As we’ve been covering Tommy Wirkola’s upcoming Nazi zombie comedy Dead Snow - soon to premiere at Sundance 2009 - in these pages, every post has had one phrase in common: “They’re holding back the money shots.”
Well, they’re not holding back any more. Twitch has just been given a first look at a brand new clip - English subtitled, even - in which we get the gore. And it is absolutely fantastic. The balance of tension and comedy is perfectly spot on, with both elements having me howl out loud, and the effects are pleasingly squishy. Oh, yes please. Here’s the Sundance synopsis:
For eight medical students, Easter vacation begins innocently enough. They pack their cars full of ski equipment and enough beer to fuel their escape from everyday life to the snowy, isolated hills outside of Øksfjord, Norway. Once there, they receive a late-night visit from a shady hiker, who tells them a story about Nazi occupation of the area during World War II. After doing their fair share of raping and pillaging, the dreaded battalion faced a brutal and vengeful uprising by the citizens of the town. The soldiers who managed to survive the onslaught, including their dreaded leader Colonel Herzog, were driven into the hills by the angry mob, where they supposedly froze to death, never to be seen again. But if the horror genre has taught us anything, it’s that the raucous behavior and promiscuity of the younger generation always have a way of bringing evil spirits back to life.Director Tommy Wirkola pulls no punches in the carnage department—heads roll, blood flows, and entrails ooze as the young vacationers attempt to make it through the night. Wirkola adeptly utilizes the snow’s eerie and ominous backdrop to its fullest extent while orchestrating this wickedly gory, yet somehow delightful, tale of Nazi zombie terror.
Check out all the clips and the trailer below the break!
Continue Reading "DEAD SNOW’s Nazi Snow Zombies Bring The Gore!"...
Oh, this does my heart good.
Several years back now French director Eric Valette made his feature film debut with Malefique, a film which I adore and believe wholeheartedly is one of the most confident and assured debut films I have ever come across. It was a tight, confined space horror film; one that showed Valette was a master at manipulating location and character to maximum affect and showed he had far more concern for the classics of the genre - Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone in this case - than for any current trends. It’s a truly great film, and one that is horribly underseen.
And so I winced when Valette was announced as the director of the Hollywood remake of One Missed Call, the second rate J-horror film whose original came while the movement was already in its death throes. It came as no surprised when One Missed Call failed - and failed miserably - but still, it did so poorly that I worried that Valette might be done as a feature director, at least on this side of the ocean.
But no worries. He’s back with Hybrid, a film that once again showcases what made Valette interesting in the first place. He’s still nodding to another time - though a different era this time out - in an effort to put together what could be a fantastic nod to classic b film making.
Late one night, a mysterious car is brought into the Chicago police impound garage after a deadly traffic accident. The garage’s female mechanic, Tilda, and her young, hip fellow mechanics soon discover the car has a mind of its own: it morphs into different cars to confuse them and instead of needing an engine to run, it breathes. It’s a killing machine that is capable of outrunning and outwitting humans. In a high-octane fight to the death, it’s our group of determined humans versus the car in this supernatural action-adventure.
This is more a sales reel than a trailer - pay close enough attention to the audio and you can tell post production is not yet 100% - but it’s a fun one. Check it below the break.
Continue Reading "MALEFIQUE’s Eric Valette Is Back On Form. The Trailer For HYBRID Arrives."...
This one’s for regular Twitch-lad Rhythm-X who, in the comments section for yesterday’s post about Highlander director Russell Mulcahey’s upcoming action flick Courier with Adrien Brody, asked why we hadn’t yet said anything about Mulcahey’s current project - the currently in post action-noir Give ‘Em Hell Malone. The answer, of course, is because we are dumb. And so here it is.
The cult Aussie director steps firmly into noir territory with this one, casting Thomas Jane as a rugged private eye hired to retrieve a mysterious gangster. Big bad mob man - Ving Rhames - is going to get in the way of course, and the obligatory femme fatale - played by Chris (sister of Donnie) Yen - will surely complicate matters. And many, many asses will be kicked.
Critics have always slammed Mulcahey for shooting his films like music videos - the exact reason his fans have always loved him - and the early sales promo for this one certainly showcases the trademark style. Check it out below the break.
Continue Reading "First Trailer For Russell Mulcahey’s GIVE ‘EM HELL MALONE"...
Well, now, this is a handy bit of timing. For my regular Webstalker column over at the AMC Blogs this week I wrote a piece about the surprising amount of hype around Lionsgate’s upcoming My Bloody Valentine 3D and the revival of 3D tech in horror film. Seriously, people are buzzed about this and after running a piece last week roasting Lionsgate and Joe Drake for their slash and burn approach to handling everything the studio greenlit before Drake came aboard - the failures of Midnight Meat Train and Repo were very deliberate - it seemed only right to give credit where it’s due. So there you go, Drake, a tip of the hat for doing one right.
The piece went live this morning, pretty much right at the same time that a new clip from the film became available online. I take this as a sign that cannot be ignored, therefore you will find the clips and trailer below the break.
Continue Reading "Apparently Today Is MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D Day"...
Feeling lackluster about the upcoming Steven Spielberg-Peter Jackson live action version of Tintin? Well, you’re not the only one. Despite the high profile talent behind the camera nobody seems to be paying much attention to this one so far. Heck, nobody even particularly noticed when Tintin himself - actor Thomas Sangster - dropped out of the film. But things just got a whole lot more interesting with a pair of casting announements.
It already seemed pretty much inevitable that Jackson regular Andy Serkis would have a place in the film and his part as Captain Haddock fits like a glove. But we already knew about that one. The new news? Shaun of the Dead and Spaced alumni Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as bowler-hatted detectives Thomson and Thompson. Whee! Keep casting like this and suddenly people are going to notice.
[Updated with an additional block of stills and a new teaser poster of Kevin Sorbo.]
Just a couple days ago we were fortunate enough to share the first few character shots from Albert Pyun’s long-in-the-works sequel to classic 80’s fantasy flick The Sword And The Sorcerer, the new film being titled Tales Of An Ancient Empire. Those first shots were taken from rehearsals and were shared purely to give fans a look at the characters and feel of the world but now we’ve got the real thing: a trio of production stills taken from the second day of principal photography. No sign of Christopher Lambert yet but we do have some very good looks at lead actress Melissa Ordway as Tanis and Kevin Sorbo as Aedan, threatening someone with a big hunk of meat. Suddenly I’m hungry.
Hit the link below for a look!
The names may not be quite as large as they were with the 2008 edition of the HAF - Asia’s largest co-production market - when it seemed every Asian director with any sort of name recognition at all had a project represented there, but the projects accepted to the 2009 edition have just been announced and it’s an impressive list. Want to know that The Chaser‘s Na Hong-Jin will be doing next? A little thriller titled The Murderer. Arthouse darling Naomi Kawase? And Protect, Protected. Hansel and Gretel director Im Pil-Sung? The Flower of Evil. Ryoo Seung-Wan, Ning Hao, Jack Neo, Dante Lam ... they’ve all got new projects in the market this year. Bear in mind that presenting a new project to potential investors in no way guarantees that it’ll actually get made but this is a pretty good picture of what Asian film may look like in a year or two.
The full synopses aren’t available yet but you can find the complete list here.
It’s barely even long enough to qualify as a teaser but the first clip from Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero’s [REC]2 - the follow up to the hugely successful Spanish zombie picture that was just remade in the US as Quarantine - has arrived over night and is currently tearing up the ‘net. In the early stages of post-production right now this film picks up right from where the first left off and obviously continues with the same look and feel of the original. Check it out below the break!
Continue Reading "Attack Of The Spanish Zombies! First [REC]2 Teaser Arrives!"...
I’m really not certain why they’re not just calling the new George A Romero film Island Of The Dead - since that’s clearly what it is - rather than insisting on referring to it as ... Of The Dead but no matter. While in Sitges late last year I had the opportunity to meet legendary effects man Greg Nicotero, who at the time was spending his evenings on the phone with Romero who for his part was back in my home town of Toronto at the time, just launching principal photography on the latest of his zombie pictures. Given the extremely tight timeline I have to assume that was has just been released by international sales outfit Voltage Pictures is dominantly raw footage - no way this has had time to go through a full post-production process - but the very first trailer for Romero’s latest has just been released. Here’s the skinny:
On a small island off North America’s coast, the dead rise to menace the living. Yet…the islanders can’t bring themselves to exterminate their loved ones, despite the growing danger from those the once held dear. A rebel among them hunts down all the zombies he can find, only to be banished from the island for assassinating his neighbors and friends. On the mainland, bent on revenge, he encounters a small band of survivors in search of an oasis on which to build a new life. Barely surviving an attack from a mass of ravenous flesh-eaters. They commandeer a zombie-infested ferry and sail to the island. There, to their horror, they discover that the locals have chained the dead inside their homes, pretending to live ‘normal’ lives…with bloody consequences. What ensues is a desperate struggle for survival and the answer to a question never posed in Romero’s Dead films: Can the living ever live in peace with the dead?
Check the trailer below the break!
Continue Reading "Attack Of The Canuck Zombies! First Trailer For Romero’s ... OF THE DEAD Arrives!"...
Note: To any and all writers out there. Never try to write a post when the nation you live in is vying for its fifth straight gold medal at the junior world hockey championships. It tends to be a bit distracting. I started this post a few hours ago and just finished it now. Almost makes me want to become a Canadian citizen.
Somewhere during the holiday season we got off track with the Face of Enemy webisodes from Battlestar Galactica. And with less than two weeks before the premiere of the second half of the fourth and final season we need to do some catch up. Follow the break for webisodes 4 through 8.
Continue Reading "BSG: Face of the Enemy Webisodes a plenty!"...
Not so long ago the word was that French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet would be directing a big screen adaptation of acclaimed novel The Life Of Pi a decision that seemed sound on all sides - he’s definitely got the needed outlook and skills to pull it off - but at the same time rather bland and safe and boring. And so there was no weeping in the House of Twitch when word surfaced that Jeunet was withdrawing from that project - the official reason was given as budgetary concerns - and instead staying in France and returning to the sort of fantasy-tinged comedy that made his name. The film is Micmacs A Tire Larigot, a film written by Jeunet himself along with regular writing partner Guillaume Laurant, with whom he also co-wrote A Very Long Engagement and City of Lost Children.
Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, even if it means you might drop dead any time? Or would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk from eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What’s the human cannonball world record?
Find out answers to these questions and more.
A comedy in the vein of Delicatessen and Amélie.
The film’s French release is still some time off in the distance but the first gallery of stills has arrived online, they are fantastic, and we’ve got ‘em. Hit the link below to check them out.
And, yes, because it wouldn’t be a Jeunet film without him, Dominique Pinon does have a role.
It’s a new year and a new batch of Alamo posters has arrived. This January the Alamo Ritz will be screening the classic Godfather for the masses and to celebrate the event they’ve gone and made three posters for yall. The artists responsible are Jeff Kleinsmith, Tim Doyle and Billy Perkins.
I must say that Kleinsmith’s poster is my absolute favorite of the bunch but all are good and a must for fans of Italian stereotypes.
All three posters are available from mondotees.com of course but as a special variant Tim Doyle has made a wood version of his poster only available through gigposters.com. There are only 15 copies of the wood edition around so if you like that one you have to hurry.
You can get each of the signed and numbered posters separate for 30 bones each or as a set for 75 bucks, that’s a sweet deal.
Tom McCarthy’s second feature, The Visitor, gets a Region 2 DVD release in the UK on 9th February and is well worth seeking out. It’s a gently comic and ultimately moving tale of a lonely college professor’s relationship with a young immigrant couple in New York, which deftly touches on (an unsatisfactory) US immigration policy along the way. Walter (Richard Jenkins) is a widower of 5 years, bored with his job and simply going through the motions of a middle-aged academic. On returning to New York after an extended absence, Walter finds Syrian musician, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Dania Gurira) enjoying a peaceful life in his flat. Having fallen victim to a rental scam, the young couple politely leave. Realising they have nowhere else to go, the benevolent professor invites them back to stay with him whilst they sort themselves out. At once Walter is drawn to Tarek’s drum playing and they strike up a friendship through a mutual interest in music. Things take a turn for the worse when Tarek is unfairly arrested and sent to an immigration facility, as it transpires that the couple have been living in America illegally. At this point McCarthy’s film changes focus as Tarek’s concerned mother, Mouna, arrives on the scene and a tender love story emerges amongst the struggle to prevent her son’s deportation.
Continue Reading "The Visitor arrives on UK DVD"...
This is so long overdue it’s not even remotely funny. After years of toiling in the B-ranks Australian stylist Russell Mulcahey could finally be getting his shot at prime time with upcoming action flick Courier. Despite helming the original - and should have been only - Highlander, a cult classic that has easily survived its subsequent bastardization, Mulcahey has never really been able to attract a-list talent or scripts but with Adrien Brody in the lead of his latest that could be changing ...
A million bucks, just to a deliver a briefcase…
It’s a job too good to be true, especially if you’re the COURIER, a daredevil carrier renowned for taking on impossible missions who’s never, ever missed a drop. The only catch is delivering it to someone who can’t be found, not even by the FBI, and when that someone is the notorious, never seen King of the Underworld EVIL SIVLE who’s very name makes the toughest tremble, there’s a lot more than reputation and money on the line.
With a baying pack of double crossing feds, conniving crooked cops and ruthless rival crime bosses in hot pursuit, the Courier trail blazes a world-wide chase for the most wanted man in the land. Drugged, beaten, tortured and two timed, the bloodhound bagman discovers easy money was never so hard, and tracking the elusive kingpin to Las Vegas learns just why Evil is the one person on the planet no one can find, and why he really is the King…
The plot has some obvious similarities to the setup for the Transporter films but Brody is in a whole different class than Jason Statham and with a script from the writers of 3:10 To Yuma and Wanted this could be something rather good. The film is in pre-production now, more as we get it.
It’s been a long and apparently troubled road for Yoichi Sai to bring his ninja epic to the big screen. After the very difficult production of Korean action-melodrama Soo, Sai - an ethnically Korean Japanese - returned back home to Japan to tackle an adaptation of Shirato Sanpei’s manga The Legend of Kamui Ninja. The film was announced ages ago but there’s been nothing from it since, other than the occassional rumor of some trouble or other on the set. But, finally - and I say finally because the world really doesn’t have enough ninja films and Sai’s got the chops to make a damn good one - we get at least a tease, in the form of a revamped website and big ol’ photo of Kenichi Matsuyama in the lead role. It aint much, but it’s something ...
We’re big fans of Kiwi director Jonathan King in these parts, much smitten by his horror-comedy Black Sheep of a few years ago. And King has been a busy man lately, writing and directing a healthy budget adaptation of youth-fantasy novel Under The Mountain. Written in 1979 the novel has been made into a television series in the past but has never made it to the big screen until now. Things have been quiet since the film was first announced but with news that photography is now complete and the film in post production under the watchful eye of Peter Jackson’s WETA Workshop, the first still has now arrived.
When teenage twins Rachel and Theo investigate the creepy old house next door, they discover the Wilberforces - shape-shifting creatures that lurk beneath Auckland’s ring of extinct volcanoes.
Guided by the mysterious Mr Jones and with the help of their older cousin Ricky, the twins must rekindle the unique powers they once shared if they are to destroy this ancient evil - before it destroys them.
We’ve lamented the lack of good youth fantasy in these pages lately and this is one of a coming wave of titles that looks poised to fill that void. Hit the link below for a larger version of the still.
Thailand’s Chocolate and Denmark’s Fighter opened the flood gates for a female-fronted martial arts revival in 2008 and the gates show no sign of closing any time soon. Coming in 2009 are Japan’s High Kick Girl and Hong Kong’s Coweb, the common thread between the films being that all feature first time actresses who are real life fighters and do all of their own fight and stunt work.
Coweb marks the directorial debut of Xiong Xin Xin, a familiar name to martial arts fans around the globe thanks to his acting role as Clubfoot in the Once Upon A Time In China films. Xiong has been absent from the screen for a while now but that’s only because he’s been busy working as a fight choreographer and now as a director. The star? Jiang Luxia, who was spotted on the Hong Kong martial art reality show The Disciple, a show sponsored by Jackie Chan to find the next generation of Hong Kong screen fighters - a successful move as a number of finalist are appearing in upcoming films. Here’s a synopsis:
Newcomer 蒋露霞 Jiang Luxia, a finalist of The Disciple reality TV show, plays the lead role as Guangdong wushu coach Nie Yi Yi who gets implicated by a kidnap case in Hong Kong. It’s up to her to battle waves after waves of fighters to rescue her employer and his wife who are kidnapped. Little did she know that her fights are being captured on video and broadcast live via a website which serves as an illegal online gambling den…
When we first wrote about this back in September there was a trailer and a pair of clips available on the official website. Those have disappeared now but a new trailer has just surfaced which you can find below the break. The video quality is lower than I’d like but the fight quality is nice and high.
Continue Reading "2009: Year of the Chick Fight! First Proper Trailer For Xiong Xin Xin’s COWEB!"...
Since word came down that David Tennant would soon be ending his run as the titular Doctor Who - if memory serves Tenant currently has four one-off specials left to do and then he’s finished - speculation has been running rampant over who would take over the iconic role. And last night the BBC ended the uncertainty with, shall we say, a rather surprising announcement.
Meet Matt Smith, the new Doctor Who. Don’t know who Smith is? Not to worry, neither does anyone else, really. The betting money throughout this process was that comedian Paterson Joseph had the inside line to become the first black Doctor but the Beeb opted instead to go with Smith who, at the age of just twenty six, becomes the youngest doctor ever by a margin of three years. With hardly any significant entries on his resume Smith has just received the opportunity of a lifetime, though also probably one that’s going to typecast him to the nth degree. Hope you like scifi Matt ...
Look at that man sitting there all cross legged in the water. So peaceful. So tranquil. What you don’t know is that if this image were moving his jaws would probably be working away - chewing and chewing and chewing. And what he’d be chewing would most likely be human flesh! Heh ...
The film is titled Naan Kadavul, a long-in-production Tamil effort that seems to have preferred to work only with single-named talent. The director is known simply as Bala, the lead actor Arya and the lead actress Pooja. The title translates to I Am God and the film tracks the life of an Aghori, an Indian sect that is rumored to practice cannibalism. That last bit is key to appreciating the trailer which is dominated by shots of Arya chewing. And chewing. And chewing.
Check it out below the break!
Continue Reading "This Man Will Kick Your Ass. And Then Eat It."...
[Updated with another piece of promo art]
We first brought news of the impending sequel to classic 80s fantasy flick The Sword And The Sorcerer back in April and while production was delayed some by this past year’s labor uncertainty and while the cast has undergone some slight alterations things are now up and running, with principal photography now freshly begun. Here’s how director Albert Pyun first described the project to us: “It’s got a sexy sorceress, hordes of demonic vampires, a giant serpent, sea pirates, nasty sword (and axe, spear, leg of cow) fights and gore and nudity galore. Everything that a rousing adventure needs to have.”
Though the project has changed some since it began life as a direct sequel to Pyun’s The Sword And The Sorcerer there are still direct links between the two films. Starring? Here are the notables: Kevin Sorbo (Hercules) and Christopher Lambert (The Highlander) are the male leads, while relative newcomer Melissa Ordway takes the female lead as Tanis, a young woman trying to unite the warrior of her world in a battle against an evil sorceress. Whitney Able (All The Boys Love Mandy Lane), Janelle Taylor, Ralf Moeller (Conan, Cyborg) and Olivier Gruner (Nemesis) also have key parts.
We’ll have more from this soon but in the mean time we’ve got a handful of stills from early rehearsals that show off the look of the characters - I’m rather fond of the Sorbo shot - the first look at the sales art and an early composite shot of Ordway as Tanis. Hit the link below to get a look!
Now, this is a surprising and very deserving move. The National Society of Film Critics have just named Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir the Best Picture of 2008 - a move that should help it’s chances for an Oscar nomination later this month. Bashir would have seemed a sure thing to at least be nominated for an Oscar this year but a shortage of submitted animated features means only three animated films can be nominated and with most people figuring Wall*E and Kung Fu Panda will take up two of those slots that means one of arthouse faves Waltz With Bashir or $9.99 is going to be left out cold.
Waltz With Bashir is on screens in limited release right now, check it out if at all possible. The trailers are below the break and you can find my review at the link below.
Continue Reading "National Society Of Film Critics Names WALTZ WITH BASHIR Best Picture!"...
When fresh images from Oldboy director Park Chan Wook’s much-anticipated vampire picture Thirst turned up in the Korean media earlier this weekend I must confess that I was a little bit underwhelmed, having seen considerably more in the promotional materials and sales reel presented at the American Film Market in November. I passed on posting them up originally but not to worry - I’ve come to my senses. This is the new Park Chan Wook, after all, and while these are relatively old to me they’re certainly not to you and so I’ve gathered them together and put them in a gallery for your perusal. And if, before browsing, you;ve been asking yourself why the Korean media have suddenly released these things, the answer is a good one: production has apparently gone so well that they’re ahead of schedule and now on track for a much-sooner-than-anticipated April theatrical release in Korea. Focus have the film here in North America but have not yet set a release date.
Check below the break for the full HAF synopsis for this tale of a lustful priest-turned-vampire and hit the link below for the images.
Continue Reading "Fresh Images From Park Chan Wook’s Vampire Picture THIRST"...
