A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
I received an updated release schedule from Artsmagic today - a good number of date changes contained within - and what jumped out was the inclusion of a couple Shinji Aoyama titles that I don’t recall seeing on the list at all before. The current list calls for Aoyama’s Wild Life in August and An Obsession in November. Read on for the current complete release schedule ...
Continue Reading "More Shinji Aoyama Films Coming Via Artsmagic!"...
Just surfaced from my Hanzo the Razor boxset - two down, one to go - to check my email and found a note from Logboy directing me here: the official Eureka Project website, a new giant robot anime from Bones - the studio behind Wolf’s Rain among other things. Gotta say the character and mech designs are sweet and the trailer looks mighty nice as well. You can find more clips here.
The show starts hitting DVD in Japan in July and will also be one of the first titles available on the PSPs new UMD format ...
The trailer for Joss Whedon’s big screen version of Firefly - easily his best work thus far - has just gone live and it’s GLORIOUS! Wondering where the Shepherd is but all the other principal characters get at least a moment or two ... Hit it here ...
An Insider’s Review. In the summer of 2003, I worked as a set dresser on the 1950 period soccer film, “The Game of Their Lives”. Directed by David Anspaugh and written by Angelo Pizzo, the duo who brought us “Hoosiers” and “Rudy”, “Game” had an air of legitimacy not often found on the sets of other movies shot here in my hometown of St. Louis, MO. Of course, not being any kind of sports movie buff, I’ve never actually seen the former two films. But hey, their reputations were good, and despite the prospect of hauling large amounts of furniture around in 100+ degree heat for two and a half months, the notion of working on a halfway decent movie for a change was appealing. (“Game” was my sixth feature as a crew member, give or take a few smallish local ones. The most well known prior to it was “The Big Brass Ring” with William Hurt. Remember that classic? Didn’t think so.) And then I read the screenplay…
No, no. We’re not that fortunate here to have interviewed one of Koreas hottest directorial exports. But ComingSoon.net did and you should give it a read. And then you should pay very close attention to theatre listings over the next couple weeks as 3-Iron starts to open this weekend.
Read the ComingSoon.net interview with 3-Iron director Kim Ki-duk here.
Wu-jing picked up another article with photos from the set of Jet Li’s next film Legend of a Fighter, helmed by Ronny Yu.
I could not make much from my bleak translation of the original article but what I could piece together is that these may have been taken the day of shooting the final part of the movie in which Li’s character Huo Yuan Jia competes in the ring against foreign challengers in Shanghai. The competitors include that behemoth in the Rex-Kwon-Do shorts.
Click here for a bigger image of Jet Li and a Big Bald Man in tight shorts.
Hey, screw the upcoming American remake of The Eye, we’re going to Bollywood! I just spotted a link to Naina over on the KFC Forums and it looks to be a note for note remake of the Pang Brothers’ original. Yes, Dave it even has the ‘what are you doing in my chair?’ scene ... hit the site at the link above and the full trailer here.
Oooh ... Grady over at Kaiju Shakedown has scored himself a wee interview with Wu Jing, mostly about his role in upcoming Hong Kong actioner Sha Po Lang. That’s two people I know now who have seen the film and both swear that it absolutely rules. The interview’s short but sweet. Check it here.
According to the J-Horror Theater (J horâ shiatâ) official website, Takashi Shimizu’s Reincarnation (Rinne) - the third movie in the hexalogy - began filming (crank in / kuranku in) last Saturday (April 23). The screenplay for the movie was written by Shimizu and Masaki Adachi - who directed the story “Seven Rooms” in the omnibus movie Zoo. Starring in Reincarnation are Yûka, Karina, and Kippei Shiina. It’s scheduled to be released theatrically in Japan by Tôhô on January 7th of next year.
Let me state my general bias right up front: ever since Ryuhei Kitamura burst onto the scene with the exhilarating Versus he has proven to be something of a polarizing director. Some absolutely adore him and everything he’s done. Others tend to find him incredibly frustrating. I belong in the second group. Here’s why. I think the man’s got a masterpiece in him but he keeps finding ways not to make it.
Kitamura is very obviously an enormously gifted visual director with style to spare. With Versus Kitamura made a film that was openly about nothing more than that style – cramming as many ridiculous shots and extended fight scenes into his film as he possibly could on his restrictive budget. It worked because it didn’t take itself too seriously and because it had a star with major charisma in former street fighter Tak Sakaguchi, who has strangely been limited to only cameo appearances in Kitamura’s work since. With every successive film Kitamura’s budgets have gotten bigger and he has taken his stories more seriously and the dissenters have gotten increasingly more vocal insisting that the man needs a script editor in a big way. There are as many impressive shots as ever but his films tend to be over long and the characters a little bit thin, and he has this disturbing habit of casting fight oriented films with actors who make for some mighty appealing eye candy but very unconvincing fighters. Sky High falls neatly into this mold. If you’re already a fan you’re going to love it, if the weaknesses of his earlier films drive you nuts then this will likely do the same.
This is shaping up to be a fantastic year for fans of Shinya Tsukamoto. Not only are his cyber-punk masterworks getting the special edition treatment but by year’s end virtually his entire catalog will be easily available to North American fans for the very first time.
The latest Tsukamoto title to hit these shores is Hiruko The Goblin released by Fangoria via Media Blasters. Those who know Tsukamoto only through the thoroughly bizarre Tetsuo: The Iron Man or the recently released and starkly beautiful A Snake of June or Bullet Ballet are in for an enormous surprise here. Tsukamoto has a sense of humor! And he’s not afraid to use it! Hiruko the Goblin is a throwback to the cheaply made serialized science fiction of Tsukamoto’s youth and comes complete with all the camp humor and odd characters that you’d expect from that genre along with a healthy dose of blood, gore and genuine suspense.
Todd asked me to review a film that many consider a classic of pan-Asian horror, the South Korean Memento Mori. Set in an all girls high school this latest release from Tartan’s Asia Extreme label explores ideas of acceptance and human community set agianst a backdrop of gossip, suicide and ghostly visitation.
Oooh ... there have been rumblings about this for a while, but it looks as though it’s official now. Logboy just sent me the listing for Kino’s upcoming Maiku Hama trilogy boxset, made up of the first three films in the Maiku Hama series - The Most Terrible Time In My Life, Stairway To the Distant Past, and The Trap. The box releases July fifth and, yes, those of you who picked up the first film on it’s original release can pick up the second two individually. Check the details here.
Between this and Facets’ upcoming Forest With No Name release it’s a good time to be a Hama fan ...
Okay ... a little help here? I stumbled across this review of the latest from the director of Candyman over at Screendaily and it caught my attention but it doesn’t seem to have any sort of presence online at all. As near as I can tell this is the same film as Man With a Movie Camera but both titles are utterly useless as far as Google is concerned - go ahead, you do a search for Snuff and wade through all the crap that comes up - and the production company info isn’t any better ... can anybody help out with still shots or a trailer?
We posted a link to the trailer of The Empire of the Wolves - the latest actioner from Jean Reno and the director of Kiss of the Dragon - a while back and, lo, it has now hit screens in its native France and Screendaily’s got a detailed review here. They’re a bit mixed on it but they can be a bit wobbly on genre stuff there ... here’s that trailer again if you missed it first time around ...
Shop at our affiliated sites and support Twitch while feeding your pop-culture addiction.
