We begin in New Zealand with Jason Stutter’s PREDICAMENT. Stutter has been a fave on the short film circuit for the past few years thanks to his three part CAREFUL WITH series of gruesome comedies. With titles like CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, CAREFUL WITH THAT POWER TOOL and, most recently, CAREFUL WITH THAT CROSSBOW, you probably have a pretty fair idea where Stutter is coming from.
And now he’s moving into the world of features with PREDICAMENT, a black comedy about a trio of young men who cook up a scheme to photograph and blackmail people having affairs. It goes badly. FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS stalwart Jemaine Clement has a key role in this and while the first teaser is brief it is tasty, indeed.
Find the PREDICAMENT teaser here
Off now to the Czech Republic where puppet animated kids film KUKY RETURNS, well, returns to the IEC. We’ve covered this one before, much taken in by the fantastical world it creates with its devotion to old school practical effects and now that KUKY has a new trailer showing even more of said fantastical world we just can’t resist going back for a second helping. This stuff does the spirit of Jim Henson very proud indeed.
Find the KUKY RETURNS trailer here
Think Cannes is all about snooty art film? Well, here come director Quentin Dupieux and his angry tire, Robert, to prove you wrong with RUBBER. And, yes, I said angry tire. Angry psychic tire, to be accurate. Angry, psychic tire rolling around the desert, quivering with rage and using its psychic powers to blows stuff up. Stuff like heads. And birds. I shit you not. This is a real movie.
Dupiuex is well known on the electronic music front as Mr Oizo and apparently when not creating music he loves to do nothing more than make really, really weird movies. This will, undoubtedly, be the weirdest movie included in the big programs at Cannes 2010. I was lucky enough to see an extended promo for it a few months back but can only share the public teaser for now. Say it with me, folks: Instant Cult Classic.
Find the RUBBER teaser here
No tires or exploding heads in Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego’s LA PIEL AZUL, just lots of pretty young things having a very bad time indeed on a sailing vacation.
Lopez-Gallego wona lot of love a couple years back with the stellar thriller KING OF THE HILL and he’s at it again here, with a project devised as a two part miniseries for Mexican TV and now being re-edited for theatrical release in Spain. DEAD CALM is an obvious touch point but there are plenty of signature Lopez-Gallego touches going on to keep things from feeling repetitious.
Find the LA PIEL AZUL trailer here
It’s Sean Bean versus the plague in BLACK DEATH, the latest from CREEP / SEVERANCE / TRIANGLE director Christopher Smith. Is Smith’s first foray into the world of multiple-word titles any good? Why, yes. I’ve seen it and yes it is, indeed. And so is the trailer, freshly arrived on UK shores. Bean is one of those guys who tends to be quite good in a lot of quite bad films so it’s always refreshing when he gets to be in a film as good as he is. This is one of them.
Catch the BLACK DEATH here
Im Sang-Soo’s classy thriller THE HOUSEMAID is the early leader for Buzz Film of Cannes 2010 with anticipation running very high indeed for the remake of the 1960s Korean psycho-sexual classic. Yes, this goes where you think it does, but with this sort of film it’s all about how it goes there and all signs are that Im has hit this one out of the ballpark, a good sign indeed that the Korean wave may be regaining its momentum after a few very lean years, indeed.
This one has made the IEC column before but it’s back now with a much longer, much higher quality trailer that really shows it off to maximum effect. Yum.
Find the HOUSEMAID trailer here
Bill Nighy, Rupert Everett, Martin Freeman, Emily Blunt and Rupert Grint in a UK hitman comedy? Where can I sign up? New UK effort WILD TARGET has an absolutely stellar cast from top to bottom and it looks to make very good use of them, indeed. While the US makes action-comedies along the lines of COP OUT and wonders why they keep failing – answer: they’re stupid and unfunny – the UK takes the wittier high road and excels with stuff like this. Very smart. Very fun. Yes, please.
Find the WILD TARGET trailer here
Another one from Cannes for you here, this time Gilles Marchand’s techno-thriller BLACK HEAVEN. The story of a young man drawn into the world of a virtual reality game by a dangerous, suicidal femme fatale, the film features a heavy dose of CGI animation from the same company that backed animated feature RENAISSANCE a couple years ago and while I’m personally sceptical of video game films in general – things change so quickly in real life that fake life treatments of technology tend to have a very short shelf life – this one seems to have hit on a compelling blend of styles and influences. What we’ve got here is an extended sales promo for the picture, complete with English subtitles.
Find the BLACK HEAVEN promo here
What’s better than a trailer featuring Donnie Yen and Sammo Hung in IP MAN 2? How about a full ten minute reel of footage from the film? You’re welcome.
Find the IP MAN 2 promo here
Who likes Sam Raimi? Australian film maker Brett Anstey likes Sam Raimi, that’s who! Go ahead, watch the trailer for Anstey’s DAMNED BY DAWN and tell me that you don’t see a whole lot of Raimi influence in his creature and undead effects. In most hands this sort of thing comes off as clumsy mimicry but Anstey seems to have a bit more going on, enough that this plays more like must-see tribute.
Find the DAMNED BY DAWN trailer here
We just had a dose of New School Hong Kong kung fu with IP MAN 2 and now it’s time to go Old School – way Old School – with GALLANTS. A low budget action comedy that arrived at the recent Hong Kong International Film Festival with virtually no advance notice and left as one of the most talked about films of the event, GALLANTS captures pretty much everything that made a generation fall in love with martial arts film in the first place. Great sense of humor, great fight sequences, just a great time.
Find the GALLANTS trailer here
And, finally, we wrap things up with the brand new trailer for one of the more controversial titles of the year. Michael Winterbottom’s THE KILLER INSIDE ME has been drawing controversy on the fest circuit thanks to the way Casey Affleck uses Jessica Alba as a punching bag in one extremely explicit sequence but writing Winterbottom off as simply a shock jock would be foolish in the extreme. The man is an undeniable master when he’s on top of his game and with this sort of cast ... well, THE KILLER INSIDE ME has the potential to be explosive on more levels than just the obvious one.
The trailer stays away from the controversial stuff, leaving any violence implied rather than shown, but it is still potent, potent stuff.
Find THE KILLER INSIDE ME here
