International Eye Candy
November 19, 2009
I am afraid I must begin this edition of International Eye Candy with an apology. Last time out I promised no more lengthy lay-offs between columns, a promise that I immediately broke. What can I say ... the American Film Market happened right when I was supposed to write the last instalment and it just never quite happened. But things are back to normal now, no more interruptions forseen, and it’s time for our regular foray through the pages of Twitch for another edition of International Eye Candy! In this edition: A Nazi slasher! A manly salad! Giant robots! The new Kato digging up ancient artefacts! A possessed truck preying on a Twilight teen! Uwe Boll times two! And real life boxing champ Manny Pacquiao fighting a giant crab! Here we go!
What the hell, it’s TWILIGHT week, so let’s start there. Young Aussie actor Xavier Samuel has already been cast in the third instalment of the TWILIGHT Series but don’t hold that against him. He’s already turned a ton of heads as the lead in stellar Aussie horror picture THE LOVED ONES and he’s got another Aussie indie in post right now, this one the (possibly) possessed truck film ROAD TRAIN. Is it the truck itself that’s evil or is there something else going on? Check the promo to find out!
Click here for the ROAD TRAIN promo
From Australia we hop across the ocean to find duelling wizard film JEON WOO CHI. The latest from the director of blockbuster gambling hit TAZZA: THE HIGH ROLLERS, WOO CHI is the story of a rogueish wizard trapped in time by his peers who simply don’t want to deal with his antics anymore only to be resurrected in modern times to do battle with an ancient demon. With the talent involved this one will almost certainly be a big hit in its native country and the trailers so far look like an awful lot of fun.
Find the JEON WOO CHI trailer here
 
Are you ready for a two-pack of Uwe Boll? As is his norm, the prolific Doctor had a fistful of films presented at the American Film Market this year, two of which were boasting their first ever trailers. Up first is THE LAST STORM, a Biblical apocalypse film starring 90210 alum Luke Perry as some sort of wandering prophet / very bad man roaming the earth after the Rapture. Bad things are going to happen to the people left behind. Second? The much more serious minded DARFUR which – despite a bizarre b-level cast including Billy Zane, Edward Furlong, Kristanna Loken and Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer – actually looks to be a serious treatment of events in that part of the world.
Find the DARFUR trailer here and THE LAST STORM trailer here
And speaking of Billy Zane ... he was also prominently displayed at Ye Olde AFM as the star of low budget fantasy effort JOURNEY TO PROMETHEA. This is quite possibly one of the worst movies ever made, it’s director easily rivalling Ed Wood in terms of sheer incompetence. Zane is clearly aware of what a bad movie he’s in and just doesn’t give a damn. Someone give him his check so he can leave. All of which means that I absolutely LOVE this trailer. Love it. Love, love, love. If everyone watched it at least once a day the world would be a better place.
Billy Zane wants you to kill him! What is so hard about that?
And after that, now seems the appropriate time to introduce you to KANTHASWAMY – the chicken superhero film from India. It’s a Tamil picture, so Kollywood as opposed to Bollywood and every bit as daft as you’d expect a film about a chicken-man fighting crime to be. More strange superheroes later in the column.
Find the KANTHASWAMY trailer here
Oh, damn. Things are staying strange. Director Josef Fares shall demonstrate to you the manly way to make a salad in the trailer for his Swedish comedy FARSAN.
Click here for you salad-making lesson. Be prepared to strip down and grunt a lot.
Okay, enough of that stuff. We head now to the Czech Republic, where stellar character actor Karel Roden has landed a rare leading role in upcoming thriller THE EYE. A film that promises lots of atmosphere and intelligent scares all wrapped up in a very noir-tinged package, Jurgen Prochnow also stars in this one which I expect to be one of Europe’s finer genre offerings this coming year.
Find THE EYE trailer here
Anybody else out there horribly disappointed by the wasted opportunity that was THE MUMMY 3? I actually really like the first two MUMMY films and was hoping they could create a solid, Asia-centered adventure story with the third instalment but nope. It was just horrible, despite one hell of a scenery chewing performance from Anthony Wong in the villain role. But lucky for me Jay Chou is coming to rinse that bad taste out of my mouth with THE TREASURE HUNTER.
Wondering why Chou’s name sounds familiar? That’d be because he’s the hugely popular Taiwanese pop star turned actor who is also starring as Kato in the new GREEN HORNET film but first he’s out to give us a Chinese spin on the INDIANA JONES / NATIONAL TREASURE / MUMMY style action adventure film. The first full trailer for this one packs one hell of a punch with a load of fantastic imagery and a jaw dropping stunt involving a motorcycle and several horses.
Find the TREASURE HUNTER trailer here
POPSKULL director Adam Wingard has become a big favourite of mine in the past couple years – and a director clearly able to split an audience as the comments threads on Twitch when I write about him demonstrate – thanks to his ability to not just survive but thrive in lower-than-low budget environments. The guy’s just got a natural eye for things and the ability to tell a story through images that allows him to do a whole lot with hardly anything. Since POPSKULL Wingard has been directing music videos and shorts while preparing his next feature and his complete FORGOT MY MEDS trilogy has just been released online.
Watch the complete trilogy here
Enough with the quirky indies, it’s time for a giant robot PANIC ATTACK! Uruguay may not be known as a hotbed for animation and special effects but that’s going to change very soon if commercial director and effects man Federico Alvarez has anything to do with it. He has just posted his short film PANIC ATTACK online and it features enough giant robot stomping action to make Michael Bay blush. Eat your heart out, Neil Blomkamp, we’ve got another bona fide low budget effects wizard here.
And just as Uruguay hasn’t been known for producing special effects bonanzas over the years, Ireland hasn’t been known for producing ... well, all that much of anything, really, but certainly not much in the way of genre film. This may very well change with Brendan Muldowney’s SAVAGE. A hard edged revenge picture, SAVAGE tracks a photographer’s descent into obsession and paranoia and, finally, explosive violence, after being the victim of a mugging. Cold and hard, this one.
Find the SAVAGE promo here
Let’s bounce back to South America now, shall we? And while there we’ll take a look at Argentinian animated feature BOOGIE. Definitely not kid’s fare, this one, the story of an aging hitman on a bloody rampage to prove that he is still the best there is. Ultra violent, ultra bloody, sexually explicit by the looks of things, politically very incorrect this aint the sort of thing Pixar will be making any time soon.
Find the BOOGIE trailer here
The Nazis are Europe’s new boogeymen. Yes, they’re very old boogeymen, I know, but there is a sudden wave of Nazi themed horror pictures flowing out of Europe right now, films ranging from Xavier Gens’ FRONTIERE(S) to recent Norwegian effort DEAD SNOW. And now you can add upcoming Danish effort FINAL SOLUTION to the list. A full blooded slasher picture revolving around Nazis intercepting and killing Jews fleeing Denmark for the safer confines of Sweden during WWII, this one is still in production but the first teaser has arrived and is absolutely fantastic.
Find the FINAL SOLUTION here
The title of Richard Gale’s THE HORRIBLY SLOW MURDERER WITH THE EXTREMELY INEFFICIENT WEAPON says it all, really. The short film with the long name has been racking up awards all around the globe – including at Fantastic Fest – for better than a year now and the director has finally made the complete short available online. Hide your spoons.
Get killed (slowly) here.
Yuen Woo Ping is a martial arts legend for a reason and TRUE LEGEND – his first directorial effort in better than a decade – has made this column before for very good reason. And it’s back now thanks to a series of six character-based teasers, one for each of the major players. And if you’re wondering why things keep flying towards the screen, the answer is yes: the master is returning to directorial duties with China’s first 3D martial arts film. Sweet.
Find the teasers here
Okay, a bit of explanation is required here. In the central part of Canada there is a city called Winnipeg. It is the geographical center of North America, apparently. It is the home to Guy Maddin. It is also the home of not very much to do. And so, in Winnipeg, there is a group of young film makers who call themselves Astron 6 who occupy their time by making trailers for non-existent, 1980s, low budget, straight to video horror films. Their latest effort is THE FIREMAN. Fear his wrath.
The FIREMAN burns for you here
Sweden is on the comedy train right now and while there may not be any manly salads in Petra Revenue’s KARAOKE KING there does happen to be a middle aged, overweight, Elvis impersonating karaoke singer. And that’s pretty damn good, too.
Behold the power of the KARAOKE KING here
Because the world just doesn’t have enough gay zombie porn, Canuck director Bruce LaBruce (we grow ‘em strange here) has followed up his OTTO; OR, UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE with another sexually explicit zombie picture titled simply LA ZOMBIE. Adult film star Francois Sagat takes the lead here as the tuskiest zombie I’ve ever seen, chewing his way through the ugly underbelly of America’s tinsel town. The trailer is probably not something you want to watch with your mom around – though who really knows what she gets up to when nobody’s looking? – but it’s not nearly as explicit as you may fear.
Find the LA ZOMBIE trailer here
Okay, this one may very well be my favourite thing in the entire column this time out, so pay attention. Alan Tudyk stars in TUCKER AND DALE VS EVIL, an upcoming horror comedy that remembers something that far too many horror comedies (hello, JENNIFER’S BODY!) seem to forget: To be a horror comedy you need to be both a) gruesome and b) funny. And this is both. Oh, yes. Yes it is. A hilarious inversion of the creepy hillbilly film, Tucker and Dale are likeable enough guys living simple enough lives in the hill country when they have the misfortune of coming across a group of vacationing college students from the big city who – mistakenly – believe that the two hicks are evil and must be destroyed. Problem is that the college kids are pretty much incompetent when it comes to destroying evil and so Tucker and Dale are left to watch, confused, as people they don’t know keep on killing themselves for reasons they don’t understand. Yes, please.
Find the TUCKER AND DALE promo here
Oi ... I shoulda put this one up with the weird stuff. I have no idea what THE LAST PICTURE SHOW’s Clu Galager was thinking when he agreed to do this but I’m glad he did.
I’m not even trying to explain, just watch.
Okay, back on track here with another dose of action, this one coming in the form of a new trailer for upcoming Hong Kong blockbuster BODYGUARDS AND ASSASSINS. Starring virtually everyone in Hong Kong, all of them shipped out to mainland China where they built a massive 1:1 scale standing replica of turn of the century Hong Kong, the film gives exactly what it says: Eight bodyguards trying to protect Dr Sun Yat-Sen – considered the founder of modern China – from eight assassins as he passes through the city. This current trailer is designed to show off the dramatic component of the film and scope of the imagery more than the fighting – the action trailer should follow later this week – and is very impressive stuff. And, yes, that’s Donnie Yen with his face beaten to a pulp.
Find the BODYGUARDS AND ASSASSINS here
And now to Japan for more fighting, this time with the martial arts employed in the destruction of a horde of bloodthirsty vampires. VOLCANO HIGH director Kim Tae-Gyun heads to Japan from his native Korea for this one, adapting popular manga series HIGANJIMA into a surprisingly bloody and vicious little number. I’ve had the chance to see this one early and other than some dodgy CGI in the finale it pretty much delivers exactly what you’d want from this sort of film. It’s basically the movie that BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE should have been but wasn’t.
Find the HIGANJIMA trailer here
You do not mess with the nunchuk-wielding bun. Not if you know what’s good for you.
I told you not to mess with him!
And, finally, we end as promised with Filipino boxing champ Manny Pacquiao – less than a week out from his victory over Miguel Cotto – in super hero mode as WAPAKMAN. It’s the latest film from director Topel Lee and while the release may be delayed by Pacquiao’s announced intention to run for government office and a rule forbidding the release of films starring candidates in the lead up to an election, the first full trailer has arrived. Beware the lava man! Thrill to the ultrasonic breasts! Giggle like a little girl as Pacquiao engages a giant crab in hand to hand combat!
Find the WAPAKMAN trailer here
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