Pictured left to right:  Kiowa Winans, the Ink costume and Jamin Winans

Over StarFest weekend, I had the chance to sit down with Jamin and Kiowa Winans, director and producer of Ink.  The film was screened as the Saturday night film, and was a real treat.  This conversation happened the next morning and was easily the longest and possibly the most fun interview I was involved with all weekend.  Right now, the film is playing in Denver at the Starz Filmcenter, but keep an eye out for a wider release and eventual DVD!  You can find out more at the film’s official website.  My review will be up in the next day or so.

Here’s the trailer, with the interview below:

Our sincere thanks to Jamin and Kiowa for sitting down with us.  It’s a real pleasure to talk about a special film like this.

 

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Last year, Barry and I had the great privelage and opportunity to speak with (clockwise from the top center) Mike Nelson, Ben Trandem, Troy McCall and Lance Hendrickson from Random CreatureFace Films.  This interview is WAY delayed, but it’s still a great listen.  We did the interview in the HorrorFest room, so there’s a fair amount of background noise, and there are a couple spoilers near the end, just to give fair warning.  I’ll also be posting my review of the Summer School DVD shortly.

 

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At StarFest this past weekend, Billy Flynn from Geek Radio Daily, Chris from The Jesus Geeks and I sat down VERY early to do an introduction to podcasting panel.    The goal of this panel was to explain how to go about getting a podcast together from concept, to equipment, to marketing.  We appreciate everyone who showed up and we’re planning on doing an expanded one next year that won’t be at 8am on a Saturday morning.

Links mentioned on the panel:

Audacity
Podiobooks.com
Imagine That Studios
Podcast Pickle
Juice
Jazler Show
Levelator
1and1 Internet Hosting
Wordpress
Feedburner

Feel free to e-mail me with any questions

 

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I just wanted to say a quick word about the Intro To Podcasting panel that I did with Billy Flynn at Geek Radio Daily and Chris Martens from The Jesus Geeks.  I wanted to say thank you to each of you who came to the panel.  We all really enjoyed doing it and are planning on doing an expanded panel next year.  You guys had great questions and really appreciated all of you.  We should all have the audio from the panel up within the next day or so.

Well, we’ve made it back from StarFest and are on the road to recovery!  We had a great time and will be posting the interviews we got over the next couple of weeks.

As with previous years at StarFest, we were able to talk with quite a few of the guests who came out.  We got to talk with Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, William Katt, Patricia Tallman and Jed Rowen.

What was a bit unusual was that there were directors for several films who came out and got to talk with them as well.  We had the opportunity to sit down with Meni Tsirbas (Battle for Terra), Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan) and Jamin Winans (Ink).  We had a great time talking with these gentlemen and are grateful for the time they gave us.  We should be posting the interviews with Mr. Winans and Mr. Collet-Serra this week, but my interview with Mr. Tsirbas will most likely have to wait until the film’s release as I essentially reviewed the film in that interview and I can’t talk about it until May 1st.

As is tradition with past StarFests, we’ll also be posting links to audio/video interviews that Geek Radio Daily and Jonja.net had as well.  Even if you didn’t make it out, you’ll feel like you did!

Just in case we haven’t been pimping StarFest enough lately on the site and on the podcast, I’m about to do some more!  This is for those of you who think that sci-fi conventions aren’t for movie geeks.  You would be QUITE mistaken.  Here’s a rundown of some of the movie panel highlights coming to StarFest:

-StarFest MC Kevin Atkins will be hosting a presentation about Ray Harryhousen including a screening of The Ray Harryhausen Chronicles, some of Ray’s lost projects and what he’s doing today.  There will also be a special screening of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad followed with a look at the production of the special effects.

-We will also be getting a presentation about Alien Trespass.  It’s already opened in limited release, but it’s been getting great word of mouth online.  This should be a fun time and will get us all to go seek it out afterward.

-The Orphan will be coming out with director Jaume Collet-Serra to show us a bit of his latest film.  It could be yet another scary kid movie, or it could be something special.  The trailer looks quite interesting.

-A film I hadn’t heard of until the announcement, we’ll also be getting a look at Battle For Terra.  Some people may say it looks like an alegory for the current war on terror, but I think it looks like it might be quite good regardless of message.

-Finally, we’re getting a presentation for the Tim Burton-produced 9.  I saw this trailer in front of Coraline, and I can’t wait to see more of this.

This doesn’t take into account that Fox is sponsoring a Wolverine costume contest, the Of Gods and Men screening and everything else going on over at HorrorFest.  What I’m getting to is that you don’t necessarily need to be a pure sci-fi geek to enjoy StarFest.  I’ll be putting up more articles looking at HorrorFest and ComicFest in the next couple days just so you know what you’ll be missing.

Still, even if you can’t join us for the fun, you can be with us in spirit.  We’ll be blogging all weekend and we’ll also be appearing in at least some of the streaming that Geek Radio Daily will be doing.  Keep an eye on their Ustream.tv site over the weekend of April 17-19!

Well, we’re down to less than two weeks until StarFest.  I’m putting together some highlights for this year, but I thought I’d put up the video of the interview we did with Nichelle Nichols last year.  Our thanks to Jeff Norris over at iSCiFi.tv for taping last year

 

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I knew that when it was confirmed that William Katt was coming to StarFest in Denver, Steve and Kathe Walker were off to a good start.  What I couldn’t expect, however, was just how many awesome people would be lined up with more still to come!  I’ll post these in order that they’ve been announced.  If you’re a geek ANYWHERE near Denver, CO, you’re crazy not to come to StarFest and join in the fun.

Robert Picardo has established himself firmly in the Star Trek universe with his portrayal of the holographic Doctor in Star Trek:  Voyager.  In fact, Mr. Picardo was easily the highlight of that show for me.  For us movie geeks, though, you’ll know Robert Picardo as a mainstay of Joe Dante’s films, appearing in The Howling, Explorers, Innerspace, Amazon Women on the Moon, The ‘Burbs, and my personal favorite as Forster in Gremlins 2:  The New Batch.  Mr. Picardo will be at StarFest for all three days.

Ethan Philips is most likely known by those attending StarFest as Neelix in Star Trek Voyager, but he is a GREAT example of actors who have an extremely varied and versatile filmography.  If you’re a child of the 80’s, you know you’ve seen him on Benson.  You’ll also recognize him from his appearances in films like Glory, The Man Without A Face, Wagons East, and Bad Santa.  He’s currently working with HorrorFest guest Ford Austin on the film Dahmer vs. Gacy.  Mr. Phillips will be appearing at StarFest for all three days.

Brent Spiner is obviously known to everyone for his role as Commander Data in Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  Did you know, though, that he also appeared in Tales From the Darkside, Night Court and Sledge Hammer! in the 1980’s?  Mr. Spiner always adds a lot of fun to the movies he appears in.  My favorite appearance of Mr. Spiner outside of TNG may very well be when he played Dr. Brackish Okun in Independance Day.  Mr. Spiner is currently appearing in a production of Man of La Mancha in Los Angeles and has also release an album of musical radio drama called Dreamland with Mark Hamill and Maude Maggart.  Mr. Spiner will be appearing at StarFest on Saturady, April 18th.

Katee Sackhoff went into Battlestar Galactica in a pretty tough position.  As if changing the gender of Starbuck wasn’t enough, it’s very easily argued that the change in tone from the original series to the new series changed the character of Starbuck more than any other character in the show.  Fan backlash began before a frame had been filmed.  If Ms. Sackhoff was phased in the slightest, she’s never shown it.  She has confidently taken the reimagining of Starbuck and made it hers.  She has taken what was really nothing more than a playboy and created one of the most compelling characters in science fiction today.  Ms. Sackhoff will be appearing at StarFest on Saturday, April 18th.

We had a great time at StarFest last year, but this year is shaping up to be even better and more fun!  We’re also working on planning a bit of a get together while in Denver for fans of our show, Geek Radio Daily and The Jesus Geeks as all three shows will have representatives at StarFest this year.  While we will make every attempt to talk to as many guests as possible, there is no guarantee that we will be able to talk everyone.  Some guests’ schedules will just simply be too busy.  We’re also looking forward to seeing who comes out for HorrorFest and we’ll be posting some video of the fun as well.

Well, it’s getting to be that time of year again.  I know not a lot of our listeners/readers will be going to StarFest in Denver, but we’re getting excited for the fun to come.  I still have one interview from last year that I’ve been trying to get finished since April, and that’s with the good gentlemen from Random Creatureface Films, but that will hopefully be up this week (along with a DVD review).

Anyway, the first confirmed guest has been announced for this year’s StarFest, and it will make any geek in their 30’s VERY happy and bouncy.  William Katt has most recently been seen in an episode of this season’s Heroes, and he’s known by horror fans for his work in House or Carrie.  The role that most people know him for, though, is as English teacher Ralph Hinkley in The Greatest American Hero.  If you’re a child of the 80’s, you really owe it to yourself to look at his filmography and see everything he’s been in.  Chances are that you’ll probably even remember the episodes Mr. Katt appeared in.  This is one of the great things about the 70’s/80’s.  If there was an actor/actress you loved, chances are they would appear in a bunch of shows.  Mr. Katt just happens to be good in everything he shows up in.

As with last year, just because a guest is confirmed doesn’t mean that we’ll have a chance to sit down with them, but we’ll make every effort to talk to Mr. Katt if his schedule allows.

Photo by pinguino k.