International Eye Candy
April 30, 2008

Yes boys and girls, two weeks has come and gone – two week in which I’ve been rather international myself – and I’m home, I’m rested, I’m well stocked on Italian wine and now it’s time for the very best bits and pieces from around the world as culled from the pages of Twitch. What’s in store this week? Jean Claude Van Damme pitching a fit! Colombian killers! Japanese peasants! Nathan Jones – the behemoth from TOM YUM GOONG and FEARLESS – turning bright red and kicking a guy through a plane! The latest from the director of GHOST IN THE SHELL! Gene Simmons in Japan and more, more more! Here we go!



What the hell, let’s start with Gene. The KISS front man has taken a role in DETROIT METAL CITY, the upcoming Japanese live action adaptation of a popular comic. The story? Geeky Japanese kid founds a costumed metal band and shoots to fame. Get your devil horns ready and get your neck nice and loose before head banging …

You’ll find details and a trailer link here




Colombian gangster film. Don’t know about you but the phrase gets my blood running and we’ve got not one but TWO of them in the column. The first is SALUDA AL DIABLO, the new film from the writer-director combo behind last year’s hit horror flick AT THE END OF THE SPECTRUM, which is currently being remade by THE DEPARTED producer Roy Lee with Nicole Kidman in the lead. But who cares about that one, we’re talking about this one. SALUDA is still early in production and they’re playing coy with details but it’s heavily noir influenced, appears to revolve around a hitman and the trailer is just stunningly well shot.

And you will find that trailer here




From Colombia we head just a little bit north to Mexico for Ivan Avila’s ENLIGHTENED BLOOD. Now, I’m still trying to work out if what I’m being told about this one is true – it’s bizarre enough that it just might be – but what I’m hearing is that this film is based on an actual found diary penned by a person (or being, who knows?) that believed they were an alien capable of swapping bodies to build networks of shared memories and experiences. Sounds bizarre but the buzz in Mexico is big for this one, the website is hypnotic and the trailer gorgeous. Yes, please.

Website and trailer links here




We’ve brought up Shinji Higuchi’s THE LAST PRINCESS in the column before, and for good reason. Higuchi is the effects whiz behind big time disaster film JAPAN SINKS a couple years back and this is his remake of Akira Kurosawa’s HIDDEN FORTRESS. HIDDEN FORTRESS, of course, is the film that served as the basis for a little film called STAR WARS that you might have heard of. I seriously doubt this will have the sort of impact either Kurosawa or Lucas’ versions have had but, hey, it looks pretty good nonetheless and a new trailer has just released.

Two trailers and a teaser here




Sure, Tsui Hark’s fallen on hard times lately – quick! Someone name his last good movie! – but the Hong Kong director got to be a living legend the good old fashioned way: he earned it by making and producing a ton of classics during Hong Kong’s golden years. So when Hark makes a new film you’d still best pause to take a look and his latest is MISSING, a supernatural thriller starring Angelica Lee from the original version of THE EYE. Beyond Lee – who is a legitimately great actress who is very choosey about her roles – the big draw here is the setting: the film features extensive underwater photography shot in an actual, centuries-old sunken city.

You’ll find details and a trailer here




Let’s get away from Asia for a moment, shall we? We head to Norway which, despite it’s proximity to Amsterdam, is not at all a drug-friendly city. But things were a little looser once upon a time and THE LAST JOINT VENTURE is the film adaptation of a hugely popular cult novel set at the end of the hippy era. The director on this is a good one but the big draw are the two leads: Nicolai Cleve Broche and Kristoffer Joner, two of the very finest actors in all of Europe.

Trailer’s here and looking good!




Okay, okay, more Colombian gangsters. This one’s PERRO COME PERRO or DOG EAT DOG if English is more your thing. The film took its bow at Sundance where it won huge praise for its gritty story of two small time hoods slowly realizing they’ve both been marked for death. A bit of gunplay, a bit of black magic, you know the drill. The final trailer for this one released this past week and it’s one tight piece of work. Keep an eye on South America, people, there’s something brewing down there …

Details and trailer here




Does the phrase KAMIKAZE GIRLS mean anything to you? If not, it should! Go out and rent it! Right now! The director of that film – and also the much more serious MEMORIES OF MATSUKO – is Tetsuya Nakashima, one of the most seriously gifted visual talents in the world. You see one of this guy’s films and his style will be burned into your brain forever: it’s bright, colorful, exaggerated and just deliriously fun. Which, of course, raises the big question of why he doesn’t make children’s films, a question he has now rendered moot by making a children’s film. It’s titled PACO AND THE MAGICAL PICTURE BOOK and it’s stacked with more stunning images per square inch than should be allowable by law. It also features one hell of a cast including Anna Tsuchaiya (KAMIKAZE GIRLS), Koji Yakusho (BABEL, and also Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s favorite actor) and Ryo Kase (LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA) though other than Tsuchaiya they’re all so heavily made up that they’re next to impossible to recognize without someone pointing them out …

Enjoy the eye candy here




If memory serves the first teaser for Turkish war film NEFES was featured in the very first International Eye Candy column – I’m far too lazy to actually look that up to confirm – and the film returns to the column now with a brand new trailer. Looking good? Hell, yeah. Like PLATOON level good. The director opted to use a bunch of unknowns for this and had them trained by retired military personnel before shooting the story of a troop assigned to protect a mountain position and it looks to have paid off with a fistful of incredibly believable performances. Plus the director – a commercial veteran making his feature debut – just shoots outright gorgeous film.

Both trailers lurk here




We’re unusually light on animation with this installment but we’re making up for that by making sure that the animation included is bloody well great. The film is SKY CRAWLERS, it’s the latest from the director of GHOST IN THE SHELL, it features the voice talents of Chiaki Kuriyama (KILL BILL) and it looks bloody spectacular. I know a few people who have seen the first couple reels of this in advance Tokyo screenings and they all swear that the trailer doesn’t lie here: this might just be Oshii’s career defining moment.

You’ll find the full trailer and the earlier teaser here




Anybody recognize the big red man in that poster? That’s Nathan Jones, the Australian wrestler who beefed it up on screen in TROY, TOM YUM GOONG (aka THE PROTECTOR) and FEARLESS. He’s freaking huge, as in seven foot tall and big enough to tear your arms off. And after casting him opposite Tony Jaa in TYG the Thai company behind that film thought: “You know what would be funny? Nathan Jones in a children’s film.” And good, god, I think they’re right. It’s like KINDERGARTEN COP but sillier and more violent and with a kid that would kick you in the face – the observant will recognize the wee lass from BORN TO FIGHT – if you tried to make her crack any stupid jokes about a tumor. Jones kicks a guy through a plane in this. I say again: through a plane. The plane breaks in half. It’s two minutes well spent.

Marvel at Big Red here




You know what makes Todd a happy boy? When somebody makes a film inspired by Japanese masked heroes and plays it straight rather than going to the cheap laughs. The film is GREENSIDE, a long-short (it’s forty minutes) from the guys behind the similarly themed ZERO TROOPER. These guys have got a good thing going on here – decent story, good lead actor, some nice martial arts, memorable villains … it’s all you need for forty minutes of quality escapism.

You’ll find the trailer here




Scared of math? You aint the only one. The math thriller is a tidy little sub-genre that pops up from time to time – Vincenzo Natali’s CUBE being a good example, Alex De LA Iglesia’s OXFORD CRIMES, sadly, a bad one – and it’s getting a fresh shot in the arm courtesy of little Spanish thriller FERMAT’S ROOM. You know the drill: four mathematicians invited to dinner only to be locked in a room that will slowly shrink and crush them to death unless they can think their way out of the mess. I hate when that happens. I like the film rather a lot, though.

You’ll find the English subtitled trailer here



And, finally, we conclude with everybody’s favorite Belgian. Yes, kids, it’s Jean Claude Van Damme and his upcoming French action comedy JCVD. You should be well familiar with this one by now – it has appeared in the column before as well as on the main site and been much buzzed about around the web – but if you’ve missed out on that, here goes: Van Damme plays himself in a film with events largely ripped from his own life. Custody battle? In there. Drug problem? In there. Money woes? In there. This thing looks absolutely fantastic in a Charlie Kauffman sort of way and a number of promos, scenes, etc have popped up over the past couple months but there is now finally the first actual theatrical teaser for the film available. Yummy.

You’ll find the teaser and a whole lot more here