverage. I had a great time and look forward to hitting next year's festival just as hard. Things are bit hectic right now in my world, I'm actually writing this from Bermuda where I am currently attending the Bermuda International Film Festival and am a few days in already. 8 Bit is screening tonight (Monday) at the Alamo Downtown, and if you are in the area you should go check it out, tickets are only $2 for tonight's screening but next week's screening features a band from the movie! Buy tickets at Alamo's website so you aren't stuck not being able to get in.

Also, my art contest going on in conjunction with the movie just finished up and we got some seriously amazing work in. I'm going through all the entries now, from the music, to the digital art to the painted works to the movies, all very very good stuff. Thank you everyone who entered. I promise I'll knock out the winners very soon so you can all see the fantastic stuff that made it through.

Until next time, from yet another tropical island, back up the tree I go!

-Monki