To date from the 65th Venice Film Festival we have shown you Coffin Joe, Fabrice Du Welz, Kaiju and now Hayao Miyazaki! A super size image of him at the festival today is at the link below and several more added super size images from Ponyo On The Cliff. Hayao Miyazaki was at Venice screening his latest work and proclaiming his steadfast and unending love for non-computer animation. He told reporters after the Ponyo screening:

“I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man’s drawing hand, and that is why I decided to do this work in this way. Currently computer graphics are of course used a great deal and, as I’ve said before, this use can at times be excessive. I will continue to use my pencil as long as I can.”

More from Silvia Aloisi of Reuters

As I mentionned earlier in my first article on the World Film Festival, this event suffers from TIFF picking up the majority of the year’s exciting titles. There are some exceptions and Parking is one of them. Why Toronto didn’t pick this first feature is a total mystery. This gem puts a new talent in Taiwanese cinema on the map, a promising director named Chung Mong-hong.

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We have already seen Coffin Joe stomping down the red carpet of the 65th Venice Film Festival (here) and now at last we see Minoru Kawasaki stomping down the red carpet Takemajin-style! While audiences and critics seemed shocked the Coen Brothers, heaven forbid, would make a silly comedy, Kawasaki was sexying up Venice with gigantic romping kaiju action. Click the link below to witness pictures from its showing at Venice and images from the film itself, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit that feature destruction, confused world leaders, kaiju paparazzi, mayhem and… Takemajin and Guilala locked in fierce deadly fighting!

Apparently we’re in a bit of a DTV mood around here these days, first with a trailer for the newest Seagal film and now with the first teaser for a directorial effort by Ivan Drago himself, Dolph Lundgren. 

Titled Command Performance, the film is shooting now in Sofia before moving on to Moscow and stars Lundgren as an ex-biker turned metal drummer who must intervene when both a band and the Russian President - along with his entire family - are kidnapped by an armed gang during a charity concert. 

Believe it or not this is now Lundgren’s fifth directorial effort and with production company Nu Image riding the recent success of Rambo there are some rumblings of this getting at least a limited theatrical release before hitting the video world.

Teaser below the break in the Twitch Player.

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Three trailers and still not a bad thing to say about it.  It’s upcoming Russian naval epic Admiral Kolchak, starring Night Watch‘s Konstantine Khabensky.  What is there to say about it?  Large scale action?  Check.  Strong cast?  Check.  Impressive cinematography?  Check.  Time devoted to characters and environment as well as action?  Check?  Really, it looks like this thing is hitting everything you need to hit to do a large scale epic right.  You can check all three trailers below the break.

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I’m not really sure why but the initial teaser for Aleksandr Melnik’s New Land didn’t quite work for me.  The storyline was compelling enough, there were some familiar - and welcome - faces in the cast, and the script is from the same pen as recent epic Mongol so i felt like I should like it but it just wasn’t clicking.  Well, enough of that and on to the new trailer, just passed our way by regular reader Vladimir.  This one?  Yeah, this one works.  The film is essentially an adult Lord of the Flies and this one packs the sort of tension that such a story needs.

Near future. The death penalty was abolished worldwide, prisons are overcrowded. More and more funds needed for the maintenance of convicts to life imprisonment. International organizations decide to make an experiment. Russia provides an uninhabited island in the north, where a small settlement is developed. The first prisoners from Russia come to island. They must start a new life and arrange their own society. However, the settlers begin to live by the law: “last is dead”.

You can check both trailers in the Twitch Player below the break.

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Strange but true:  Steven Seagal may be all washed up here in North America, where he’s become a bit of a side show curiosity and object of mockery.  But Japan?  Japan’s a different story.  His films still do pretty well there, a decent number of them landing theatrical releases and provoking such things as, you know, full fledged marketing campaigns. Which means trailers.  Yes, there is a Japanese trailer online now for Seagal’s latest, Pistol Whipped, which also stars Lance Henriksen in a support role, Sure, Henriksen will go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything for a paycheck but he’s pretty solid in everything he does and the production values in this actually look quite good.  Plus, as an added bonus, you get a super enthusiastic Japanese narrator.  Huzzah!

It’s in the Twitch Player below the break.  But be aware:  breasts be lurking within.

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Yes, yes, technically Samurai Fiction director Hiroyuki Nakano officially got back into the director’s chair with his destined-for-pachinko screens remake of Seven Samurai but unless some brave DVD label takes a flyer on that one - Hey BCI!  It’s got Sonny Chiba in it!  And the trailers look great! - this is the first new Nakano film that people might actually have a chance of seeing.

Now, details from those more knowledgable than I would be gratefully accepted as I stumbled across the website purely by accident and speak not a lick of Japanese but it looks like what we’ve got here is an expansion of Nakano’s 2006 short film Iron, a film that played Critics Week at Cannes in 2006.  Beyond this and the fact that the trailer is filled with the sort of sumptuous black and white photography that made Samurai Fiction such a treat to look at, I know nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  I know you can watch the trailer at the link below.

** My thanks to Kevin from Nippon Cinema for clarifying some things on this.  Turns out that this is a new short film anthology that Nakano is heavily involved with.  The original version of Iron is included along with two newer Nakano-directed shorts.  Details below in the comments section.

It is impossible not to be moved by Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son about His Father. Director Kurt Kuenne delivers a personnal and intimate documentary about a lost friend, a cinematographic diary about a family tormented by a devastating tragedy. The film is also a fantastic achievement on a technical point of view with its fantastic use of stock footages that explores an heavy past, searching answers that could explain the nature of an unthinkable crime.

Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is called a masterpiece. 

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Jose Mojica Marins’ latest film Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio) played for press yesterday at the 65th Venice Film Festival and will screen publicly on Sunday, August 31, 2008. Blake Ethridge found some fantastic images of Marins and cohorts at Venice, including an image of Marins walking the red carpet in full Coffin Joe regalia. The photos as well as the Twitch film review can be pursued below.

Vinyan, a film we have been covering fairly thorough here at Twitch, had its world premiere today at the 65th Venice Film Festival. Reviews and comments should start streaming in over the course of the next 24-48 hours. At the moment we have Neil Smith from the BBC talking to Fabrice Du Welz and Emmanuelle Beart (here) and a rather grumpy take on the film by Andrew Pulver at the Guardian (here). I expect Vinyan to be somewhat divisive as its rumored to be a very strong and emotional film told with cracking and feverish intensity. Basically anyone walking into expecting to see something like Bogart in The Africa Queen will probably be disappointed. Strongly told films tend to cause strong reactions.

Super size images from the world premiere at the link below.

Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) has announced a special program on Asian superheroes for 2008. The characters are as follows: Gekko Kamen (Japan), Masked Rider (Japan), Krrish (India), Cicak Man (Malyasia), Mercury Man (Thailand), Hong Gil Dong (Korea), Darna (Indonesia and Philippines), Lastikman (Philippines), Captain Barbell (Philippines), and Super Inframan (Hong Kong). There are a limited number of films based on these characters, and the available titles suggest that this will be a fun program. Further updates will be provided at a later date. 

Hmm, now this could be interesting.  More of a clip than an actual trailer and loaded with over-the-top, hyper-frenetic editing in the early going, we’ve just had a reader load the first trailer for Igor Voloshin’s Nirvana in the Video Player and there’s some intriguing stuff at play there.  The film is the story of a love triangle between a Russian nurse and her neighbor, a heroin junkie, and on of their boyfriends and - according to the uploader - it may well have some sort of cyberpunk angle to it.  What I do know for sure is that the cinematography on this is spectacular.  Now I’d just like to see a little bit more of it where characters are given a bit more space to breath ...

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One of the fun things about running Twitch is hearing from the number of aspiring film makers out there who read the site regularly.  Case in point, Josh Danger.  One of the minds behind ultra indie production outfit Giant Killer Presents Danger shoots micro budget films on video and is managing to squeeze some impressive results out of the medium.  With one short in the can and a pair of other projects in the works Danger has managed to put together a body of work that, despite the obvious budget limits, features some impressive camera work and powerful images.  You’ll find trailers for three of his projects at the link below, I’m partial to Vandal, myself.

Oh oh, Mama. This is good stuff.

It’s sort of ironic, or maybe even a little pathetic, that two of the best dramas of the year coincide with the end of a certain format. After wasting their time with season dramas that had no seasons, MBC scored a winner with their last “season drama” 라이프 특별조사팀 (Life: Special Investigation Unit), mixing Japanese genre drama tropes with Korean sentiment. And now it seems SBS is following the same path, with the conclusion of their Friday Dramas hitting the jackpot right on their last effort, 신의 저울 (The Scale of Providence), which started airing yesterday. A few weeks ago, SBS announced they’ll terminate the Friday Drama format. That is because, apparently, trying to fund innovative genre dramas among rubbish for the ajumma junta holding the remote is easier said than done. Which, essentially, means The Scale of Providence will be the last Friday Drama we’ll see until next year, when things will get back to normal (on paper).

But, after watching the first two episodes, one thing’s for sure: this is not only a badass, exciting court thriller. It might actually be 2008’s equivalent of 부활 (Resurrection), Kim Ji-Woo and Park Chan-Hong’s masterpiece from 2005. Genre is a little different, but at least the vibes are quite similar. And it’s no surprise if you look at who’s behind the camera: PD Hong Chang-Ok’s 강남엄마 따라잡기 (Gangnam Mom) was one of last year’s biggest surprises, and he certainly keeps that ironic, pungent touch alive in Scale, which might actually become really critical of the Korean justice system, as the episodes go on. But why the vibes feel similar to Resurrection can be explained also through this drama’s writer: it’s Yoo Hyun-Mi of 그린 로즈 (Green Rose), which has a bad rep as a low-rent Resurrection, but it’s a really solid drama that can stand on its own. Cast, led by veteran Moon Sung-Geun and promising youngster Song Chang-Wi, seems to be excellent, and if the start is any indication, we might have one of the best dramas of the year on our hands. Check a little clip below the break (spoilers, but it’s the cliffhanger of episode 1 that sets up the entire drama, so maybe even better than a trailer).

Continue Reading "SBS’ 신의 저울 (The Scale of Providence) the new 부활 (Resurrection)?"...