International Eye Candy
November 26th, 2008

Yes, kids, it's cold and snowy and wet here in Canada, weather we refer to locally as "shitty" and which inspires us all to stay indoors, eat prepackaged foods and watch movies. Movies? Yes, you figured out where I'm going next you clever sod, it's time for our fortnightly trawl through the pages of Twitch for a new installment of International Eye Candy! It's an Asia-heavy installment this time out but along with the trailer for the latest John Woo outing we've got Czech graphic novels, Canadian gore and the proverbial so much more! Here we go!

We'll kick things off with the Woo, shall we? Part One of Woo's massive RED CLIFF war epic is mauling the box office all across Asia which means the time is ripe to strike with Part Two and that's exactly what they're doing. What can you expect? More battles! More carnage! More patented Shido Nakamura crazy-face! More of Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung making the girls swoon. And, of course, brand new trailers and we've got the very first one for RED CLIFF PART TWO for your perusal.

Find the RED CLIFF 2 trailer here!

What the hell ... we'll follow the Woo with quite possibly the only Asian project to aim bigger - albeit cheaper - this year, that being Yukihiko Tsutsumi's massive three part adaptation of cult hit apocalypse-conspiracy manga 20TH CENTURY BOYS. Part One was a hit at home and Part Two is currently being prepped to go head to head with RED CLIFF 2 in early 2009. No Nakamura crazy-face in this - a shame since there are very few films that wouldn't benefit from a good dose of Nakamura - but like RED CLIFF this part two does indeed include more action and more explosions. And also giant robots. Whee!

Check the 20TH CENTURY BOYS 2 trailer here

Man ... even when we try to leave Asia this week we can't really leave, if you know what I mean. What's keeping us there? Well, it aint Anders Banke, the Swedish directors of NEWSMAKERS. Nope. And it certainly aint the fact that despite the Swedish director this is a Russian film through and through. Nope, the Asian element is the source material: NEWSMAKERS is the long rumored Russian remake of Hong Kong director Johnnie To's action opus BREAKING NEWS. Film's done, it opens in Russia in April and Banke was kind enough to pass us an English subtitled version of the very first teaser.

Make some NEWS here

So, we've done China. We've done Japan. We've sort of done Hong Kong and will be back to do things there properly a little later. That leaves, believe it or not, four more Asian countries to stop in before we're done and here we are with our first of two forays into Thailand. The film is DEEP IN THE JUNGLE, a modern spin on a local snake-woman tale recast as a sort of horror-romance-action hybrid. Now, this one comes from Thai production house Phranakorn Film who normally produce low budget pulp that performs well in Thailand but won't play for crap anywhere else. I normally don't pay any attention to Phrankorn releases but this one actually looks pretty damn good and not just because of the snake lady. Definitely worth checking out.

Go DEEP IN THE JUNGLE here

Let's finish up with Thailand now, shall we? and to do so I need you to ask yourself one very simple question: What goes better with sports (and gambling) than violence? Nothing! That's what! And the folks behind upcoming basketball flick FIREBALL - it shares a director with the fascinating but flawed karmic superpower film OPAPATIKA - were clever enough to figure this out. The result? Full contact, combat muay thai basketball. Do you really need to know anything else?

Well, you need to know the FIREBALL trailer is here, for one thing

If the world were a just and fair place indie sci fi musical western THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT would have made an instant cult icon of director Cory McAbee and his cohorts but the world is neither just nor fair and McAbee had the great misfortune of premiering his film at the Toronto Intnerational Film Festival on the weekend of September 11th. Yes, the premiere still happened but it's safe to say that the world's attention was elsewhere at the time and as a result this absolute gem has remained largely overlooked and McAbee has been left scrambling to put together his next project. Fans have been hoping he'd get his WEREWOLF HUNTERS OF THE MIDWEST - also a musical - off the ground but that one hasn't happened yet. What has happened, however, is STINGRAY SAM. Also also a musical STINGRAY SAM is designed as a sic episode - ten minutes per episode - serial to be viewed on phones and other mobile devices. And lest you think small screens equals low quality this one turned out so well that it'll be premiering at the 2009 Sundance Festival.

Check the STINGRAY SAM trailer here

>From America we head north to my homeland and Winnipeg based film maker Steven Kostanski. Kostanski's part of a wee collective known as Astron-6 who fill their days shooting trailers for non-existent 1980's straight to video shlock. Kostanki's the effects whiz of the group and for his latest directorial effort he aimed for something a little higher than a spoof trailer, shooting an astounding twenty minute short titled HEART OF KARL. A fusion of live action, stop motion and latex prosthetics Kostanski and his tiny, micro-budgeted crew have created one of the most shockingly original things I've seen in a good while, a film that plays like the bastard love child of Guy Maddin and Sam Raimi.

Find the HEART OF KARL here

And back to Asia we go, this time to Indonesia and Barry Prima's 1984 action picture THE WARRIOR. Yeah, it's an old one but it's a good one and has just received it's first ever DVD release. Why bother with a film older than a good percentage of the people reading this column? Kung fu, witchcraft, decapitations and 1980s style arterial sprays. They don't make 'em like this any more - they hardly made 'em like this back when they were making 'em like this - and that makes me sad.

Check THE WARRIOR trailer here

Any fans of Vietnamese martial arts flick THE REBEL out there? 'Cause I sure as hell am and I've been eagerly awaiting anything new from the principals of that film ever since. Well, here comes Dustin Nguyen - THE REBEL's villain - in THE LEGEND IS ALIVE, a new Vietnamese action-drama hybrid in which Nguyen stars as a mentally disable kung fu expert whose only goal is to take his mother to America. Yeah, the device has been used a couple of times recently but Nguyen looks great in the lead role, the cinematography is great, the director is solid and the martial arts work looks excellent. This one's the complete package and due for a Vietnamese release on their local New Year.

Check out five LEGEND trailers here

Another break from the Asian onslaught here with a test reel from ALOIS NEBEL, a rotoscoped animated feature based on a popular Czech graphic novel. Now, this one is still a looooooong way from being finished but if this animation test is any indication it is going to be very well worth the wait. Personally I'm already a big fan of this animation technique - it's the same deal as WAKING LIFE and A SCANNER DARKLY in which live action footage is painted over by animators - but the kicker to this is that instead of using the technique to create characters that mimic the behavior of their real life counterparts the film makers here are using the technique to create hyper-realistic replicas of the characters and settings from the source novel. It's such an obvious use for the technique that I'm surprised nobody has done it before.

Click here to watch the trains with ALOIS NEBEL

Is this the first IEC column to include a pair of American productions? It may very well be, but apparently James Boss' WHITEWALL features a good amount of production work from Macau so there is, again, an Asian angle. What is it? Low budget post-apocalyptic goodness with a heavy martial arts component and one hell of a cinematographer. They've only released a brief teaser so far but it's certainly done its job: I want more. Now.

Go behind the WHITEWALL

Our Asian tour nears its end now with a stop in Korea and upcoming horror effort 4 DAY. Now, Korea normally crams as much horror as humanly possible into the summer release schedule but broke from that tradition this year by releasing only a single summer horror flick, the school set hit slasher GOSA: THE DEATH BELL. Aiming to release sometime in the winter 4 DAY looks to be a slightly more grown up version of that same basic formula witha group fo adults returning to their old school - now long abandoned - where they become the target of an angry ghost and blood flows freely. Slashers seem to eb the thing in Korea these days and this looks to be a good one.

Check the 4 DAY trailer here

The Asian section of the column concludes now with our promised visit to Hong Kong proper and what must surely be the most hotly anticipated martial arts film of the past few years, a film so lusted after that a sequel has been greenlit before the first film even releases to theaters. What is it? Wilson Yip's IP MAN, in which Donnie Yen stars as the martial arts master of Bruce Lee. We've included some earlier IP MAN trailers in previous IEC columns and there's a new, longer, subtitled one fresh on the scene and it is just as jaw dropping as what came before. This looks absolutely stunning.

Check all the IP MAN trailers here. And count just how many times Donnie hits the guy before the guy hits the ground. Crazy.

We wrap things up now in Russia with the latest from Fyodor Bondarchuk's huge budget scifi spectacle INHABITED ISLAND. Based on a story by the Strugatsky Brothers - also the authors of STALKER - this is pretty easily the most hotly anticipated film in Russia this coming year, a full on action spectacle from one of the country's very best, and while they've released a number of teasers and trailers for it before now they've actually played remarkably coy with new materials throughout, generally replacing only a single shot when progressing from trailer to trailer, always making the audience feel like they've experienced more of the world than they really have. No more. This is a brand new trailer made up almost entirely of brand new footage and it shows off the action, the environments and the design work far more than anything that has come before. Looking tasty.

Check the INHABITED ISLAND trailers here