Posted by Todd Brown at 3:48pm.
Well, glory be. CL Hor’s Kinta 1881 is a film that I have literally been tracking for months now, just waiting for the day that the first trailer would arrive. Billed as Malaysia’s first martial arts film - a claim I see no reason to dispute - the film stars a handful of real life martial arts champions battling it out in massive underground tin mines. The pedigree of the fighters got a lot of people’s attention, then came the behind the scenes reels that showcased the stunning natural sets and brutal action - I’m fairly certain one of the performers is knocked out cold in one of them - and the first artwork released proved that director Hor is capable of shooting some truly impressive film. Put it all together and it should be something special. The trailer certainly seems to say so ... it’s beautifully shot and the action looks stellar. You’ll find it below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "Finally! The Trailer For Malaysian Martial Arts Picture KINTA 1881 Has Arrived!"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 3:27pm.
Korean director Lee Jun-ik has become one of the most respected and successful forces in Asia thanks to the runaway critical and commercial success of his The King and the Clown - check the archives here for lots of coverage on that one - and for his latest he’s tackling what still seems to be a potent issue in Korea: the Vietnam War. Titled Sunny - the literal title is Someone Dead Is Far Away - the film tells the story of a small town country woman who joins an entertainment troop as a means of travelling to Vietnam to search for her MIA husband. The first trailer is out and it’s looking rather good. You’ll find it below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "THE KING AND THE CLOWN Director Goes To ‘Nam With SUNNY"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 3:16pm.
At the recently completed HK Filmart I had the chance to sit down for an extended chat with Impact Magazine’s Mike Leeder - an experience I highly recommend as he’s a killer guy and has been working behind the scenes in Hong Kong for long enough now that he’s got personal stories about everybody who’s anybody plus a whole lot of people who almost were - and as the conversation rolled along we got on to the subject of people who should have been major stars but for some reason or another just weren’t. High on that list was Louis Fan Siu-wong. Blessed with good on screen charisma and dead solid fight skills he could - and arguably should - have been one of the biggest stars of his generation but after a promising start he agreed to play the lead in the notorious gore-fu film Riki-Oh. The film has since gone on to become a notorious cult hit but at the time of its release it was a massive failure and Fan’s career simply went poof. Bye bye. But he does turn up from time to time and as luck would have it Fan has a featured role in an upcoming gritty Hong Kong action flick titled Moss in which he plays an incredibly grimy homeless man opposite Shawn Yue’s shady cop character.
The fine people at Mei Ah were telling anyone without the money to buy the film - i.e. people like me - that there was no trailer for it at the Filmart, which was total crap since they’d played clips from it at a press conference hours before I went and asked them, but the trailer they wouldn’t show anyone then has arrived online now and it’s looking good, a down and dirty action flick with a stylish look, a solid cast and quality action. Yes, please. You’ll find the trailer in the Twitch Player after the break.
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Posted by Todd Brown at 9:10am.
Well, no. That’s not true at all, actually, but while most people who care about Japanese cult director Minoru Kawasaki - he of Calamari Wrestler, Everything But Japan Sinks and other assorted cult film fame - is up to have been focusing on his upcoming revival of Guilala - particularly now that he’s cast the iconic Takeshi Kitano is a key role - he’s snuck out and made something entirely different. Good thing the fine lads at Nippon Cinema have been paying attention ...
Titled Kamigakari the film is the story of a hair stylist who radically alters her clients’ style when they fall asleep in her chair and encourages them to let their new hair style change their lives. And given that this is a Kawasaki film I’d be willing to put down good money that the changes amount to a fair bit more than cutting off an extra inch. Kawasaki has built his name as a low budget creature feature man, a bit of a one hit joke machine, but I’m starting to think he must have a bit of a hair thing, too, as this is at least the second hair oriented comedy that he’s turned out, the first being The Rug Cop.
Posted by Todd Brown at 8:55am.
Heh ... after a series of early promotional concepts that won’t actually appear in the film, an extended scene and a leaked sales video hit online we finally have the first proper, theatrical teaser for the upcoming Jean Claude Van Damme, ripped from the headlines and his own life, action comedy JCVD. This bit revolves around the events that trigger the film’s climax: Van Damme is refused money at a bank, throws a fit, and is mistaken for a thief when an actual gang of robbers subsequently hold up the same bank and take the staff hostage. Very nice. You’ll find the teaser and all of the other videos below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "When Van Damme Throws A Tantrum, He Really Throws A Tantrum."...
Posted by Todd Brown at 8:48am.
In a very nice little pick up, IFC Films have just announced that they’ve picked up rights for recent Spanish thriller Fermat’s Room - freshly premiered in Tribeca - for release via their VOD service. The film is a tight, twisty little thriller about a quartet of mathematicians lured out to the country for a mathematical challenge which turns out to be a slowly compressing room that will crush all four to death unless they can solve a series of riddles. I had the chance to see this a while back and it’s one very well shot and performed piece of work, you can check out the trailer below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "Math Is Scary. IFC Picks Up Spanish Thriller FERMAT’S ROOM"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 8:43am.
I love a good cop movie and Russia’s upcoming Gosudar looks to fit the bill. There’s no English language info on this one anywhere that I can find but the trailer makes the story clear enough - there’s a killer preying on young girls and the cops aren’t doing so well when it comes to tracking him down. The trailer plays with a nice blend of 70’s style grit and post-CSI blood and guts that, bolstered by the fact they’ve cast this entirely with actors old enough to have some weight and weariness behind them rather than stocking it up with pretty young things, makes this look like a winner.
You’ll find the trailer below the break in the Twitch Player.
Continue Reading "Trailer For Gritty Russian Crime Thriller GOSUDAR (Государь)"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 8:15am.
I suppose at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness screenings we’ll all have to start referring to programmer Colin Geddes as Mr. Producer Man. Yep, in a deal that’s been brewing for a while - and that Geddes has been involved with from day one - ultra-gorey Thai horror film Art of the Devil 2 have been picked up for English language remake by Cerenzie-Peters Productions. Don’t let the fact that it’s the second film in the franchise that’s been picked up throw you - the first part isn’t much good at all and the far superior second film actually has no story relationship to the first whatsoever, so this will be starting from the beginning of a story rather than the middle. No word on how hard they plan on making the remake but, really, this is all about the splatter so I can’t imagine why anybody would by it to strip the gore out ...
You’ll find trailer for the recent third installment in the Twitch Player below the break. And Geddes ... next time we go out, you’re buying.
Continue Reading "Thai Ultra-Gore ART OF THE DEVIL 2 Getting The Remake Treatment …"...
Summer, at least according to Hollywood, is almost here. With the high-dollar Iron Man set to kick off the blockbuster season tomorrow, now seemed like the perfect time revisit a few of those inevitable, potentially career-crippling box office misfires that crop up every May through August. Don’t get me wrong - if anyone knows that receipts don’t equate to respect, it’s Twitch readers. That being said, big budget films that tank hard tend to get the shortest end of the cred stick from all corners. With this edition of the Twitch-o-Meter, I’m singling out a few lavish productions which not only bombed but took something of (in my mind’s eye, anyway) an unfair critical drubbing. The only criteria for selection was that the films have release dates post-1988 (’89 being the first year I can recall palpable excitement for the start of summer movie season).
Continue Reading "Summer Floppin’"...
Posted by Todd Brown at 6:38am.
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During the previous Cannes Announcement, there was speculation as to why Fernando Meirelles‘ Blindness, a very handsomely produced disease/apocalypse drama - 28 Weeks Later without all the gunfire and explosions - was not in the initial offering of Competition films. After all it’s a Brazilian/Canadian/Japanese co-production starring Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Sandra Oh and Gael Garcia Bernal, written by Canadian screenwriter/actor/director Don McKellar and based on Portuguese author José Saramago‘s Nobel Prize winning novel. What better way to kick off the first big worldwide festival of 2008 than a world-wide arthouse apocalypse yarn? An announcement from the festival group yesterday has indicated that Blindness not only at the festival, but is in fact the kick-off film for the Festival Competition section.
Posted by Todd Brown at 4:20am.
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Okay, kids, the Over the Top Fest gets rolling here in Toronto today - visit the official festival website for details - and we’ve got a stack of tickets to give away! Here we go!
Winning double passes to Pop Skull, Blood Boobs and Beast, Machine Girl, and Frownland are: Oblit 9, Anna Olowianczyk, Sean Normoyle, Sean O’Grady and Justin Decloux.
Winning double passes to Pop Skull, Blood Boobs and Beast, Hokuro Brothers / 100 Tears and I Think We’re Alone Now are: Vale Clark, Dan Krbavac, David Barmak, Ante Kovac and Michael Paszt.
And winning a double pass to the second Crispin Glover night is Marina Usher.
Congratulations to all the winners!
Posted by Mack at 11:25pm.
Not known for pumping out superhero flicks like their American counterparts the Korean film industry wants to show the world what they can do with the genre. Choi Dong-hoon [Tazza] and producer Lee Eugene [Voice of a Murderer] have green-lit a production that will begin filming in August and aim to release in Summer of 2009.
Pic, tentatively titled “Jeon Woo Chi,” borrows from an anonymously written novel from the Chosun Dynasty period featuring a magician who punishes corrupt officials. Adapting and modernizing the story Choi’s script sees a cursed Taoist magician resurrected 500 years later to cure the evils of the modern age. Lee and Choi have assembled an A-list cast headed by Kang Dong-won (”M”), Lim Su-jeong (”I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK”) and Kim Yoon-suk in what will be his first major role since this year’s smash hit ”The Chaser.” He plays a dangerous, evil spirit.
Frail, yet radiantly self-amused, Catherine Breillat admitted to being moved by Graham Leggat’s introductory remarks and expressed her pleasure to be back in San Francisco. By way of her own introduction to SFIFF51’s opening night presentation of The Last Mistress at the Castro Theatre, Breillat stated that it was true when she made the film that she wasn’t sure if it was legitimate for her to present a costume drama after the kinds of films she’s more customarily known for; but, it involved a subject that’s intrigued her for some time.
Jules Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, the author of Une vieille maîtresse upon which Breillat has based her film, was a great romantic and a dandy, subject to censorship and attacked by the authorities. Naturally, Breillat identifies with him. The Last Mistress presents the last hurrah of the 18th Century French aristocracy just before the advent of the 19th Century bourgeoisie. This is a period Breillat feels keenly attached to. As the Marquise de Flers proclaims in the film, “I am furiously aristocratic”, Breillat herself feels furiously 18th century.
Hoping her audience will derive as much pleasure from watching the film as she derived making it, Breillat likewise hoped that—after seeing the film—the audience would retain Leggat’s complimentary remarks. Though many rushed off to attend the opening night party at the Metreon, those who remained were charmed and attentive.
Continue Reading "SFIFF51: THE LAST MISTRESS—Opening Night Q&A With Catherine Breillat"...
Posted by Blake at 7:22pm.
Tony Starks is a hell bent man obsessed with power and adrenaline in Tony Starks who suddenly gets a does of reality on a trip to Kunar Province in Afghanistan to debut a new missile system dubbed Jericho that can seemingly blow up the horizon. He lives a dashing life of little care as a dominant world weapons dealer. Girls, hard drinks, fast cars and even faster girls, he blazes through them all in one long blur with no real sense of purpose. Whatever good qualities he possesses have been lost in his blinding vision of greedy capitalism and self-centered universe. It takes this one life-changing event in Afghanistan to propel forward the central plot of the movie of how a man rises from his past and inner demons to take on the injustices of the world.
Iron Man heralds in the summer with a giant boom of thundering robot rock that will surely cause audiences to immediately flock to see it again once the end credits start. It features a sensational performance by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, whom might initially seem like an odd choice, but once you see him own this role as a super hero and adrenaline junkie bad boy, you can’t wait to see him in future adventures. A hard drinking socialite with little to no redeeming qualities has rarely been this much fun on the silver screen, well outside of Vince Vaughn in Swingers. His transformation from his vices and illicit past to a robot fist-pounding machine of fury seeking out justice should more than keep fans of the original satisfied. Downey Jr. becomes Tony Stark to the degree it seems he threw out the entire script and ad-libs a performance like Hendrix would Purple Haze in past summers of love. I haven’t seen this wildly of a quirky performance by an actor work so damn well since Bill Pullman in Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance.
View pictures from the fun Fantastic Fest screening at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Real flying men in jet packs and more ensue!
Continue Reading "Iron Man Review & Fantastic Fest Fun Pictures"...
