Yes, kids, the Twitch Video Player Top Ten is a day early this week but I’ll be high above the ocean on my way to Cannes when I would normally be writing this, so there you have it.  What’s new this week?  Nazi space men!  Giant monsters!  Japanese gore and more, more, more!  Here we go!

1.  Iron Sky Trailer
2.  Zero Trooper F Opening Sequence
3.  Tokyo Gore Police Official Trailer
4.  Tokyo Teaser
5.  God’s Puzzle Trailer
6.  Tokyo Gore Police Promo
7.  Sauna Trailer
8.  Hank and Mike Teaser
9.  Chocolate Trailer
10. Greenside Trailer

Watch out Wisconsin, you’ve got some renegade film makers on the loose and they’re not afraid to blow stuff up in the name of entertainment.  We first caught wind of these guys thanks to the stellar trailer for their Japanese hero inspired sci fi picture Greenside, then went on to track down the similarly kaiju-themed short Zero Trooper F and now we’ve got the trailer for a third picture titled Loose Cannons.  No big monsters or sci fi action in this one, instead it’s a buddy-action-comedy laced with bursts of gunfire and kung fu action.  Yes, it’s totally independent and made for no money and the zero budget shows in spots but what shows more is just how talented and creative these guys are when it comes to overcoming those budget limits to put together solid work.  You can check the trailer for Loose Cannon, the trailer for Greenside and the opening three minutes of Zero Trooper F in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "The GREENSIDE Crew Strike Again With LOOSE CANNONS"...

Following on the success of their first foray into production with Pakistani splatter flick Hell’s Ground cult DVD label Mondo Macabro are jumping full bore into the production pool.  We brought news last week about Karim Hussain’s upcoming exploiter Filthy and today we got the first word on upcoming Filipino scifi splatter exploiter Killdroid.  From director Rico Maria Ilarde the film tells the story of a high school girl who becomes the lover of an abandoned killer android, part of an abandoned military project.

Given that it’s coming from Mondo I expect this one to be every bit as splattery as the recent Fever Dreams productions - Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police - with no opportunity to shock ignored.  We’ve got a detailed project announcement below the break and you can check the first images at the link below.

Continue Reading "It’s Filipino Killer Robot Love In KILLDROID!"...

No, it’s not a done deal yet but word is out from Nacho Vigalondo, director of the original Spanish version of Time Crimes, that iconic director David Cronenberg is in the running to direct the upcoming English language remake.  This is not a done deal just yet - I honestly don’t even know how far into negotiations they are - but if this is the direction that the US producers are trying to take the project then I say hot damn, bring it on.  A Cronenberg take on this material would, no doubt, be significantly different than Vigalondo’s source material but it should make for absolutely spectacular stuff ...

Updates on Twitch may be a bit more sporadic than usual over the next week as I’m heading out to Cannes tomorrow afternoon for the first week of the festival and market.  Extravaganza or endurance test?  It’s a lot of both, really ... I’ll be hitting five or six screenings a day most days while I’m there and will be reporting on as much as I’m able but I have yet to confirm what my internet access will be like where I’m staying so things might be spotty.  If you need to get hold of me while I’m there the Twitch Contact Form will do the job as well as anything.

I leave you in the capable hands of the rest of the Twitch crew while gone and, yes, it hurts bad that I’ll be missing The Good, The Bad and The Weird by leaving early.

Yes, this news isn’t the freshest we’ve ever posted - I believe the trailer is a couple days old now - but over the weekend the lady friend and I took the boy to see Speed Racer - which she hated, I was middling on and the boy really enjoyed - and the big highlight before the show was catching the trailer for the new, animated Star Wars movie before the screening.  Hey, kids!  It’s a new Star Wars movie that looks to be remarkably free of suck!  And very high on action!  Huzzah!

Are the killers lesbian?  Are the vampires?  Does it matter?  We’ve mentioned this one before but upcoming UK horror comedy Lesbian Vampire Killers is back on the radar due to principal photography launching May 19th, which is next week.  Hurray! 

Surprising news here:  Word is out that Fox has pulled the plug on the McG produced American remake of classic UK sitcom Spaced. Hurray!  Be a good boy or girl and buy the North American DVD release of the original show when it hits this summer. 

Oh, look!  Another festival down, another audience voted prize as best picture for Chile’s Mirage Man.  The festival was Brazil’s RIOFAN and the complete list of winners has just been announced with a good selection of Twitch favorites in the winner’s circle.  What won?  Pakistani splatter picture Hell’s Ground took the jury award, Mirage Man got the aforementioned audience award along with a special jury prize for Marko Zaror’s performance, Bruce LaBruce’s gay zombie picture Otto took the Visions award, Sebastian Silva’s La Vida Me Mata took a special jury award for achievement in editing and cinematography, Richard Gale’s Criticized took best international short and Gustavo Brandau’s Gravidade Zero took best Brazilian short.

Mirage Man has now taken home major prizes at pretty much every festival it has played - and expect more major festival announcements for the film soon - and yet, strangely, has only released in its native Chile with the United States being the only other territory to pick the film up.  All you international sorts may want to take not that the film is screening in the Marche Du Film on May 15th.  Get it while you can.

The web monkey has been keeping tabs on upcoming comedy Hank And Mike for a good while now.  The film is something of a local product, a feature length expansion of a short film by a pair of young Canadian film makers, and the premise is just stellar.  Easter bunnies, unemployed and unhappy.  The first official teaser has just arrived and it lives up to the premise.  You’ll find it in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Bad Bunnies!  The HANK AND MIKE Teaser Arrives!"...

While the final lineups won’t be announced until May 21st the box office for the 2008 edition for the Worldwide Short Film Festival here in Toronto is now open for business, with tickets available at a reduced rate until the selections are announced.  And while I’m not allowed to say what’s what until the official press release goes out I can say that I was directly responsible for both Midnight programs of horror and cult shorts and also had a hand in a special program of Japanese animation that local readers will not want to miss plus a special program of shorts from South East Asia that features a prominent name or two.  It’s going to be a very good year ...

This is wrong.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Screen International has announced that sales company Velvet Octopus will be launching international pre-sales on S. Darko at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival.  And, yes, this is what you think - a sequel to Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko with Daviegh Chase reprising her role as the younger Darko sister.  Richard Kelly has no official involvement whatsoever.  Darko needs a sequel about as badly as the original Highlander did, which is to say not at all, and I fully expect the results of this to be about the same, which is to say horribly bad.  I’m bothered that they’re doing a sequel at all, that they’re doing it without Kelly boggles the mind as Darko was Kelly’s baby ... my guess is Kelly has too much love for his creation to bastardize it this way himself and not enough financial control over the property to stop other people from doing it for him ... Icky.

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”.

We debuted the first footage from upcoming cult flick Tokyo Gore Police here at Twitch a while back, a four minute reel of footage cut together for use at Japan’s Yubari Fantastic Film Festival.  True to it’s name it was nasty, gorey stuff, with Audition star Eihi Shiina hacking and slashing her way through a series of bizarre mutants.  Only down side to that promo was that it was cut together early enough in the film’s life that it wasn’t entirely through post production yet and was still a little rough around the edges.  Well, no more!  The official trailer has just been released and the blood has been buffed and polished to a high sheen.  There’s not really anything in the way of new footage in this one but things have been tightened up considerably with some of the more bizarre moments - hello, crocodile girl! - moved up front and center ... You’ll find both trailers in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Second TOKYO GORE POLICE Trailer"...

He seems like such a pleasant young man in person but then, that’s what they say about all sorts of deviants, now isn’t it?  Canadian writer-director Karim Hussain has just announced his latest project, the aptly titled Filthy, a film revolving around garbage fetishists.  And that’s fetish in the true, deriving-sexual-pleasure-from sense, I make sure to point out.  Fresh of the success of their Pakistani splatter picture Hell’s Ground, Filthy is the first of a slate of new pictures to be announced from the Mondo Macabro lads and they’ll be touting the picture to prospective investors in Cannes with a nasty little promo teaser in tow.  You’ll find details below the break and a larger version of the poster linked below.

Continue Reading "Karim Hussain Has A FILTHY Mind"...

We’ve been tracking the progress of John Bergin’s upcoming animated feature From Inside for quite some time now and with the film edging up on completion we’ve got another incredible From Inside giveaway for you.  That image to the left is the second in a series of ultra limited edition, giclee prints featuring artwork from the film that Bergin is making available for sale.  There are only one hundred and fifty of these being made and Bergin is offering one up for a lucky Twitch reader.  Want it?  You’ve got until May 20th to saying you want in on the From Inside art giveaway.  And don’t forget to check out the trailer in the Twitch Player below the break.

Continue Reading "Signed And Numbered FROM INSIDE Art Print Giveaway!"...