International Eye Candy
October 29, 2008

Yes, boys and girls, once again it is Todd from Twitch here with another installment of International Eye Candy – our bi-weekly collection of the very best bits and pieces from around the globe. This time out we learn to say thank you to the French and the Belgians, who have been rather busy indeed, while we also learn that Norwegian women are rather attractive while Norwegian men are overweight slobs who masturbate a lot. Hurray!

We'll kick it off in France, shall we, with the brand new trailer for spy comedy THE PLEASURE OF SINGING. Yes, it's spies and singing together at last. I know you've been waiting for this day. No, it's not a musical but it does revolve around a widow who teaches opera lessons and it just looks like very clever, very fun stuff that also manages to keep the action quotient high. Nice.

Find the Pleasure Of Singing trailer here

And while we're on the topic of unusual career choices I have to ask: If spies can sing then why can't a little white cat run a ramen noodle shop? The knowledgeable among you are already nodding in recognition and, yes, NEKO RAHMEN TAISHO is indeed the latest from Minoru Kawasaki, the Japanese cult comedy director who has already built films around wrestling squids, soccer goalie crabs, import/export koalas, boxing beetles and more. This one's an adaptation of a popular manga and it looks every bit as goofy as you'd hope from Kawasaki.

Get yourself some RAHMEN here

We'll stay in Japan a touch longer but up the budget considerably here for K20, the big budget action adventure starring Takeshi Kaneshiro as an acrobat in search of the Fiend With 20 Faces in an effort to clear his own name. The effects are by the director of ALWAYS and he's created a totally compelling world here, a sort of steampunk alternate future and Kaneshiro looks as engaging as ever. This should be Japan's big winter blockbuster and the second trailer just arrived on the scene.

Find both K20 trailers here

Go back a column or two into the IEC archive and you'll find our first mention of Norwegian anti-romantic comedy FATSO and it's back now in a big way, with four brand new promo spots boasting some rather attractive women being lusted after be a considerably less attractive man. This thing looks positively genius and may very well boast my favorite marketing campaign of the entire year. Just go and watch these, right now. I'm going to keep looking at the poster for a while longer.

Find all the FATSO goodies here

From Norway it's not such a long trek to Belgium, where we find our first of several Belgian trailers this column. This one belongs to LARGO WINCH, the big budget big screen adaptation of the popular adventure comics. With the story revolving around a wealthy young man using his vast resources and natural physical abilities to tackle wrong doers it's hard not to see this as a sort of sunnier counterpart to BATMAN and it's really hard to see that as any sort of negative.

Check the LARGO WINCH trailer here

Yes, we've posted the teaser for Nazi snow zombie comedy DEAD SNOW in this column once before and, yes, this is indeed the same teaser but there's one significant difference: We have a subtitled version now so non-Norwegians can now fully enjoy the fun as well.

Beware the snow zombies!

I hadn't realized until this very moment just how well represented Norway was in this week's column but here we are with our third entry from that snowy land already. Go Norway.

The film is COLD PREY 2, the sequel to the hugely successful slasher film that we've written about here before, but with the film's theatrical release last week came a trio of brand new clips and they're all looking good.

Find COLD PREY 2 clips and trailers here

How can you not have warm, fuzzy feelings towards a film titled DIRTY MIND? Particularly towards a film titled DIRTY MIND that revolves around a shy and quiet man who awakens from a brain-damaging accident insisting that people call him Tony T and believing that he is now a slick talking stuntman? You may not expect a lot of action comedies to come out of Belgium, but here you are: you're wrong.

Enter the DIRTY MIND here

More Belgians here, this time with a series of clips from upcoming stop motion animation A TOWN CALLED PANIC. Based on the TV series of the same name this is quite possibly the most primitive stop motion ever put to film, the three principal characters – known simply as Cowboy, Indian and Horse – being rigid plastic figures from a small child's cowboy playset. But primitive can be funny in the right hands and these clips are very, very funny.

Join in the PANIC here

For higher quality stop motion we head to Mexico and Sofia Carillo's FUERA DE CONTROL. Did I say high quality? I've seen this one in its entirety and it is my favorite piece of animation of the last year for sure and maybe even farther back than that. Dark, creepy stuff that the teaser just scratches the surface of.

Check out FUERA DE CONTROL here

We'll stick with animation for a while longer but head to Russia for this one, kid's oriented scifi ALICE'S BIRTHDAY. Based on stories by Kir Bulychev this is a sort of follow up – though not, as far as I know, a direct sequel – to earlier adaptations of Bulchev's work, the original film based on these characters being a HUGELY popular bit of work in the 1980s. I've had many, many people tell me that the titular Alice was every adolescent boy's dream girl at the time and based on the trailers and footage from this thing it's not that hard to see why. This just looks like energetic, creative fun.

Find ALICE'S BIRTHDAY trailers and footage here

Russian boys may love Alice but FIKSI's lead character is in love with her neighbor and willing to kill to prove it. This one comes from the pen of Indonesia's Joko Anwar – who is currently hard at work on his own film – and Anwar's involvement is a virtual guarantee of quality. Lord knows the trailer is impressive.

Check the FIKSI trailer here

Take my word for this: Ireland's Dylan Moran is a comedy god. He's turned up in a few things here and there before now – most notably a key role in SHAUN OF THE DEAD – but Moran spends most of his time on stage so, generally speaking, North American audiences have no idea what they're missing. Well, they're missing A FILM WITH ME IN IT, a film in which Moran costars and is largely allowed to simply run with his normal on-stage persona. And it's brilliant, blackly funny stuff. I caught this one at the Toronto International Film Festival and absolutely love it.

Find the trailer with Dylan in it here

Don't get me wrong, I love me some kung fu, but there are definitely days when I'd like to see some of the lesser known martial arts portrayed on screen. Well, luckily for me, here comes Indonesian fight flick MERANTAU to scratch that particular itch, built as it is around the Pencak Silat skills of star Iko Uwais. There aren't any trailers for this one yet – it just recently began shooting – but there are a pair of extensive behind the scenes reels, including a very detailed look at the film's fight choreography. Yes, this should be good.

Go behind the scenes of MERANTAU here

And back to Belgium one last time now for LOFT, the new psycho sexual thriller from the director of THE ALZHEIMER CASE. Director Erik Van Looy is one of the hottest things going in Europe these days – this new film is currently doing more than half of the total box office business in Belgium – and it's really not hard to see why: smart, sexy, violent, and dangerous LOFT looks to be a thriller that actually thrills.

Enter the LOFT here

With his last film Agustín Díaz Yanes directed the most expensive picture ever made in Spain – Viggo Mortensen starring nautical adventure ALATRISTE – and he's following that up now with something considerably smaller but no less stylish. Violent crime picture SOLO QUIERO CAMINAR opens up in Spain this week and it looks to owe a slight debt to the likes of Sam Pekinpah and Jean Pierre Melville and, frankly, if you're going to go making a heist movie, those are pretty good debts to owe. Trailer is slick as all hell.

Check the SOLO trailer here

And, finally, we end where we began: back in France. This time out it's the trailer for part two of PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE, the hugely acclaimed, two part, true crime Jacques Mesrine bio-pics starring Vincent Cassel as the notorious French gangster. This have been getting much love on the festival circuit, part one just opened in France and part two is coming soon.

Find the trailers here