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AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy! Lesbian Vampire Killers trailer! METROPIA! REC2! POWER KIDS! & More!!
Ah, yes, it is a mere four days after Valentine's Day as I type this and, good god, have we got things for you to love in this new edition of International Eye Candy. Sure, Harry jumped all over the BLOOD, THE LAST VAMPIRE teaser a couple days back, which quickly struck one title for the list but there's plenty more where that came from! What is there to love? Thai kids kneeing baddies in the face! Full contact basketball to the death! Roasted crocodile! Lesbian vampires! Plus the proverbial more, more, more! Here we go kids, get ready for the good stuff!
We're going to play a trump card right off the top, here, with the trailer for Ole Bornedal's DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Fantastic Festers should be well familiar with the Danish director by this point since we screened a pair of his films there last year - JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY and THE SUBSTITUTE - and his latest looks as though it could be his best yet. DELIVER US FROM EVIL is the story of suburban life gone horribly wrong, a story of tragedy, cover up and bloody violent retribution, all of it just flawlessly executed. If you're a fan of intelligent thrillers it really doesn't get any better than Bornedal, so get hopping.
From Denmark we head to Russia for the third installment of the hugely popular ANTIKILLER series, the films that topped the Russian box office before NIGHT WATCH came along. And yes, gamers, these are the films that the shooter of the same title is based on. The ubiquitous Gosha Kutsenko - you seriously can't miss this guy if you track current Russian film, he's everywhere - stars as a former cop turned violent vigilante slowly losing his grip on reality. There was talk that Christopher Lee was to have a part in this at one point and while he doesn't show up in this - and I have no idea if they actually used him - what DOES show up is a whole lot of classic 80's style action. Cars, guns, 'splosions, all the good stuff ...
Any fans of French action flick DISTRICT B:13 out there? Because here comes the sequel, BANLIEUE 13: ULTIMATUM. I had the chance to catch this one while in Berlin for the European Film Market and while I'm a little bit mixed on it - the villain is weak and parkour co-founder David Belle generally underused - good god is this thing ever one hell of a showcase for martial artist Cyril Raffaelli. Cyril owns this film, positively owns it, just like he owns the asses of everyone he fights within it. We've run the trailers for the film in this column before but we've got five fresh clips now that are also worth a gander.
Need something a little different to spice up your martial arts menu? How about POWER KIDS, a muay thai kiddie flick from the same creative team that gave us ONG BAK and CHOCOLATE? You know what that means - a bunch of ten year olds driving their knees into the faces of assorted bad guys and villains. The two way flying knee is a personal favorite, as is the little kid going face first through a pane of glass while taking down his target.
THE HORSEMAN? Isn't that the thing with Dennis Quaid and Zhang Ziyi? Well, yeah, but that's not the HORSEMAN we're talking about here. This HORSEMAN is the pounding as all hell - hurray for crowbars! - Aussie revenge picture about to premiere at SXSW. Not for the faint of heart, this one, but it looks exceptionally well done.
For those familiar with the original this needs no introduction: it's the first official trailer for [REC]2. For the uninitiated the original [REC] was a hugely successful Spanish zombie film a couple years back, one that provided the basis for American effort QUARANTINE and a film that QUARANTINE producers Sony are making sure nobody in the US can see so that their own film won't suffer by comparison. The sequel picks up exactly where the first left off and carries on in the original style. First person zombies, people, and creepy as hell.
Yu Likwai's PLASTIC CITY was one of the highest profile cockups on the international festival circuit last year, a big international coproduction with two of Asia's biggest stars - Anthony Wong and Jo Odagiri - that was accepted early to both the Venice and Toronto film festivals only to realize at the last minute - whoopsie! - that they weren't going to have it ready on time. The end result was an unfinished version of the film screening in both festivals, one all involved were unhappy enough with that they actually sent out a notice telling prospective buyers to stay away and not watch this version. Well, it's done now and whatever the flaws may be there's no doubt that Yu can shoot some amazing film. This thing is candy, indeed. Be aware of who may be standing behind you when you start this one up, it borders on naughtiness.
Another SXSW film here, this one Pierre Laffargue's modern blaxploitation film BLACK. French rapper MC Jean Gab1 - who also has a key role in BANLIEUE 13 ULTIMATUM - takes the lead role in this one as a French-Sengalese thief who heads to Africa to pull off a big job only to get caught up in a running battle with local arms dealers and thugs. This one is FAR less tongue-in-cheek than American effort BLACK DYNAMITE but ti's already winning its share of fans.
For something as different as humanly possible we head now to Sweden and METROPIA, an English language animated feature with the voices of Juliette Lewis and Vincent Gallo that plays out like equal parts Philip K Dick and Franz Kafka. Mind control, massive underground tunnel networks, media manipulation ... it's a great big stew of urban neurosis, all of it rendered with an animation technique developed specifically for this film that gives teh characters a creepily realistic effect. This is one of the big ones to watch for in 2009.
Okay, I promised you combat basketball and I hereby deliver combat basketball. The film is FIREBALL and, yes, with a concept like to-the-death 'ball it really should be ludicrous in the extreme. But here's the thing. I've seen it and it's not. This thing is actually shockingly well put together by an obviously talented director who draws solid performances out of a cast of largely unknown stuntmen, at least one of whom has the potential to become a MAJOR international action star. I really, really like this movie. And I've got a high quality trailer for it with English subtitles included.
As we near the end now we head to France for a new clip from the upcoming OSS 117 flick, RIO NE REPOND PLUS, the second entry in the note-perfect comic recreation of the 1960s era French spy series. French comedian Jean Dujardin is absolutely flawless as the leading man in these and the first revival picture is such a huge favorite of mine - I know Moriarty shares the sentiment - that expectations are simply huge for this. And it certainly looks like they're going to be met. A knowledge of French will certainly help here somewhat but whether you catch all the dialogue or not the site of the dapper French spy shooting, gutting and trying to roast a giant river crocodile while lecturing his female companion on her proper place is pure genius.
And, finally, we wrap things up with the full trailer for LESBIAN VAMPIRE KILLERS because, let's be honest, once you've played the lesbian vampire card there's really no point in continuing, now is there? The teaser was truly just a tease but the trailer delivers everything you could ask for: characters, comedy, a healthy dose of bad language, scnatily clad women and a whole bunch of vampire violence. This very much looks as though it's aiming for a SHAUN OF THE DEAD vibe and everybody I know who has seen it says it delivers. And, yep, it's another SXSW flick.
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