Ain't It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com)
Movie News
AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy: JEZ JERZY, JUEGA CONMIGO, HIGGLETY PIGGLETY POP, PERRIER’S BOUNTY, And More!!
International Eye Candy February 26, 2010 The international film world may not have ground to a halt last week but the arrival of the massive Berlin Film Festival certainly slowed things to a crawl as everybody cast their eyes on Germany to see what the big titles would be. But less material hitting the web doesn’t mean none and it certainly doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth seeing. So while this edition of the International Eye Candy may be a little slimmer than normal that doesn’t mean it isn’t loaded with the good stuff. We’ve got Norwegian gangsters, French animation, Australian cyberpunk, an oversexed hedgehog, a pair of hysterically campy entries from Malaysia – one intentionally so and one not so much – and a little something new from Steven Seagal. So without further ado, on we go!
Let’s start with the hedgehog, shall we? Poland’s JEZ JERZY has long been hugely popular on the printed page, the underground comic starting in a significantly more family-friendly form before descending into a stew of sex, drugs, and so-dumb-it’s-clever social satire. You want SOUTH PARK level vulgarity as a hedgehog tries to get drunk and laid while fighting off neo-Nazis and mad scientists? This is the one for you.
The film version of JEZ JERZY has been in the works for a good while now and a pair of trailers have arrived. One is straight animated raunch, the other casting the character as a sort of live action arthouse thriller, and both are brilliant.
Ask anybody who tracks international film and they’ll tell you that Latin America is the next market ready to explode. The arthouse side of things has been making noise for a while and now the commercial side of things is starting to make noise as well. Uruguayan single shot horror LA CASA MUDA impressed in a previous IEC and now here comes Colombia to challenge for the Latin horror crown with JUEGA CONMIGO.
They are saying very little about what this one is actually about but it appears to involve some sort of doll based fantasy world and the teaser is nicely atmospheric stuff.
You probably don’t need another reason to buy the upcoming DVD of Spike Jonze’s WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE but I’m going to give you one anyway. Spike’s a clever lad and so when he was prepping his adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s classic kid’s book it didn’t take him long at all to realize that Sendak had a whole lot of other quality material out there as well. And so he took advantage of the situation to bring a bit more to the screen while he was at it.
Spike came up with the idea of commissioning a second Sendak adaptation as a companion piece to WILD THINGS and so he approached the Oscar-nominated directors of MADAM TUTLI-PUTLI and asked if they would be interested in creating a Sendak adaptation of their own to appear on the WILD THINGS DVD. And so the film version of HIGGLETY PIGGLETY POP, OR THERE MUST BE MORE TO LIFE was born.
A fusion of puppet animation, stop motion and live action, this looks to be typically brilliant stuff. A trio of clips have been released to whet the appetite.
From Canada we hop over the Atlantic to visit Ireland for the latest from director Ian Fitzgibbon. Fitzgibbon’s previous film – the sadly overlooked A FILM WITH ME IN IT – is a fantastic piece of pitch-black comedy starring Dylan Moran (BLACK BOOKS, SHAUN OF THE DEAD) and he’s got another stellar cast in his upcoming gangster comedy PERRIER’S BOUNTY.
Cillian Murphy, Jim Broadbent and Brendan Gleeson star in this one about a young man trying to escape a crippling from the gangster he owes a crippling debt to accompanied by his neurotic father. How neurotic is he? He believes he’ll die the next time he falls asleep. The trailer looks like great fun.
Donnie Yen as a period-set kung fu superhero? That’s the goal with THE LEGEND OF CHEN ZHEN, a supercharged spin on the character player by Jet Li in FIST OF LEGEND and Bruce Lee in THE CHINESE CONNECTION. This one is still in production but an action reel has just been released. Murky? You bet. Clumsily edited? A bit. But good lord this has a lot of potential.
And now what’s probably the highest profile piece of animation in this very animation-centric column ...
French director Sylvain Chomet burst on to the scene a little over six years ago with THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (aka BELLEVILLE RENDEZ-VOUZ) a wildly energetic, lovingly hand drawn throwback to years gone by. There is quite simply nobody else even remotely like Chomet in the world of animation right now and TRIPLETS won him a legion of fans around the world.
Since then things have been quiet in the Chomet camp, with just a couple short films, as the director worked his way through the painstaking process of creating his second feature – an animated adaptation of an unproduced script by the legendary Jacques Tati. The film is THE ILLUSIONIST, it is finally finished and premiered in Berlin. No proper trailer but a lengthy clip reel has arrived.
Another Berlin premiere here, this one my personal favourite film of the festival.
Stellan Skaarsgard stars as lowly gangster Ulrik in the Coen-esque A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN. Freshly released from prison, he’s trying to rebuild his life and reconnect with his family while also fending off the amorous advances of his very unappealing landlady, dealing with a television that suddenly insists on showing only Polish language channels, and dealing with pressure to take his revenge on the man whose testimony landed him in prison for the past twelve years.
This one is drily hilarious and, thankfully, the trailer includes English subtitles so everybody can share in the joke.
More from Berlin? You got it.
Director Koji Masunari made a big splash in the anime world a few years ago with his series READ OR DIE and he’s looking to build on that reputation with his new kid-oriented sci-fi feature WELCOME TO THE SPACE SHOW.
The feature reunites the entire creative team behind R.O.D. and looks to play straight to the crowd hungry to fill the gap between Studio Ghibli features with a story of young children drawn into an inter-stellar adventure during their summer holiday. The trailer showcases loads of amazing environments and creatures and the word is very good indeed. And, like A SOMEWHAT GENTLE MAN, the trailer is totally English friendly.
Any fans of James O’Barr – author of THE CROW – out there? This one’s for you.
Based on a short comic by O’Barr, Judd Tilyard’s FRAME 137 is a full out Australian cyberpunk short built around the skills of young Sam Ransom. He may only be ten but Ransom is certainly not shy about pulling off his own stunt and martial arts work, to say nothing of breathing fire and knocking back the occasional shot. Very stylish and shot in ultra-widescreen.
One more piece of animation before we go camp to wrap up the column ...
One of the true greats of world animation it remains a mystery to me how it is that none of Masaaki Yuasa’s work has ever been available in North America. Rising to prominence with his stunning feature MIND GAME, Yuasa has since worked dominantly in television dancing through visual styles as he crafts some of the smartest, most visually dazzling work in the world.
His latest is YOJOHAN SHINWA TAIKEI and while details are still scarce it looks to be another high concept bit of work dabbling with sci-fi themes and, once again, the visual style is completely different from anything Yuasa – or just about anyone else – has ever done before.
Got a weakness for bad movies? Because Malaysia’s Julian Cheah has an unintentional slice of hilarity for you with KILLER CLOWN. Horrible in all the right ways, this vanity project from Cheah – who appears to write, direct, and edit all of his own films as well as starring in them – is delivered with such straight-faced sincerity that I truly believe all involved thought they were actually making something good. Baffling and hysterical.
Also from Malaysia and also very campy – though intentionally so this time – is superhero comedy KAPOWW!! Yes, the double ‘w’ and the two exclamation marks are part of the title. Young man struck by lightning develops superpowers - goofy costumes, silly effects and overall hilarity ensue.
How to top those two slices of Malaysian madness? With a bit of home grown insanity, of course. Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Seagal is BORN TO RAISE HELL.
Readers Talkback
