Our pals over at Yellow Veil will represent worldwide sales for The Spine of Night, an ultra-violent, hand-rotoscoped epic fantasy inspired by the cult classic works of animators Ralph Bakshi and Frank Franzetta. The film is set in a fantasy land ripe with magic and intrigue where a dark force is unleashed sending mankind into an age of ruin. It falls on heroes from different eras and cultures to fight back, and stars Richard E. Grant, Lucy Lawless, Patton Oswalt, Betty Gabriel, Joe Manganiello, Abby Savage, Rob McClure and Fessenden.

Screen Anarchy has the skinny on the SXSW Midnighter. 

THE RANGER team headed down to Austin for its SXSW World Premiere! Check it out in pics here.

Jenn Wexler’s THE RANGER, produced by Glass Eye Pix and Hood River Entertainment, to world premiere in the SXSW Midnighters section!

Teen punks, on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods, come up against the local authority—an unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind.

Cast: Chloë Levine, Granit Lahu, Jeremy Pope, Bubba Weiler, Amanda Grace Benitez, Jeremy Holm, Larry Fessenden

Directed by Jenn Wexler. Written by Jenn Wexler & Giaco Furino. Produced by Andrew van den Houten, Larry Fessenden, Ashleigh Snead, Heather Buckley, and Jenn Wexler. Co-produced by Chris Skotchdopole. Edited by Jenn Wexler & Abbey Killheffer. Cinematography by James Siewert. 

Check it out at SXSW.com.

SXSW comes to a close! We’ve gathered pics from throughout the festival, including the MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND and LIKE ME premieres and the GEP / Dogfish Pictures / Palomo Films party.

Check out the gallery here.

From Yahoo:

At a packed Paramount Theater this evening, the SXSW Film Festival, now at the halfway mark, handed out their big film awards. The fest’s two big competition jury prizes went to director Ana Asensio’s “Most Beautiful Island” …

Shot in super 16mm, it tells the story of undocumented female immigrants struggling to start a life in New York. It is a feature film debut for Asensio, who also stars and wrote the screenplay. “Island” is being billed as a dramatic thriller and was produced by the New York horror master Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix.

LIKE ME premieres at SXSW Monday, March 13th at the Stateside Theater!

From Screen Anarchy:

The internet can be a weird and dark place, which is something I think anybody who has spent any amount of time online can agree on. How much online culture will grow to shape society versus how much society shapes online culture is still something to be seen played out around us but as we see a generation now reaching maturity having spent their entire lives inundated in broadband video and social media it’s clear enough that it’s doing something to us. And what that thing may be is very much the subject of Robert Mockler’s striking debut feature Like Me.

Read full article…

First-time writer-director Ana Asensio’s Most Beautiful Island is a movie you won’t easily forget. The psychological thriller follows a day in the life of an undocumented immigrant woman trying to make ends meet in New York. She decides to take an odd job to get herself out of financial straits, but when she shows up, she’s forced into a dangerous underground world in which her life hangs by a delicate thread. Shot in gritty Super-16, the film intimately captures the desperation and ignominy facing many American immigrants. – Emily Buder

Read full article…

Two Glass Eye Pix pics, Rob Mockler’s LIKE ME and Ana Asensio’s MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND, will world premiere in competition at SXSW.

LIKE ME
A reckless loner, desperate for human connection, sets out on a crime spree that she broadcasts on social media. Her reality quickly splinters into a surreal nightmare as her exploits spiral out of control. Cast: Addison Timlin, Ian Nelson, Larry Fessenden, Jeremy Gardner, Stuart Rudin, Nicolette Pierini. Written & Directed by Rob Mockler. Produced by Jenn Wexler. Producers: Jessalyn Abbott, Rob Mockler, James Belfer, Larry Fessenden. Executive Producers: Peter Phok, Leo Joseph, Anya Joseph, Anthony Gentile, John Gentile. A Dogfish Pictures / Glass Eye Pix production.

MOST BEAUTIFUL ISLAND
An undocumented young woman struggling to begin a new life in New York City is offered an opportunity she can’t pass up. But as day turns to night she discovers she’s been lured to the center of a dangerous game. Cast: Ana Asensio, Natasha Romanova, David Little, Nicholas Tucci, Larry Fessenden, Caprice Benedetti. Written & Directed by Ana Asensio. Produced by Jenn Wexler, Chadd Harbold, Ana Asensio. Producers: Larry Fessenden, Noah Greenberg. Executive Producers: Peter Phok, Gill Holland.

Fessenden also appears in Evan Katz’s SMALL CRIMES, also world premiering at SXSW.

More on these films coming soon. Check out the full SXSW lineup right here!

producers Jacob Jaffke and Peter Phok flank writer director Ti West; West, Ethan Hawke and Jason Blum

Fessenden, Hawke, Ti West

EW has a brand new trailer for the Mickey Keating directed POD, starring Dean Cates, Lauren Ashley Carter, and Brian Morvant, featuring Fessenden.

From the EW breakdown:

Where would the horror genre be without creepy woods and basements? We don’t know—and, fortunately, it’s not something we have to worry about.

That brings us to the creepy woods-and-basement-featuring trailer for the new, SXSW-screened horror movie, Pod. Written and directed by Mickey Keating, the film stars Dean Cates and Lauren Ashley Carter as siblings whose veteran brother, played by Brian Morvant, believes he has a secured a sinister being of some sort in the basement of their family’s remote lakehouse in Maine.

The film also features the always watchable indie-horror nabob Larry Fessenden and will be released to select theaters and on VOD, Aug. 28.

Read On for the trailer and an awesome new poster!