The Fandemic Comic Con Tour recently announced the collection of stars who’ll be attending the three-day comics/pop-culture convention in October at NRG Center. And, once again, it’s a cavalcade of much-adored celebs.
Avengers star Sebastian Stan, who couldn’t attend last year’s Fandemic (but still squared some time away to meet some Houstonians), will definitely be in the house this year, along with Milo Ventimiglia (This is Us), Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings;Stranger Things), Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead), and others.
Famous Houstonians Sean Patrick Flanery (The Boondock Saints) and Jason David Frank (Power Rangers) will be around, as well as cast members from Game of Thrones, The Umbrella Academy, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As for comics creators, look for local faves Michael Golden (Rogue and Bucky O’Hare) and Arthur Suydam (Deadpool), among many others.
For a convention that had to move its 2017 debut to the following year, after Hurricane Harvey put a kibosh on things, Fandemic has now become an event (much like Comicpalooza, which happens every May) both fans and stars flock to.
“[Fans] appreciated the show,” Fandemic CEO John Macaluso tells CultureMap. “We’re excited to come back and do another show. Houston has shown it can certainly handle two shows.”
Of course, Macaluso is hoping for a lot more people this time around. “We were probably in the range of 10,000 last year, so we’ll expect quite a bit more this year,” he says. “I love Texas. The fan base there is unbelievable.”
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Fandemic will be at NRG Center, 1 NRG Park, October 18-20. For tickets and more information, visit the official site.
Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing the slasher subgenre that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.
Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.
Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death — a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask — may not just be a character created for the movies.
Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.
But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.
The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).
Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference — Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard — to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.
While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.
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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters
