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2023 marks another year where the Academy Awards have shuttered horror from the competition, but genre fans know better than to expect anything less. Although there have always been exceptions in the past, such as "The Exorcist," "The Fly," and "Get Out," the Oscars' track record speaks for itself. But the truth is that horror folks don't really need the attention of the prestigious awards body when they have a better outlet to see their favorites receive some industry recognition.

If you're a horror nerd, then the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards is where you want to be paying attention. Although the famed magazine started this back in the '90s, it's only been in the past few years that they've started making it a yearly tradition. On top of that, the one-hour ceremony, which usually airs on Shudder, is curated for horror folks by horror folks. Where else are you going to...

"That shouldn't be there... it burned down! The watchtower, it burned down years ago... whole section of the forest! It shouldn't... be here..." Another excellent animated horror short to feast upon. 100,000 Acres of Pine is a horror short created by filmmaker Jennifer Alice Wright, as one of her projects studying at The Animation Workshop school in Denmark. Ranger Megan Patel must uncover the mystery surrounding her brother's death. Following his footsteps, she discovers a darkness she might not escape. Featuring the voices of Sarah Airriess, Lawrence Marvit, and Kirk Johnson. This is only 7 minutes but it has some impressive visuals and a chilling atmosphere with the creepy forest. Plus the final reveal is awesome! Enjoy. Thanks to Short of the Week for featuring this one. Brief description from YouTube: "Ranger Megan Patel must uncover the mystery surrounding her brother’s death. But following his footsteps, Megan discovers a darkness she might not escape.

With the Sundance Film Festival coming to a close, Oscar nominations out and Specialty distributors looking ahead, this weekend will have more new limited releases than the last few, post-holidays weekends. Bleecker Street is opening Joe Penna’s Arctic starring Mads Mikkelsen as a man stranded near the North Pole following a plane crash. The Orchard is opening The Unicorn by Robert Schwartzman, who hosted an event at Sundance last weekend. Starring Nick Rutherford who also co-wrote, The Unicorn will head out to theaters this weekend before going on-demand next week. The ‘widest’ Specialty roll out on this continent this weekend will be Bollywood’s Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga from Fip, which will take the title by director Shelly Chopra Dhar to 192 locations in North America. And Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger was at the Sundance Film Festival with doc Cold Case Hammarskjöld, but the director has also...

If you don’t know what a “unicorn” is in the parlance of the bedroom, the title of this film may come as a bit of a surprise for you. A romantic comedy through and through, it explores a cute and fairly commonplace cinematic relationship, with the added bonus of throwing in something new. Despite the sexy title, which is code for a person who wants to engage in an encounter with a couple, just know that if you’re bemoaning the lack of rom coms in the marketplace these days, this movie is a tonic. It’s here to make the strong case that the genre has some life left in it. A fun little independent flick, it offers more than its fair share of smiles. The film is a romantic comedy about a couple who inadvertently learns that they need to spice up their relationship. Caleb (Nick Rutherford...

For all its inclusion of raunchy dialogue, seriocomic carnality, and oral sex (implied to be happening beneath a strategically placed bedsheet), there is something oddly quaint about “The Unicorn,” director Robert Schwartzman’s lightly amusing trifle about two long-engaged millennials who contemplate a walk on the wild side — specifically, a threesome with another man or woman — before forging marital ties.

In terms of structure, predictability, and ultimate payoff, the film resembles nothing so much as the formulaic risqué farces that once provided gainful employment for faded TV and movie stars in dinner theaters decades ago. On the plus side, however, lead players Lauren Lapkus and co-scripter Nick Rutherford are amply engaging and sympathetic, even when the behavior of their characters is cringe-worthy embarrassing. No, never mind: Make that especially when those characters are humiliating themselves for our enjoyment.

Malory (Lapkus) and Caleb (Rutherford) — or, as they call each other, Mal...

Forget Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, here’s Caleb & Malory & The Unicorn, in this first trailer for director Robert Schwartzman’s comedy.

The film, from The Orchard, stars Nick Rutherford and Lauren Lapkus as a newly engaged (if not newly involved – they’ve been together four years) couple whose eyes are opened when they visit Malory’s free-spirited parents on the occasion of the latter’s 25th anniversary.

The secret to a long marriage, it turns out, is a unicorn. More bluntly, a third sex partner.

The logline: When an engaged couple, Caleb and Malory is forced to visit Palm Springs for a weekend to celebrate Malory’s parents’ 25th wedding vow renewal, they discover the apparent secret to their happy marriage. Determined to properly celebrate their own ‘re-engagement,’ they set out on a wild night, but this fun and innocent new experience takes an intense turn,...

Filmmaker Chris McInroy is no stranger to these pages or to much of our readership: his short films such as Bad Guy Number 2 and Death Metal have screened at festivals around the world and won numerous awards. McInroy's latest opus, We Summoned a Demon, finds him yet again wading into the hilariously bloody and inept actions of an earnest yet arguably not-so-smart guy (played by the brilliant Kirk C. Johnson), as two guys try to get some dark powers to help them talk to girls. Of course, as is expected, it doesn't exactly go as planned. After its extensive festival run, the short is now online for your viewing pleasure!...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Screen Media has secured the North American rights to Robert Schwartzman’s (Dreamland) sophomore film, The Unicorn, which had its world premiere at the recent SXSW Film Festival. The romantic comedy, which will be released sometime this year, stars comedians Lauren Lapkus and Nick Rutherford as an indecisive couple thrust into the most uncomfortable night of their lives when they decide to invite a third party into their relationship. Lucy Hale, Beck Bennett, Dree Hemingway, Beverly D’Angelo, John Kapelos, Maya Kazan, Darrell Britt-Gibson, and Kyle Mooney co-star. Rutherford, a former SNL writer, co-wrote the screenplay with Kirk C. Johnson and Will Elliott. Schwartzman and Russell Wayne Grove produced the pic, while Bret Disend, Al Di, Mark Weiss, Jessica James, Bo An, Viola Du, and Nick Gross served as executive producers. Seth Needle negotiated the deal for Screen Media with ICM and Submarine on behalf of the filmmakers.

Parade Deck Films...

Exclusive: In his second feature directorial, The Unicorn, Coppola scion Robert Schwartzman continues his knack for painting funky relationships on screen.

While his 2016 Tribeca Film Festival world premiere Dreamland centered around a cash-strapped piano player who aims to solve his financial problems via a cash-for-sex opportunity with an older woman, in The Unicorn, engaged couple Caleb (Nick Rutherford) and Malory (Lauren Lapkus) seem to have reached a plateau, and as this clip shows, their love life could use some electricity.

Thank God for Malory’s parents being role models. After 25 years of marriage, they truly know the secret to a long love life: threesomes. So, Caleb and Malory set about seeking that third wheel who’ll provide that je ne sais quoi, however, then love takes a turn unveiling their true souls.

The pic is written by former Saturday Night Live writer Rutherford, Rooster Teeth Shorts’ Kirk C. Johnson and Will Elliott.

With Sundance 2018 wrapped up, the next major American festival is South by Southwest Film Festival and today they’ve announced their lineup. Opening with John Krasinski’s horror film A Quiet Place, it also includes some of our most-anticipated films of the year: Jody Hill’s Observe & Report follow-up The Legacy of a Whitetail Deer Hunter (which Netflix has announced they’ll release), Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, and Julia Hart’s Miss Stevens follow-up, the sci-fi film Fast Color (pictured above) starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

Check out the lineup below for the festival that takes place March 9-18 in Austin. It also includes many Sundance 2018 titles, and you can see our reviews of those here.

Narrative Feature Competition

Ten world premieres; ten unique ways to celebrate the art of storytelling. Selected from 1,408 narrative feature submissions in 2018.

Family

Director/Screenwriter: Laura Steinel

When an emotionally stunted 30 year-old woman is tasked...

Exclusive: Heading into the market, Los Angeles-based Cinedigm has expanded its relationship with Rooster Teeth to encompass international sales on a trio of titles.

For the first time, the parties will offer Day 5, Rwby and Crunch Time to Mipcom buyers from Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.

Cinedigm is the exclusive sales agent on these titles and represents digital, home video and linear television rights.

“Our audience has been thrilled with the new premium content we’ve been releasing on First, the Rooster Teeth Svod platform,” said Rooster Teeth CEO Matt Hullum.

“From the apocalyptic drama Day 5 to the hilarious sci-fi comedy Crunch Time to the breakout anime hit Rwby, we’re excited to share this content with new audiences around the world.”

Day 5 (pictured) is a six-part long-form dramatic series set in the immediate aftermath of a fatal sleep epidemic as a drug addict, a doctor and a red-eye pilot search for answers...

After solidly tackling the post-apocalyptic thriller with “Day 5,” Rooster Teeth takes a swing at the science-fiction comedy genre with its second, “Crunch Time,” and hits it out of the park once again.

Read More: ‘Day 5’ Review: Rooster Teeth’s Post-Apocalyptic Drama Thrills (And Kills)

Starring five lovable weirdos as eccentric science students, “Crunch Time” clips along at a breakneck pace, seamlessly weaving wacky gags and colorful characters into its intriguing plot exposition. From the discomfort of an interrogation room, the characters in “Crunch Time” recount the shenanigans that got them handcuffed to a metal desk answering to two steely-faced detectives. (Brett Morrin and “True Detective’s” Michael Hyatt, no less). The motley crew explains the origins of “the brain-frame,” a “machine that allows you to place yourself inside another person’s mind.”

Read More: ‘David’ Review: ‘Marcel The Shell’ Meets ‘Twin Peaks’ In Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Surreal Series...

Some of the greatest scientific discoveries were accidental, but many of the world’s catastrophes were caused by petty foolishness. The new web comedy series “Crunch Time” from and Rooster Teeth assumes both of those ideas, examining what happens when ingenuity and selfishness causes a cataclysmic event and if it’s possible to walk back from the brink of total destruction

Read More: ‘Crunch Time’ Featurette: A Look Inside The Rooster Teeth Sci-Fi Comedy Series Starring Samm Levine

The series follows four brilliant grad students who started making money by placing people in a lucid dream machine they created. But as a result of their actions, they create a small but potentially world-ending black hole in their college lab. Now, they’re being interrogated by top-secret government operatives who are tasked with cleaning up their mess, only they must cooperate with the scientists to do so. The problem is that...

It’s Sunday so it must be time for another installment of VOD Vault, taking a look at some of this weeks on-demand releases that have hit various VOD platforms. This time round we’re looking at a film only available via YouTube (to buy or view via the sites subscription service YouTube Red), the sci-fi comedy Lazer Team; and action-drama Mercury Plains, starring Scott Eastwood (Fury, Dawn Patrol) and Nick Chinlund (Training Day, Con Air).

Lazer Team

Stars: Burnie Burns, Gavin Free, Michael Jones, Colton Dunn, Alexandria DeBerry, Alan Ritchson, Steve Shearer, Kirk C. Johnson, Benjamin Scott, Johnny Walter, Chris Demarais, Jeremy St. James | Directed by Matt Hullum

Part Pixels, part Laserblast, Lazer Team comes from Rooster Teeth, the uber-successful YouTube channel behind long-running web series such as Red vs. Blue and Rwby; and tells the story of four idiots who accidentally shoot down an alien spacecraft with fireworks...

Can there be anything funnier than seeing Clint Howard make fun of your “yutes” word choice? Well save of course for the obvious My Cousin Vinny judge, I think not.

But that’s not why I gathered you here today. Bradley Jackson’s brilliantly bored mind is why we’re here.

Intramural is a sports comedy written by Jackson in his sophomore year of college about a boy named Caleb (played by Jake Lacey) who is a fifth year college senior in denial about life after school. In his efforts to relive his college career as freshman intramural football champion, he tries to reunite the team, even after his friend Grant Rosenfalis (Nick Kocher) became paralyzed since the last time they played.

Andrew Disney directs this comedy, which stars Lacey and Kocher in addition to Nikki Reed, Nick Rutherford, Gabriel Luna, Brian McElhaney and SNL members Kate McKinnon, Beck Bennett and Jay Pharoah.

It’s always nice to see a labor of love make its way to the big screen. More often than not, film festivals are the proving grounds where young filmmakers cut their teeth seeing their low budget passion projects play before audiences and critics. Austin is home to several film fests, and it’s always great to see a local production find a home at one of them. Austin High is the brainchild of Will Elliott and Kirk Johnson, and it’s having its world premiere at this year’s Austin Film Festival. They co-wrote the screenplay (from a story by star Michael S. Wilson), co-produced the shoot and then co-edited the footage to create the final product, a feature length comedy. While making a film is a collaborative effort that requires lots of hard work from multiple people, Elliott, Johnson and Wilson seem to be the main creative force and in a lot of ways the...

By Sean O’Connell

Hollywoodnews.com: A handful of stellar titles with Oscar aspirations have been programmed into this year’s Austin Film Festival schedule, which begins on Oct. 20 with an as-yet-unnamed Opening Night selection.

In between, Aff audiences will get their first looks at Alexander Payne’s “The Descendants,” Steve McQueen’s “Shame,” Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” Rodrigo Garcia’s “Albert Nobbs” and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene” – all films with awards hopes that will screen as part of the festival’s Marquee category.

“We’re proud to be taking our program in some exciting new directions while maintaining our focus on strong writing and engaging stories,” said new Film Programmers Stephen Jannise and Stephen Belyeu.

In addition, the fest has set up special screenings of “Toy Story” (presented by John Lasseter), an “Edward Scissorhands” screening, and a tribute to Polly Platt...