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Twitch & AICN present INTERNATIONAL EYE CANDY! SCARE 2 DIE! ARN! HITLER KAPUT! Miike's YATTERMAN and more!!!
Yes, kids, it’s Todd from Twitch here again with the latest installment of International Eye Candy, a grab bag of tasty goodness spanning the globe. What have we got for you this time out? A pair from TASTE OF TEA and FUNKY FOREST director Katsuhito Ishii, the first glimpse at Takashi Miike’s YATTERMAN, Swedish crusaders, Russian gore, Britney Spears sung by a German big band (really), and hot Japanese girls in bikinis lopping the heads of zombie hordes with samurai swords. You betcha. Here we go!
Let’s kick it off with a double bill of Katsuhito Ishii, shall we? If you haven’t seen Ishii’s most recent pair of films – FUNKY FOREST and TASTE OF TEA – then you are missing out in a big, big way as both are brilliant and since both are readily available on DVD now I strongly recommend you correct your oversight immediately. Until you have the chance to do so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say the man is one of the most wildly creative and diverse talents in the world today. He works in both animation – he supervised the anime sequence in KILL BILL – and live action and the first of the new pair falls into the animation camp. Titled RED LINE it’s a wildly over the top car racing film that has been in the works for years now. Ishii wrote the script, Takeshi Koike directs and a fresh block of footage was show at the recent Tokyo Anime Fair. It’s a cam job video here, unfortunately, but it’s more than enough to show this thing off until something better comes along …
Also coming down the line from Ishii is his latest live action directorial effort. Titled Yama No Anata it’s a remake of a film from the 1930’s and looks to be handled in remarkably restrained – and typically gorgeous – style. The story revolves around the relationship between a beautiful young woman and a blind traveling masseur – no, there’s no relation to ZATOICHI here – and it shows another face to a man who is already one of the most diverse directors working today. Watch for the shot of the woman looking back over her shoulder … just perfect …
And we go from a restrained little love story to a picture of a guy with an arrow through his head. Yep, that’s how we do things here at the ol’ IEC.
Coming out of Russia, the film is titled S.S.D. – no idea why, so don’t ask – and, as you may have guessed, is full on, bloody horror. Now, while Russia is undergoing a huge genre film boom these days the horror end of that segment has been largely neglected so far and, as far as I can tell, this is one of the very first attempts the country has made at this sort of thing. Looks like they’ve learned quickly.
Like Russia, Hong Kong is a genre-heavy film region whose output is surprisingly light on horror film. Seriously: try and name five Hong Kong horror films from the last ten years. If you’re able to do it at all I’d be willing to bet it’s only because you’re well familiar with the work of the Pang Brothers – by FAR the most prolific horror directors in the region – which means you’re going to want to pay attention here.
SCARE 2 DIE – yes, I hate the use of the number, too – is the directorial debut of one Cub Chien. And who is Chien? He’s the Pang’s regular DP, that’s who, and his going all out with this, a full on, very bloody horror picture that tells three interlocking stories set in a hospital. It also has a charming poster that you won’t likely be seeing in WalMart any time soon.
Right. Let’s put the gore aside for a moment and head to Sweden, where we’ll find the trailer for the second feature in the epic Crusades-based series ARN. I continue to be baffled as to why exactly someone would think it’s a good idea to make a series of Crusades pictures in the current global climate – particularly anywhere in Scandinavia, just a stone’s throw away from the recent political cartoon debacle – but if you must make one you may as well make one like ARN. Meaning, very big and very pretty. The films are based on a hugely popular series of novels that are being spun out into a multiple format release that’ll see them playing on screens throughout the region before being reworked into a longer form television miniseries. Part one played to big success and two is just around the corner …
Did I promise Britney Spears? I do believe I did promise Britney Spears. I may, however, have failed to neglect that Britney would arrive accompanied by a photo of Adolf Hitler dancing a tabletop two step.
There are two big trends in Russian film right now. The expected, sensible one is the big historical epic. There are buckets of these things in production over there and most of them look very good, indeed. The unexpected, very surprising one is the sudden explosion of Zucker Brothers styled slapstick comedies. This is one of those. The film is titled HITLER KAPUT and it pokes ridiculous fun at the second world war, a topic still rather touchy for many Russians. And, you know what? It looks really good, in an absolutely ludicrous way. Production values are great, the gags are funny and just make sure you pay particular attention to the soundtrack …
Japan’s SHAOLIN GIRL has a bit of an odd pedigree. After the huge international success of Stephen Chow’s SHAOLIN SOCCER the expectations were very high that Chow would continue on with a sequel or two. He’s not been averse to riding a franchise in the past and the ending was certainly open to another installment or two but Chow just didn’t seem interested. He did KUNG FU HUSTLE instead and the whole issue appeared dead. But the Japanese can be persistent folk and rather than simply doing a cheap knock off of the property the producers of this film approached Chow directly and asked if he would be open to an officially sanctioned, Japanese set sequel to the film and Chow, surprisingly, said yes. He doesn’t star in the picture but worked on it as a producer and it has his full and complete blessing as a rather unorthodox continuation of the world he created.
This time out BATTLE ROYALE’s Kou Shibasaki is in the lead as a kung fu enhanced field lacrosse player, the tone seems slightly less geared towards slapstick, and the production values are great.
For something completely different we head to the good ol’ US of A – hey, it’s international to me - and Benh Zeitlin’s GLORY AT SEA. I first came across Zeitlin when his stunning and bizarre stop motion short EGG played at a festival here in Toronto and while this is the first time I’ve seen him working in live action it looks no less compelling to me. I think the less I explain, the better here so just go check out the trailer.
Ah, the Miike. The Miike.
As is seemingly always the case with this man – who will one day no doubt simply just stop and drop dead from sheer exhaustion – Takashi Miike’s got, by my count, five or so films in some stage of production right now and the most interesting by far is the live action adaptation of classic anime YATTERMAN. Miike’s perfectly suited to this sort of thing, in my opinion, his loopy sense of humor, tripped out color schemes and physics defying action being naturally suited to bringing an animated hero in to the live action world. So I’ve been tracking this one closely for a good while but news has been sketchy, at best. It still is, really, but they recently had a press conference for the film with cast and crew in attendance and a brief clip of footage from the feature was shown. There’s not much, but it’s there and it’s looking gooood.
On to Korea now, which may well be the sleeping giant of world animation. For years now Korea has been the labor farm for animation houses around the globe – THE SIMPSONS has been drawn there for ages, if not the entire run – but despite the huge pool of talented animators the country has yet to produce a large scale break out hit or big name director to call their own.
That could end with Studio Flying and Gap Kim. These were the people behind recent festival hit AACHI AND SSIPAK and they’re now hard at work on their new project, MAD MONKEY, with Kim at the helm. Supernatural martial arts fantasy set in a brothel catch your fancy? Well here it is, in four minute music video form …
A bit of cross cultural pollination happening in the latest from Barbet Schroeder. Schroeder is a big time French arthouse film director. His latest film? INJU, based on a story by hugely influential Japanese novelist Edogawa Rampo. Schroeder’s leaving the story true to its roots, meaning it’s dominantly shot in Japan with a Japanese cast and the Rampo touches are everywhere. Rampo styled himself as Japan’s answer to Edgar Alan Poe which means his work had a highly stylized, very gothic feel to him, but he was also very much a Japanese horror writer, which means copious amounts of blood, kinky sex and all around oddity. All of which are present in this very short initial teaser.
Another bit of cross cultural work here, this one also involving Japan. Hong Kong director Soi Cheang – most recently known for DOG BITE DOG – is about to see his latest film his screens across Asia. Titled SHAMO it is the ultraviolent adaptation of a Japanese manga of the same name, shot with a mixed Japanese and Chinese cast. Shawn Yue stars in the lead as a young man imprisoned for murdering his parents. While there he is beaten and abused – quite graphically on screen – until he finally learns that he must toughen up in order to survive. By the time he is released he has reshaped himself into a brutal fighting machine, intent on finding his younger sister and making a name for himself within the fighting arena. It’s a hugely stylish film that’ll leave you feeling more than a little beaten up by the end and the new Japanese trailer is rather impressive.
Yeah, this is here just because I’m feeling a bit goofy.
For those unfamiliar with them, The Asylum ar the LA outfit responsible for all those cheap knock offs of big budget Hollywood blockbusters that mysteriously find their way to the rental shelves of your local DVD shop the week before the big films release. They’ve got a simple business model – make films cheap and ride a much larger film’s ad campaign – and they work it hard. Sometimes they even turn out a film that’s halfway decent, they’re SNAKES ON A TRAIN by all accounts a much more entertaining film than the Sam Jackson film it knocked off.
Anyway … two new Asylum trailers. ALLAN QUATERMAIN obviously is aping INDIANA JONES but the real gem is the trailer for C. Thomas Howell’s WAR OF THE WORLDS 2 …
If you’re at all a fan of old school martial arts then the prospect of Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung working together again has got to get the blood pumping a bit, even if it’s not an on screen collaboration. The film is WUSHU, a project that Chan is producing and Hung plays a key support role in and while nobody’s saying so in these words it has all the marks of a “passing the torch” sort of scenario. Set in an actual mainland Chinese martial arts school the film focuses on a young fighter who switches disciplines in hopes of catching the eye of a girl in the school and while the story line is nothing to get all worked up over the main point of the film is to showcase the realities of martial arts training and the very impressive skills of its young stars. Basically this is Chan and Hung trying to give the new generation a kick so that there will be someone there to keep the traditions that made them such huge stars alive when they’re finally ready to hang it up.
Right. The bikini girl with the sword.
What, ahem, certain feature film directors have never seemed to understand is that their video game adaptations don’t fail because they’re no good. No, nobody really much expects them to be good. They fail because they’re no fun. This does not look to be a problem with ONECHANBARA. The Japanese live action film version of the most ridiculously adolescent wish fulfilling video game series ever pits a rather fetching young woman in nothing but a bikini, feather boa and cowboy hat against a swarm of bloodthirsty zombies wielding just a samurai sword. The girl is attractive, the costumes tight and barely there, the effects pleasingly splattery. Yup. A good film this aint but a fun film it sure as hell is …
We’re in the home stretch now, with a pair of real gems to finish up with …
Korean director Shin Han-Sol won a lot of international attention with his debut feature THE ART OF FIGHTING and he’s back now – in a big way – with his sophomore effort. The title? A TALE OF LEGENDARY LIBIDO. Yep, it’s a full on, period-set, sex comedy about a young man rendered impotent by a series of childhood accidents who practices martial arts techniques to … errr … ‘strengthen’ his member, thereby rendering him able to service the entire population of his home village, a village drained of its male population by war. Stephen Chow’s SHAOLIN SOCCER proved that just about anything can be funny when martial arts motifs are applied and the trailers for this look flat out brilliant.
And, finally, a little something new from JCVD, the Charlie Kauffman-esque, ripped from his own life, action comedy that just might lift aging Belgian action star Jean Claude Van Damme out of the DTV hell that has been his life for the past decade or so.
This is one that’s gotten a lot of coverage here and other places, almost all of which has focused on Van Damme himself and his willingness to poke fun at his own life and public persona. And that’s definitely a big part of the charm of the film but I just came across something that made me think we’d been neglecting to pay director Mabrouk El Mechri the attention he deserves. Just arriving online is a single take, nearly four minute shot from the film and Mechri’s work with the camera is absolutely brilliant; it’s the sort of complex yet impossibly smooth and confident camera work that you’d expect from a much better known and established director like Jean Pierre Jeunet and not from a first timer like Mechri. This is looking more and more like it might not just be a fun film, but actually a really, really good one on all levels …
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