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.

Japanese cinema has a long history of female revenge films. As my knowledge of Japanese cinema grows it’s be interesting to find action heroines outside of those who I knew from industries such as Hong Kong with actresses like Michelle Yeoh. So color me interested when I hear about a new female revenge film, Hard Revenge, Milly, starring Miki Mizuno, that finished lensing recently and will screen this August in Japan. I just hope it is longer than the listed 44 minutes run time over at Eigepedia. If not, V Cinema is just fine by us.

At some point in the near future gun and weapon control laws are deregulated by public order. Because of this, Asia quickly becomes the epicenter of violent criminal activity in the world. In Yokohama City this violence becomes so extreme that the population quickly drops as ordinary people try to escape the criminal element that remain, leaving the northern part of the city as a haven of sorts to a particularly violent gang of four miscreants that call themselves The Jack Brothers.

When The Jack Brothers viciously murder Milly’s husband in daughter in front of her, leaving her to die, she vows revenge. She learns the art of sword combat from a master swordsman named Juubee, and eventually sets off to confront The Jack Brothers at their hideout in an abandoned factory.

Miki Mizuno is well versed in action cinema starring in Sasori, last year’s remake of Female Convict Scorpion, has a long history with martial arts training and apparently according to the report over at Tokyograph did all her own stunts. Chick’s hardcore!

Well, well.  Back in March we posted a note about an open casting call for an at-the-time untitled Yuen Wo Ping project.  Seems the master was preparing a new martial arts film and wanted to inject some new blood and so was looking for martial artists of all types from around the globe.  Any news Yuen Wo Ping film is good news so we were happy to hear of it but little else was known at the time.  Well, today I spotted word that Shawn Yue and Louis Koo have been cast to star in Iron Mask, a new Yuen Wo Ping directed sequel to the classic Iron Monkey.  Could this be the same film?  There’s some concern that Louis Koo - not a highly trained martial artist, though he’s dabbled in screen fighting - is cast in the lead role, though keeping the character masked during the major fight scenes opens the door for the use of a stunt double should the fight sequence demand it.  Iron Mask is slated to begin shooting in July.

To say that Tony Ching’s martial arts epic An Empress And The Warriors drew a lukewarm critical response is being kind, reviews from both The Visitor and Stefan in these pages being strongly negative.  I actually enjoyed this one significantly more than either of those two and the film is certainly not without its fans and if you’re one of those who likes their martial arts action old-school then it’s certainly worth noting that the film is about to arrive in an English friendly, region free DVD edition in Hong Kong. 

Now, when I say old school for this film I mean it.  Though blessed with a lavish budget and impressive production design the film is directed by Tony Ching, a legendary fight choreographer most recently known for his work on Zhang Yimou’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers though his resume stretches back much farther than that.  Ching shoots his film very much in the old style - complete with over the top soap opera melodramatics - and he’s got one of the best screen fighters in the biz - Donnie Yen - to work with here.  Take it as a throwback with the actors playing to certain stock types and you’ll have a good time with it and, if nothing else, the martial arts and set design - particularly Leon Lai’s hidden tree fort refuge - are fantastic.  You’ll find trailers below the break.

Continue Reading "Tony Ching’s AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS With Donnie Yen Hits DVD!"...

Learning about the upcoming Asian action flick Knife, I somehow get the picture in my head of that deadly duel between Donnie Yen and Wu Jing in SPL.

Knife is the latest project by LeBrocquy Fraser Productions, the team that brought us Osama, the Golden Globe Best Foreign Language Film some years ago. It features a lead character who is a “martial arts hero with an east-meets-west style; his blend of Muay Thai, street fighting and Special Forces knife techniques are in a way unique to Asia.” The film also promises “some of the most extreme knife work ever seen on the screen.”

I say, bring it on already!

Knife will be directed by Xie Dong, who was assistant director on many of Zhang Yimou’s films. Sunny Pang, last seen in the Singapore exquisite-corpse film, Lucky 7, will play the lead, an ex-Special Forces soldier turned mercenary. Other confirmed cast include John Lone, Yasuaki Kurata and Jade Leung.

Here’s the synopsis:

An outcast Special Forces soldier returns to Southeast Asia after a fifteen year absence to get his daughter away from the biggest gang in the city. With the help of his former Colonel and Guru he takes on the gang who are planning a massive money laundering deal, but other forces are at work, not to mention police who are closing in on the gang. Our hero must unleash his incredible martial arts knife wielding skills to overcome the odds and bring his daughter around to accepting his true identity, but tragedy and death are all too close in what becomes an action packed journey through the pulsing heart of this Metropolitan Asian City.

Production is scheduled to begin “soon.”

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!"...

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.

Continue Reading "RIKI-OH’s Louis Fan Siu-wong Returns In MOSS!"...

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."...

If you haven’t checked it out already head on over to Kaiju Shakedown and read excerpts of an interview Grady did with Chilean martial artist Marko Zaror. We’re quite fond of his two movies Kiltro and Mirage Man and you should be to. Head on over and read Marko Zaror on Bruce Lee.

... though surely I don’t hurt as bad as the guy Nathan Jones kicks through a plane.

We posted up the poster for this one just yesterday and today Wise Kwai has spotted the trailer and it’s a blast.  For those unfamiliar, Nathan Jones is the behemoth of a man who fought Jet Li in Fearless and Tony Jaa in Tom Yum Goong - one of only two men in the world who can make that claim, and I’ll give a candy to anyone who can name the other without looking it up - and also is featured in Troy.  Calling him enormous is a bit of an understatement.  So what has Thai film company Sahamongkol done to him here?  They’ve cast him opposite children, of course.  It’s a martial arts comedy in which Jones stars as a homeless and very timid foreigner living on the streets of Bangkok who is taken in by two young girls, one of whom is familiar to fans of Born To Fight.  He’s quiet and peaceful until he eats a bowl of very spicy papaya salad - the Som Tam of the title - at which point buildings are destroyed and aircraft collapse in terror.  This looks hysterical.  And also painful in the funnest possible way.

You’ll find the trailer embedded below the break.

Continue Reading "SOM TAM Trailer Makes Me Laugh So Hard It Hurts …"...

When the folks at Sahamongkol told me during the European Film Market that they were preparing a new children’s action film starring Nathan Jones - the behemoth from Tom Yum Goong and Fearless - the concept was silly enough to get me giggling like a little school girl.  They had no artwork or anything to share at the time, however, so I’ve held off mentioning it until now.  That image to the left is the film’s poster and yes, you can see the young girl from Born To Fight is one of the film’s young stars.  You can also see that Jones is bright red, which is the film’s central gimmick:  whenever he eats spicy Thai mango salad - the som tam of the title - he turns bright red and temporarily loses control of himself due to the extreme spiciness.  Yes, it’s very silly but that’s the point.  And added little perk here is that Jones apparently squares off against the appropriately named Conan Stevens - himself a seven foot tall behemoth - in this one which should be something to behold ...

Yes, kids, if you’ve ever read one of Vern’s frequent reviews of Steven Seagal’s straight-to-video output over at Aint It Cool then you know why this is a momentous day.  Vern has written a book.  It’s about Steven Seagal.  It’s being published, no less.  And we’ve got five copies to give away.  I absolutely guarantee that this will be one of the most compulsively readable film books ever published and I’m not kidding about that even a little bit. 

Want a copy to call your own?  Well, you could wait and pick one up via normal channels or you could predicting the outcome of a fictional cage match between Seagal, Van Damme and Chuck Norris.  We’ll accept entries until May 15th.  You’ll find the complete press release for the book below the break.

Continue Reading "Because The World Can Never Have Too Much Seagal.  Or Vern.  Or Both."...

I don’t even pretend to be knowledgeable when it comes to Indian cinema - and I would, for the record love to have someone who knows this stuff covering it for Twitch - but from time to time I stumble across something strange or compelling or both and I just can’t resist.  Hello, Dasavatharam.  The big budget Tamil picture - so don’t call it Bollywood, ‘cause it aint - has got enough stuff crammed into its trailer that it’d almost be easier to count what isn’t there.  Time travel, a bit of martial arts, car chases, dancing girls, gunplay, what looks like an ancient tribal priest, more car chases, more dancing girls, and a giggle inducing Segway chase.  Will it be good?  No clue, but it sure as hell won’t be dull.  You’ll find the trailer embedded below the break and hit the link below for more details.

Continue Reading "How Much Can Possibly Be Contained In One Trailer?  DASAVATHARAM Has The Answer!"...

[In accordance with our internal agreement Twitch-O-Meters will remain at the top of the page during the duration of the day. Please scroll down for today’s film news]

If you haven’t gone back to Michael’s review of The Forbidden Kingdom since the film opened this past weekend to enter into a discussion about the movie then you haven’t missed much. No slight against Michael but I would have thought anyone who saw the movie would have gone back to his review and and least shared your thoughts on it. No worries. This could be just a case of what I call ‘Thumper’ logic: If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all. I, however, thought I had something good to say and so I’ll repost it here, as a lead in to this week’s ToM. 

It’s hard to be discouraged about a western made martial arts movie that tries to tap into Chinese folklore. The reason I say that is because The Forbidden Kingdom is an important movie from a western standpoint. From a Chinese standpoint? It’ll likely be very embarrassing.
Ask yourself this, what is better? That you appease the relatively small legions of hard core Jackie, Jet and HK film fans? OR, that you provide a stepping stone movie, a movie that will introduce you to key players and themes found in their cinema?
The hardcore fans don’t need to be won over, we’re there with bells on! But if there is anything remotely accessible for that kid in some backwater town and he can get this experience for the first time, not knowing what we know - that it only gets better, then isn’t that better than pleasing the minority? I know, I know, when we all heard that Jet and Jackie were finally going to be in a movie together we collectively screamed in ecstasy. But the pinnacle opportunity for these two has long since passed and we should be glad that it has finally happened rather than how it went down.
Forbidden Kingdom is good. Not great. Not monumental in any regards from a hardcore fan’s perspective. I will say that I am glad that I can finally watch a Jet or Jackie film without having to worry about busting caps in asses, loud hip hop and bass scores, scantily clad Asian girls whoring themselves at nightclubs and listening to Anthony Anderson crack lame jokes every five minutes.
But the good it can do for recruiting potentially new fans is awesome.

So where do you go from there? You’ve seen The Forbidden Kingdom and a little spark has lit in your gut. You liked what you saw. You want more kung fu. And because we here at Twitch sometimes see ourselves as film educators, second to being fans of this type of cinema, we’re going to look at the key players in this movie and tell you what your next rentals are going to be. All titles mentioned hereafter are available domestically.

I introduce you to the Forbidden Kingdom Four!

Continue Reading "Okay. I’ve seen ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’. What is next?"...

Keanu Reeves has been prepping a martial arts film tentatively titled Tai Chi Tiger. According to an interview he did in Seoul he revealed that he had asked the king of martial arts choreography, a man who has a knack for making gweilos look half competent at Kung Fu, Yuen Wo-ping to be involved in the project in some capacity about six months ago. Though the script is not complete he would show it to Yuen once done. He had hoped that Yuen would direct the film but Yuen revealed recently that he wishes to only be involved as the Martial Arts Director.

So who would direct the film? It would seem that Reeves’ martial arts teacher and member of the Yuen Clan, Tiger Chen, would not only direct this film but also star in it alongside Reeves. Is he good? You tell me. Tiger Chen has choreographed martial arts for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Matrix trilogy, Charlie’s Angels and Kill Bill. Yeah, I’d say he’s qualified. The two have already been scouting locations in China. This would be the directorial debut for Tiger Chen.

Oh, and the report also says that Yuen has invited Reeves to be involved in another project next year. Could this be the unnamed Wo-ping project that recently made a worldwide casting call for martial artists? Had we known it included the chance to whup Keanu’s butt we would have made something up to get into the casting call.