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.
Yes, kids, after a foray into the world of epic spectacle with his war-themed A Very Long Engagement, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet is not only back with a new film but very much back on form. Those references to Delicatessen and Amelie in the official synopsis? Very much earned as the just released teaser for Jeunet’s Micmacs A Tire-Larigot looks to very much hit the sweet spot between the two. Good lord, I want to see more ... check the teaser below the break!
Continue Reading "Jeunet Returns And Returns To Form! The First MICMACS Teaser Arrives!"...
[Missed this one while out of town last week but am making up for it now!]
What do you do if you’re the producer of a venerable scifi franchise and you have to follow up an entry that featured not one and not two but a whopping EIGHT variations on your hero? If you’re the folks behind Japan’sUltraman franchise - about to hit its thirty eighth installment! - you trigger a mega monster battle, of course! And also recruit a whole lot more Ultramen.
The evil Ultraman Belial was imprisoned by the Ultraman King tens of thousands of years ago. When he finally escapes, he attempts to use the Giga-Battlenizer to control 100 giant monsters and conquer the galaxy. On the Ultraman homeworld, where there is no 3-minute time restriction, a team of 50 Ultramen including Ultraman, Ultra Seven, and Ultraman Mebius among many others mobilize to put a stop to Ultraman Belial’s plans and face off against his monsters.
Bad Ultraman plus one hundred giant monsters versus a team of fifty good Ultramen? Madness, I say. Madness. And the first glimpse of the madness can be seen in the teaser below the break.
Continue Reading "ULTRAMAN Returns For A MEGA MONSTER BATTLE!"...
The brutal, ultra-hard horror film The Collector, which was formerly known as The Midnight Man, is going to be one of the key horror titles of 2009. The film tells the story of an ex-con who plans to steal a rare jewel from a house while the family is away. The only problem is that a masked marauder entered the house earlier in the night and turned it into a gigantic man-trap. Director Marcus Dunstan,who also produced Feast and wrote Saw IV-VI, made the The Collector with hardcore horror fans in mind. The film is set-up like a thriller, but it slyly switches gears after the first act, and turns into an amped-up, non-stop bloodbath.
The Collector is set for U.S. theatrical release on July 31, 2009. The MPAA’s “R” rating should be prefaced by the word “hard.” For those who cannot wait, Fantastic Fest has teamed up with Scott Weinberg’s new Horror Squad site for a special screening at the Alamo Drafthouse on July 22nd, 2009. Information about the screening as well as some still images can be pursued at the links below.
Who’s that in the photo? Well, three of them (Marc Senter, Amanda Fuller and Noah Taylor to be precise) are the cast of upcoming feature Red, White and Blue. One of them - the man in the hat - is RWB writer-director Simon Rumley, helmer of award winning films The Handyman and The Living And The Dead. And the guy in the flammable pants? That’d be Fantastic Fest and Alamo Drafthouse honcho Tim League, making the move to the other side of the screen and serving as executive producer on Rumley’s latest. Yep, it came down pretty much the way you’d think - after screening Rumley’s The Living And The Dead - which took home a stack of awards when it appeared at Fantastic Fest a couple years back - League offered to get involved in whatever Rumley did next and this is the result. Described as a “slacker revenge movie” Rumley promises a controversial blend of sex and violence ... Check the full press release below the break!
Continue Reading "Simon Rumley Teams With Tim League For RED, WHITE AND BLUE"...
It’s good to be a Bowie, apparently, with word that Duncan Jones’ Moon - Jones is the son of David Bowie - has just scooped the award for Best New British Feature at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. Also scooping a big prize was Tomm Moore’s stellar animation Brendan And The Secret Of Kells, which took home the Audience Award for Best Feature. Personally I’m of the opinion that Moon is just okay but the Brendan win is very much deserved. Check out the trailers for both below the break!
Continue Reading "MOON And BRENDAN AND THE SECRET OF KELLS Take Home The Hardware In Edinburgh."...
I know what you’re thinking. Warlords is not the newest of films and there have been three reviews up on Twitch already. Well, guess what. Here’s a fourth. Why? Just because I liked the film that much and believe it deserves more global attention.
I’m a sleeper fan of Peter Chan. I favored his entry in San Geng and was pleasantly surprised by Perhaps Love. I’m pretty sure it was the first time I watched a musical I actually enjoyed. So with dread I saw him take on Warlords, a film that sounded so big and vast that I feared he had sold his talent to a simple blockbuster in which he would have little say. I was wrong, obviously.
Read the juicy bits after the break:
Continue Reading "Peter Chan’s Warlords review"...
Many thanks to the loyalists at Scott Adkins Fanz for pointing the way to three brand new stills from upcoming martial arts picture Undisputed 3. We’ve been tracking this one fairly closely thanks to the fan loved heaped on Undisputed 2, the rising profile of star Scott Adkins and the presence of Chilean fighter Marko Zaror making his English language debut in the picture. You can find the first shots of Adkins and Zaror facing off on set in the Twitch archive here. And now there’s more. Cinematographer has added five fresh shots from the shoot to his website - one fantastic close up of a bloody Adkins, plus shots of several other fighters - including Zaror - squaring off in the ring. Very tasty.
Fantastic news here for fans of Vietnamese martial arts film The Rebel:
No, Dustin Nguyen’s Monk On Fire is still not quite up and running - though it’s still in the works - but this has got to count as very nearly as complete a reunion as that one will be. Le Thanh Son - the assistant director on The Rebel - will be making his directorial debut with The Clash, a now-in-production martial arts-action film that reunites The Rebel leads Johnny Nguyen and Veronica Ngo on the big screen.
THE CLASH (Bay Rong) is the latest project featuring the leading man and leading lady from The Rebel, the news that the two had become a couple after playing romantic leads in The Rebel probably helped the films exposure, and it went onto become one of the biggest hits in Vietnamese cinema history. Their new project could best be described as a Vietnamese take on a certain Mr & Mrs.Smith project, but with high impact martial arts action playing a major part in the film. The film marks the directorial debut of Le Thanh Son, who previously served as AD on both The Rebel for Charlie Nguyen and Luu Huynhs acclaimed The White Silk Dress.
The Clash is scheduled for a Christmas release in Vietnam, so it’s still too early for a trailer, but we do have a gallery of the first five stills - well, four stills plus a behind the scenes shot - at the link below!
[UPDATE: More artwork from a year ago at Catsuka.com. Thanks to Tsuka for the tip!]
As an animation buff, I try to keep a lookout for little known gems from around the world and perhaps I have hit the jackpot on a potentially cool thriller from France. Its called The Prodigies (aka in french: La Nuit des enfants rois), a motion-capture animated film by director Antoine Charreyron and Aton Soumache, the producer of the CG sci-fi noir film Renaissance. Based on Bernard Lenteric’s bestselling French novel, the budget is estimated at E40 million ($54 million). Character designer Humberto Ramos has offer the first glimpse of the production art at his blog site.
NYC, Central Park, 2010. Five young teenagers are violently assaulted. But they’re not your average teenagers… they’re prodigies. The trauma of the assault incites them to lash out against the world in a cold and calculating way. The five chillingly brilliant minds come together to concoct a perfect revenge. The only person aware of the pending doom is Jimbo Farrar, a sixth prodigy, who has gathered them. As long as he fights against his five counterparts with all his might, there’s hope for the world. But should he turn over to their side, it’s only a matter of time before a disaster of apocalyptic proportions ensues…
The theatrical release in France is slated for next year. More details as we get it.
[Our thanks to Ben Umstead for the following review.]
Fact: Assembly and Banquet director Feng Xiaogang’s new film If You Are The One is a comedy (often humorous) and a romance (quite romantic), though it is overall melancholy in temperament. It stars Ge You and Shu Qi. Oh, and here’s one more tidbit for you… it is the highest grossing movie in China, not of the year, not of the decade but of all time.
A westerner can’t but help mention this if not obsess over it a little. 2008 was a record breaking year for the Chinese box office with Red Cliff coming in a narrow second. So when what is essentially a small and intimate study of two people’s vulnerability tops an action and effects laden spectacle that is cause to sit up and pay attention, cause when a nice chunk of the world’s population prefers this over big booms and such, well that is quite refreshing. Though I must say it is a testament to the Chinese, who are quite film literate, a lesson we in the west could learn from.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: IF YOU ARE THE ONE"...
[Our thanks to Charles Webb for the following review.]
In this Ki-duk Kim penned filmmaking drama, hot-headed actor Su-ta (Ji-hwan Kang) has to turn to charismatic gangster Gang-pae (Ji-seob So) to co-star in his latest film after injuring his latest co-lead. In exchange for appearing in the film, the gangster demands that the fights they perform be real – and that the outcomes not be constrained by the script. This intriguing premise had the potential to explore the connections between film and the realities they create but instead becomes something incredibly pedestrian by film’s end.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: ROUGH CUT"...
Concept artist Alexandre Tuis who worked on Dragonball: Evolution and Frontière(s) has posted some artwork for Blood: The Last Vampire at his official site. The concept art include transformation effects and various creature designs of the Chiroptera. Its worth a look for those interested to see what designs could of been used in the film.
Cha Tae-hyun has struggled to emulate the success of his MY SASSY GIRL co-star Jeon Ji-hyun. His work in the 8 years since has failed to emulate the reception of his debut, with his scene-stealing female co-star reaping most of the rewards. However, while Jeon, or “Gianna” as she now insists on being called, has opted to cast off her well-worked persona as one of Asia’s better comedic actresses in favour of the limp and anaemic BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE, Cha has stuck to his proven genre of romantic comedy and may have finally stumbled onto a another winner.
Continue Reading "SCANDAL MAKERS Review"...
When I first saw the trailer for Francois Ozon’s latest film I laughed out loud at the seemingly preposterous premise. An ordinary couple have a baby that sprouts wings and flies around their living room – and seemingly this was meant to be a serious drama. As with his previous films such as SWIMMING POOL and UNDER THE SAND, however, things are never so clear cut and the lines between fantasy and reality in RICKY quickly become blurred, both for Ozon’s characters and his audience.
Continue Reading "RICKY Review"...
We’ve been a little caught up with the World Premiere of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl down at NYAFF this weekend. So much so that we’ve been oblivious to the fact that there was a new international trailer for the film released recently. There is a lot of familiar footage and a lot of new footage so I won’t keep you. Follow the break for copious amounts of blood and gore. Do we need mention that these trailers are completely NSFW? Well they are and rather than tag this posting as NSFW so just the sickos see it we’re giving you the choice. Be responsible. Don’t drag us down with you!
Continue Reading "Vampires, frankensteins, blood and gore! New trailer for ‘Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl’!"...
Well, well. It seems Mads isn’t the only acting Mikkelsen. Though Lars Mikkelsen has yet to develop the same sort of international profile as has his brother Mads the word is that home in Denmark Lars has long been known as one of the nation’s finest character actors. It’s just that those of us outside of Denmark haven’t had the chance to see him in action. But now we can. Mikkelsen takes a rare lead in Headhunter, a new thriller from director Rumle Hammerich.
A thriller set in the upper echelons of the business world. Martin Vinge, a former hardcore reporter, now a successful headhunter with a complicated personal life, lands a confidential assignment to locate a new heir to Denmark’s biggest shipping and oil empire. As Martin starts searching for potential candidates, he soon realises that he is becoming entangled in a far-reaching, impenetrable power game for the corporation’s future, a brutal ploy that brings excruciating pressure to bear on Martin and the people he loves.
The trailer for this one has just arrived online and it looks like yet another entry in the long and growing list of stellar noir-oriented thrillers to come out of Denmark. Check it out below the break!
Continue Reading "Apparently It Runs In The Family. Lars Mikkelsen Stars In HEADHUNTER"...
One of the feature guests at this year’s edition of the New York Asian Film Festival was Korean actress Kong Hyo-Jin, present to support the one-two punch of her festival-screening films Crush and Blush and Dachimawa Lee. Charles Webb had the chance to sit and talk with her.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09: Kong Hyo-Jin Interview"...
The second and final batch of films were announced this weekend for the inaugural Shinsedai Cinema Festival happening here in Toronto between August 21st and 23rd. The second wave of titles are in red. And in other good news Jasper Sharp from Midnight Eye will also be coming to town from across the pond to be a part of the festival that weekend.
After a busy few weeks The Shinsedai Cinema Festival is proud to announce the final round of films of our inaugural line-up. Highlights include the Canadian premiere of Yuya Ishii’s surreal father/ daughter comedy Girl Sparks (left), Touru Hano’s moody and sexy indie horror film Thunderfish (Raigyo), plus a very special co-presentation with Toronto’s Reel Asian International Film Festival of the works of Kyoto-based video artist and composer Takagi Masakatsu including the North American premiere of Aruongaku, Takashi Tomohisa’s documentary of Masakatsu’s Tai Rei Tei Rio concert held on November 13th, 2008 at the Grand Gallery of the Iwate Museum of Art.
Bunny in Hovel - Mayumi Yabe (2009) short
Csikspost - Yumiko Beppu (2009)
Electric Button (Moon & Cherry) -Yuki Tanada (2004) feaure
emerger - Aki Sato (2008)
Freeter’s Distress - Hiroki Iwabuchi (2007) feature
Hottentot Apron: A Sketch - Kei Shirichi (2006) feature
Naked of Defenses - Masahide Ichii (2008) feature
Now, I… - Ysautomo Chikuma (2007) feature
Suzuki & Co. - Kazuo Kono (2008) short film
The New God - Yutaka Tsuchiya (1999) feature
Vortex & Others: 5 Short Films by Yoshihiro Ito (2001-2008) short film
Girl Sparks - Yuya Ishii (2007) feature
Little Birds - Takeharu Watai (2005) feature
Aruongaku - Tomohisa Takashi (2009) feature
Thunderfish - Touru Hano (2005) feature
The Evening Traveling - Akino Kondoh (2002) short film
Wiener Wuast & Israel Mix - Maya Yonesho (2008) short film
The Rule of Dreams - Naoyuki Tsuji (1995) short film
Right Place & Maledict Car - Kosai Sekine (2005) short film
A Woman Who is Beating the Earth - Tsuki Inoue (2007) short film
The finalized schedule for The Shinsedai Cinema Festival will be posted July 15th and tickets and passes will go on sale on July 20th!
[Our thanks to Dustin Chang for the following review, though it should be noted that the man who hopped on stage claiming to be Naoyuki Tomomatsu was actually Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi just goofing around with his good friend Nishimura..]
I had the privilege to attend the world premiere screening of Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police) & Naoyuki Tomomatsu (Stacey)’s Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl with boisterous fans who braved the bad weather to be in a packed theater on Friday night, as it was part of the NYAFF program. Present at the screening were co-directors Nishimura, Tomomatsu and also Tak Sakaguchi who was a stunt coordinator for the movie and a director in his own right (his movie Yoroi Samurai Zombie was to be screened right after Vampire Girl). They playfully introduced the movie and graciously stayed around for a spirited Q & A session afterwards.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: VAMPIRE GIRL VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL"...
What do you get when you mix “Twelve Monkeys” with “Four Weddings and a Funeral”? If you are a director without a budget and you liked the structure of “Memento” you might end up with something like Bob Gebert’s “11 Minutes Ago”.
His film is a romantic comedy with a time travel twist, which shows the blossoming love between two people who meet each other in a series of eleven-minute-long segments. The order of these segments differs for each of them yet this doesn’t hinder the development of their relationship.
In fact, this accelerates it…
Shot chronologically and in a single day but shown out-of-order through the eyes of a time traveler, “11 Minutes Ago” could be anything from convoluted comedy, pretentious arthouse experiment, ugly no-budget sci-fi or just incomprehensible dreck.
But instead the film cleverly focuses on its main characters, and becomes a pleasant little affair that is mostly successful and quite charming.
The movie did some time-traveling itself: the feature was circulating on festivals in 2007 already. In fact, since February of this year it is even out on DVD in the US.Yet as far as I know the 2009 Imagine Festival in Amsterdam was the first time it was shown in The Netherlands and we never reported about it before, so here follows a full review.
(More after the break!)
Continue Reading "Imagine this! 11 MINUTES AGO Review"...
Oh, my. Those of you attending Tokyo Gore Night at the New York Asian Film Festival later on tonight are in for a treat. Though it hasn’t been shown to the public yet, Machine Girl director Noboru Iguchi has been running around the fest with a great big smile on his face and a copy of the trailer for his latest - RoboGeisha - on his person and was good enough to give me an early look. He considers this version too spoiler-heavy to put online, but here’s what I can tell you:
Robot Geisha’s obviously. Lots of them. Transforming robot geishas. And also samurais. And I believe a ninja or two. In a clan war. With robotic buildings as weapons, katanas out the bum, katanas out the arm pits, fried shrimp shoved into eyes. It is absolutely daft, the budget and scope of it look significantly higher than on Machine Girl and I can’t wait to see more.
And mark these two down: word is that Iguchi’s next after this will indeed by the previously mentioned Drill Bra Sisters while effects man Yoshihiro Nishimura said from the stage tonight that his next would be a comedy involving teenage girls running down zombies in cars and would at least double the amount of blood that was used in Tokyo Gore Police. There you have it.
[Our thanks to Renzo Adler for the following review.]
If you described the plot of Lalapipo without mentioning the film’s jovial candy colored style, it would sound incredibly depressing—and I mean on Requiem for a Dream like scale (I guess Nobody Knows would be the better comparison since we’re talking Japanese films). Lalapipo, the directorial debut of Masayuki Miyano, is written by Kamikaze Girls scribe Tetsuya Nakashima and is based on the novel by Hideo Okuda. The film deals with the oft lampooned, speculated, and analyzed subject of sexuality in contemporary Tokyo. Unlike films like Love & Pop or Bounce Kogals, Lalapipo is vibrant, full of humor, and is generally light hearted for the most part; yet still manages to sneak in some heavy scenes and deals with themes like alienation, sexual de-sensitization, violence, and then some.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: LALAPIPO"...
That high school is tough and generally unpleasant is pretty much a truism. Everybody knows it to be so. That high school romance is even tougher is even more clear. This is how life goes. But for Mizushima, well, his difficulties go a bit beyond the norm. You see, having been dubbed the only acceptable boy in the school the meek Mizushima has been targeted as boyfriend material by Keiko - the borderline psychotic daughter of the vice-principal, perpetually accompanied by her gang of dolled up thugs - a situation that leaves him moderately terrified. But it’s not just Keiko who is interested in Mizushima, no, he’s the object of attractive transfer student Monami’s affections, too, so much so that the beautiful but reserved girl brought Mizushima a hand made chocolate for Valentine’s Day.
Cue the girl on girl conflict over Mizushima’s affections? You bet! But that aint all! You see, Monami may appear young but she’s actually hundreds of years old - a vampire who laced her chocolaty treat with her own blood to turn Mizushima into a creature of the night as well, and the villainous Keiko’s father turns out to be doing double duty as a mad scientist who is all too willing to transform his own daughter into an undead creature cobbled together from the strongest parts of school staff and students slain for his insane cause.
Brace yourself kids: Tokyo Gore Police director Yoshihiro Nishimura, along with Stacy and Zombie Defense Force helmer Naoyuki Tomomatsu have just done a number on the teenage romantic comedy.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: VAMPIRE GIRL VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL"...
[Our thanks to Charles Webb for the following review.]
It takes a bold actress to take a part like the one starlet Hyo-jin Kong inhabits in the wonderful Crush and Blush. It’s not just an “ugly” role because the actress is barely recognizable under makeup and a series of ticks and twitches. Her character Mi-sook Yang is profoundly unattractive because she has transformed herself over the years into a person who is so ground down by failure and disappointment that she insists to the world that being number 1 (and therefore success) is for suckers. And still, I wanted to spend a couple of hours with this character.
Continue Reading "NYAFF 09 Review: CRUSH AND BLUSH (Review Two)"...
