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AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy: THE KINEMATOGRAPH, ENTER THE VOID, DOGHOUSE, Linni Meister's Ass, And More!!
International Eye Candy June 11, 2009 Yes, boys and girls, once again it is Todd from Twitch here with the best, the brightest, the most unique and exciting new films from around the globe. And also there's a new one from Uwe Boll. Because that's fun, too, in it's own perverse way. We've got sex dolls come to life! We've got a Norwegian starlet singing about her own shapely buttocks! We've got Japanese school girls slicing their own wrists! Yes, kids, the word of the day is class. High class. All the time.
Let's start things off right and get straight to the buttocks, shall we? "But, Todd," you are no doubt thinking, "I see no buttocks on that poster. All I see is half of a severed Nazi zombie head." And correct you are but the two things are connected in strange and mysterious ways.
You see, when the producers of DEAD SNOW – aha! Nazi zombies! – were dreaming up PR gimmicks for the upcoming Norwegian DVD release of their bloody opus they figured why not play to the absolute lowest common denominator and have a bit of fun with things. And so they hired Norwegian FHM model and sex columnist Linni Meister to shoot a music video for a charming little ditty titled MY ASS. It is, as you may have guessed, all about Meister's ass. Which is a very nice ass and featured prominently in said video. How this connects to a Nazi zombie ad campaign I will leave to you to discover but I will say this: while a version of the video is available on YouTube, the complete and uncensored version was promptly removed for terms of service violations and the only place brave enough – or crass enough, as the case may be – to host the uncensored version proved to be Twitch. You'll find it at the link below.
My ravings about CG animation house Platige Image have become fairly standard stuff over the years, cropping up afresh every time something new appears from the studio. I'll spare you the full rant but suffice it to say that, in my opinion, Platige are among the very best in the world and the company would very likely be a household name if it were American or Japanese instead of Polish. As it is they'll just have to be satisfied with doing damn good work.
Any new project from Platige is something to take notice of and THE KINEMATOGRAPH is no exception. It's a steampunk influenced short film that serves to raise the question once again of when, oh when, will Platige finally bite the bullet and make a feature.
Oh, Gaspar, you're such a tease. It's only one image with suitably creepy audio accompaniment but, brief as it is, it is the first public taste of Gaspar Noe's ENTER THE VOID, the latest slap in the face from the notorious director of IRREVERSIBLE. The Cannes audience was split on this one but that's pretty much a given when Noe is involved and those who liked it generally looooooooooved it.
Hong Kong has been taking a bit of a breather on the event-film front for a little while now but there are two bona-fide blockbusters due out there before the end of the year. One is huge scale martial arts extravaganza BODYGUARDS AND ASSASSINS, which stars just about everyone in Hong Kong as either a bodyguard or assassin. And then there's this film.
STORM WARRIORS is the latest from the Pang Brothers, the Thai born purveyors of much eye candy who burst on to the scene with the original version of BANGKOK DANGEROUS – and subsequently proved with their own remake that they should never work in English again – before cementing their reputation with THE EYE. This one is the big budget sequel to hugely popular martial arts fantasy THE STORM RIDERS, bringing back the original cast to continue the story is a hugely amped up visual style. STORM WARRIORS is the first true digital backlot film to be made in Hong Kong, an effects-heavy fantasy shot using basically the same techniques put to use in 300 and, personally, I find the visuals just stunning. There hasn't been much to see until just recently when the arrival of the full theatrical trailer brought much visual goodness.
Hey! It's Gaspar Noe again! Only this time he's brought David Lynch, Harmony Korine, Asia Argento, Larry Clark and a whole lot more – thirty seven more, to be precise – along with him. The project is ONEDREAMRUSH, a series of 42 short films based on the dreams of their creators, each lasting 42 seconds, from 42 directors, all sponsored by vodka company 42 Below. The whole 42 thing would be kind of irritating except, you know, it's the answer to life, the universe and everything, BMW has already proved this sort of corporate-sponsored film making can actually yield some really good results and the list of directors is bloody well fantastic. Trailer aint bad, either.
Bald Billy Zane battling zombies in Ancient Greece! Okay, so Billy looks like more of a prophet than a zombie battler per se but, hey! He's in there! And so are zombies battling the toga and tunic set! It's the sequel to ultra-splattery Greek zombie picture TO KAKO – released here simply as EVIL – and it looks rather fun.
More zombies? Okay, if you really want some, here's the second – and unrated – trailer for EVIL ALIENS director Jake West's latest, DOGHOUSE. It's boys versus girls in this one as the zombie apocalypse here is triggered by some sort of experimentation that affects only women. And they're none to pleased about it.
Something else I'd expect the ladies to be none to pleased about is a film revolving around a blow up sex doll come to life being played as a gentle romantic comedy but strangely that is exactly what Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-Eda has made with AIR DOLL and the backlash I'd expected simply hasn't appeared. Korean actress Bae Do-Na – you know her from THE HOST – plays the titular blow up doll in the film that played Cannes to mostly glowing reviews. And based on the just-released theatrical trailer I can see why people liked it, though I still find the subject matter bizarre in the extreme.
Upcoming Finnish project MOTHGIRL is one of those cases where less may be more and so I'm not going to tell you anything at all about the story and simply let the first teaser speak for itself. And that teaser? Yow. It's a pre-production concept reel designed to sell the look and feel of the thing to potential investors and damn straight I'd sink money into it if I had any. This is the best teaser I've seen in ages.
Right! New Uwe Boll! I promised and now I deliver. The film is called STOIC, a based-on-a-true-story prison drama starring Edward Furlong. Remember when AMERICAN HISTORY X, TERMINATOR 2 and PECKER all combined to make Furlong the next hot young thing who was supposed to lead his generation of actors?
Ah, James Cameron, we'll be forever indebted to you for showing how a successful horror film could be reimagined and re-envisioned as a full on action spectacle, completely changing the game in the transition from ALIEN to ALIENS. It's a trick that has been copied to varying degrees of success ever since and one that Spanish directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza obviously took notice of. How so? Their sequel to hugely successful first-person zombie picture [REC] is nearing completion and they're taking the Cameron route with this one: Same premise, a story that picks up right where the first left off, action quotient ramped way, way up.
[REC]2 begins with the military moving in to the building quarantined in part one to sweep it out and clear up the zombie mess but things obviously don't go as smoothly as planned. The first-person camera conceit is solved this time by shooting from the perspective of cameras mounted to the soldiers' helmets, the end result coming across like one extremely intense first person shooter. Nice.
Yeah, readers of this column know the score on Belgian cult animation PANIQUE AU VILLAGE by now but I won't stop writing about it until it either stops being awesome or they stop releasing new materials. Option A just aint going to happen and, yes, there is a new clip on the scene, so guess what: PANIQUE is back in the IEC. Go and be amused.
Thai director Pen-Ek Ratanaruang has been a great favorite ever since I discovered his stellar LAST LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE – a film that triggered an immediate search for his entire back catalog and an ongoing fascination with his new projects moving forward. Premiering in Cannes this year was Ratatnaruang's latest, NYMPH, a horror tinged domestic drama. The version that screened in Cannes was very, very arthouse but apparently there is also a more commercially minded version ready for release in Thai cinemas and the first trailer for that version has just arrived. Don't mess with the angry tree, that's all I'm gonna say …
From Thailand we head to the good ol' US of A where writer-director Dave Boyle has assembled one whale of a cast for his latest Asian-American themed comedy WHITE ON RIDE. Hiroshi Watanabe – you know him from LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA – stars as Jimmy, a forty year old divorcee sharing a bedroom with his ten year old nephew - where he is tolerated by his sister and resented by his brother in law – while he tries to get his life back in order. Socially awkward in the extreme but blissfully happy about being so, WHITE ON RICE is all about Watanabe's performance and it's a great one – both funny and charming – and he's got some serious help from the rest of the cast. There's a Conan O'Brien regular in there, James Kyson Lee from HEROES is in there, along with one of the guys from RESCUE ME and the woman playing his sister has won the Japanese equivalent of an Oscar. WHITE ON RICE is the sort of film that slips through the cracks in North America far too easily but is very well worth a look.
Back before the Italian community began protesting their typecasting as criminal types in film with any degree of regularity they were entirely on the other side of the coin, Italy being one of the great producers of exploitative crime film throughout the 1970s. And those films are the subject of EUROCRIME, a new documentary from Mike Malloy – with former Fantastic Fest programatrix Kier-La Janisse helping out behind the scenes – that ropes in many of the major players from the scene for a behind the scenes look at what made it tick. Essential stuff for fans of the era.
Our penultimate entry also hails from America, specifically revolving around one of the most famous and scenic parts of the country: the Grand Canyon. An indie survival thriller that makes stunning use of its natural surroundings, THE CANYON – about to have its world premiere at Montreal's 
I once asked TOKYO GORE POLICE director Yoshihiro Nishimura in an interview whether any extreme was too extreme, if there was any particular boundary of good taste that should not be crossed, if it was possible to go too far. Answer: No. And so, in that spirit, I present to you a clip from his latest – VAMPIRE GIRL VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL – in which a group of high school girls face off in a competitive wrist-slicing rally.
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