We’ve been writing about this one forever and the proper theatrical trailer for Thai action-fantasy Queens of Langkasuka has just turned up on YouTube.  I had he chance to catch this at the Cannes Market and while it shows signs of having been compressed down from a larger project - it was originally meant to be two films, which means the story has been greatly compacted to fit it all into one - it is loaded up with lavish visuals and it’s a lot of fun to see Dan Chupong, in particular, playing a role that both has some actual depth to it and also allows him to show off some serious martial arts moves after being a one man stunt freak show - in the best possible way - in both Born To Fight and Dynamite Warrior.  The guy’s got the goods. You’ll find the trailer below the break.

Continue Reading "Proper Theatrical Trailer For Nonzee Nimibutr’s Thai Fantasy QUEENS OF LANGKASUKA!"...

We love us some Alex Proyas around here, the original version ofThe Crow and the criminally under-appreciated Dark City both standing as true classics in our books.  And while we’ve talked a good bit about the upcoming director’s cut of Dark City we’ve generally missed out on mentioning his upcoming feature, Knowing.  But no more!  The compelte synopsis has just turned up over at Quiet Earth and this looks like exactly the blend of high concept and intimate story that Proyas does so well:

In 1958, as part of the dedication ceremony for a new elementary school, a group of students is asked to draw pictures to be stored in a time capsule. But one of the students, a mysterious girl who seems to hear whispered voices, fills her sheet of paper with rows of apparently random numbers instead.

Fast forward 50 years to the present: A new generation of students examines the contents of the time capsule and the girl’s cryptic message ends up in the hands of young CALEB MYLES. But it is Caleb’s father, professor TED MYLES (Nicolas Cage), who makes the startling discovery that the encoded message predicts with pinpoint accuracy the dates, death tolls and coordinates of every major disaster of the past 50 years. As Ted further unravels the document’s secrets, he realizes it foretells three additional events—the last of which hints at destruction on a global scale and seems to somehow involve Ted and his son. When Ted’s attempts to alert the authorities fall on deaf ears, he takes it upon himself to try to prevent more destruction from taking place.

This gripping supernatural thriller charts one man’s faltering steps towards belief in the ultimate order of the universe even as he finds himself surrounded by mounting chaos. With the reluctant help of DIANA WHELAN (Rose Byrne) and ABBY, the daughter and granddaughter of the now-deceased author of the cryptic prophecies, Ted’s increasingly desperate efforts take him on a heart-pounding race against time until he finds himself facing the ultimate disaster—and the ultimate sacrifice.

In other Proyas news, the Australian director is also currently listed as a writer on the film adaptation of John Christopher’s trilogy of Tripods novels, which could make for one hell of a film if done right ...

I am virtually rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, so bare with me, when I see an article in Variety written by our friend Grady Hendrix of Kaiju Shakedown that apparently indy, Asian and horror label Tartan US has gone out of business. This is sad news for everyone. This basically means that they are selling off all their assets, including their library of 101 films. Now let’s hope that a good company picks up those titles, please not the Weinsteins, and continues where they left off.
This sucks ass, if I may be so blunt, and it’s always sad to see companies that you like and have done business with go the way of the Do Do. Tartan UK were my introduction to Asian and European films back in the day and I have been buying titles from them ever since. Let’s hope that Tartan UK is standing on stronger legs and it seems to be so as they’ve just announced their next wave of Blu Ray discs, that include Paranoid Park, I’m A Cyborg, The Proposition, Sky Blue, Funny Games U.S., A Tale of Two Sisters, P2 and Lady Vengeance.

A couple weeks back I was slipped a screener of director J.L. Vara’s debut feature, South of Heaven and have been awaiting the okay to share some news about this one ever since.  Taking a bow June 14th at the Cinevegas Festival, the film is a sort of technicolored noir that fuses bright colors and hyper stylized design with 1950s styled villains and heroes punctuated by bursts of extreme violence.  Here’s how Cinevegas describes it:

The Coop Brothers are in trouble. Roy Coop has just finished serving Uncle Sam and he’s come home to find his brother, Dale Coop, nowhere to be found and he’s left a lot of angry men looking for him. Meanwhile, in the wild west, Dale Coop is finding himself caught up in a crime spree under the manic tutelage of Mad Dog Mantee.

Along the way we will meet a vaudeville pair of thugs named Teddy, an eastern European fem fatale named Bebe, a yellow bellied crook named Rooster Union, and we’ll enter the surreal world of the Pawn Daddy Pawn shop.

South of Heaven is a cinephile’s dream: A mix of film noir, Spaghetti Western, and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. The characters are unique, the world obscure, and the colors vivid.

You can expect a full review of the film to come soon and we’ve got an interview under way with the director which will appear closer to the film’s premiere but in the meantime we’ve got the first stills and a teaser clip from the picture to whet the appetite.  Hit the link below for the stills and check the teaser in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "First Images and Teaser For J.L. Vara’s Technicolor Noir SOUTH OF HEAVEN!"...

Round two of our preview of this year’s edition of the Worldwide Short Film Festival. Tonight we look at the Sci-fi program Sci-fi: Out There. Compiled of 9 short films and clocking in over and hour and a half the program will offer viewers a diverse perspective on sci-fi cinema. Personally, I thought the bill started a bit slow but by golly does it pick up after the first couple shorts.

Things really started clicking for me with the animated short Rocket Science which had this great 1950s science fiction film approach but with noir film dialogue. She’s not just a woman, she’s a scientist. Great stuff.

Another favorite of mine was Martians Go Home!, a Spanish language film about alien invaders raising the dead to take over the world. At first I thought the director, Dani Moreno, was channeling Guy Maddin in his first scene but he switches lenses and films the meat of the film in such a way that you’d think you were watching an after school special you found on a VCR cassette at the neighborhood garage sale, Martians Go Home! Is saturated with vibrant colors, gallons of alien bodily fluid and a lead character I swear would pass as a Spanish Geddy Lee. It comes as no surprise that he picks up a guitar near the end of the short.

We’ve spoken a fair deal about Blood Will Tell, the animated short from Andrew McPhillips, and it is clear to see why. Oh. My. God. It is haunting. It is gorgeous. And it features music by Sigur Ros. Really, need we say anything else about it? See for yourself.

The icing on the cake is Ascension. During a blackout a tenant mistakenly walks into another apartment and disturbs a doomsday cult mid-ceremony. Stephen Irwin’s very funny film comes to us from Australia and is guaranteed to make you chuckle not once, not twice, but at least thrice. A very funny piece to cap off a strong program. 

Big news for animation fans here in Toronto!  We announced a little while back that Studio 4C’s Genius Party anthology films would both be coming to Toronto as part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival in June.  When the festival made that announcement we knew that one of the Genius Party directors would be accompanying the films but we didn’t actually know who until today.  Coming to present Genius Party as well as participate in an extended on-stage interview and question and answer session hosted by yours truly is Shinichiro Watanabe, director of the landmark anime series Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and a pair of the shorts included in The Animatrix.

The Genius Party films screen back to back at the Varsity Cinema on June 12th starting at 7:15 pm with tickets now available online.  The on stage one-on-one with Watanabe - a session titled Anime In Translation will take place at the University of Toronto Emmanuel College Room EM 108 on June 13th from 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm.  Yes, that’s a lot of time with the director and I’m drafting up my questions and approach now so if there are any questions you’d like to see put to him, now is the time to let me know.  Fire away in the comments section below!

A remake of Funny Games US so soon? The Strangers aims to please more than it aims to provoke. So while critics everywhere will probably compare it to Funny Games there’s no doubt a more apt comparison to last years Ils which was released last year in the US by Dark Sky Films as Them. Exactly why that comparison is more apt might be giving too much away but safe to say any of these films raises the question of just why home invasion cinema seems so resonant these days. 

Continue Reading "THE STRANGERS"...

My thanks to Aaron Soto for pointing this one out ...

With El Orfanato (The Orphanage on these shores) proving to be a major international hit it comes as no surprise that the talent behind that film is starting to pop up with other projecs of their own and the first out of the gate is Las Manos Del Pianista, the directorial debut by El Orfanato screen writer Sergio G. Sánchez.  Based on a novel by Eugenio Fuentes, the project was developed as a television movie and tells the story of a failed pianist who now makes his living euthanizing cats and dogs and who is hired to kill a man.  We haven’t found any images or trailers from the project yet but we’re looking ...

Fresh on the heels of the new Dolemite film we mentioned a few days back, here comes Black Dynamite!  A new production out of San Francisco the film is a note perfect recreation of the blaxploitation films of the seventies from the style, to the action, right down to the grainy film stock.  I mean, come on ... the guys holding a gun and a set of nunchuks!  Martial arts, vigilante justice, a hospital room shoot out, car crashes, and a whole lot of sweet loving - this has got it all in spades.

You’ll find the trailer below the break in the Twitch Player.

Continue Reading "BLACK DYNAMITE Is Ready To Explode!"...

Good news for cult film fans: organizers of the New York Asian Film Festival have just dropped a line to let us know that cult splatter film Tokyo Gore Police will be taking a bow at this year’s edition of the festival.

In the near future...The Tokyo Police force has been privatized and incorporated. The new force has their hands full with a new type of genetically engineered mutant stalking the streets and brutally taking human lives. Luca, the top level officer at Tokyo Police has special law enforcement skills but her dark past makes her vulnerable. She is determined to hunt the mutant known as “Engineer” until the day she can find and destroy the mysterious “Key-Man”.

This one comes from the same creative team as was behind The Machine Girl and looks to be, if anything, even more over the top.  Audition‘s Eihi Shiina stars, with action choreography by Versus‘ Tak Sakaguchi.  You’ll find the official trailer and an extended reel below the break.

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Few things are as scary as the idea that someone could break into your home and terrorize you. The Strangers strains mightily to tap into that very common fear, and comes up short on nearly every count.

Recent French-language genre pictures Them (Ils) and Inside (À l’intérieur) took the basic premise of a frightening home invasion and spun it into very different yet disturbing visions. The Strangers relies too heavily on the idea itself, trusting that the audience will be paralyzed from the very thought that masked strangers might attack at random.

The film sets a certain expectation by claiming to be inspired by real life: “The horrifying events that took place in the Hoyt’s family vacation home at 1801 Clark Road on February 11, 2005 are still not entirely known.” (No city or state is cited.) A simple Google search turns up nothing, and the official site doesn’t reveal any more information about the “true” circumstances, which might add a plaintive edge to the proceedings. But even if the story told on screen were exactly what happened in real life, it doesn’t excuse the tired use of old tricks to try and juice the narrative.

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The short film gods have smiled kindly upon me and I will be previewing a number of the programs for the upcoming Worldwide Short Film Festival. Tonight we start our tour with Shorts For Shorties: Into (And Out of) This World! a program that it tailored for the young and young at heart.

Oh man are you guys and gals in for a treat. To start, this year they programmed three, yes, count them, THREE! Shaun the Sheep shorts from the Aardman Animation series. Stick With Me, Hiccups and The Snore Worn Shaun are laugh out loud funny. Other very funny entries include Because You’re Gorgeous, a story about a warthog with vanity issues, and Twit-Twit, a very sharp CG short about robots on pump trolleys, passenger powered rail cars, meeting at a toll booth in the middle of a desert.

No program for children would be complete if it missed the opportunity to inform and educate them as well. World in Your Hands and Emission Admission touch on taking care of the world we live in. Emission Admission is especially catchy with its hip-hop score. Aboriginality is an absolutely stunning mix of animation and live action, a story about a boy who discovers some traditional First Nations dance while watching television. It is in fact too short, I wish it was longer.

And the man with his finger on the pulse of Canadian and International culture, George Stroumboulopoulos- if ever I had a favorite Canadian on-air celebrity this is the guy- lends his voice to narrate the film Back In ‘93, a story of a young boy living in Toronto who comes out of the Hockey Closet and shows his devotion to the Montreal Canadiens after they won the Stanley Cup in 1993. It features a young boy who wears a fake mustache. How can it miss?

There are 18 shorts in Shorts for Shorties and all help make it a very eclectic and entertaining program. 

A very tasty little offering here from Germany, assuming your tastes tend towards taxidermy and monochrome photography.  Silence is a new short film from Walter Stoehr and it looks to be one very impressive, atmospheric piece of work.  I’ll let Stoehr set it up himself:

Silence” is about a taxidermist who comes back to his home town and finds the place deserted. No one’s there. His family is gone, too. Now, in order to find the residents he follows their tracks into the woods. There he encounters someone or something who/which seems to be involved in the residents’ disappearance.

He’s been good enough to pass us the first trailer for the film, which you can find int he Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "An Impressive Trailer For Walter Stoehr’s Ominous Short SILENCE"...

My lords and masters at the Worldwide Short Film Festival - I programmed the Midnight sections and helped bring in the Genius Party anthologies as well as the series of Thai short commemorating the King of Thailand’s 80th birthday - have just passed along a trio of TV spots for this year’s festival and they make me giggle.  And so I share them with you below the break.

Continue Reading "The Worldwide Short Film Festival in Trailer Form …"...

Yes, the time has come to announce the five winners of our Queen of Black Magic DVD giveaway who will soon have some lovely Indonesian gore to call their own.  And, yes, the effects in this film are still incredibly effective - all the more so thanks to the stellar restoration job the lads at Mondo Macabro gave the film.  And the winners are:  Mark Madsen, Vincent Pina, Captain Scurvy (really), John Monahan and Mark Ferguson.