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AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy: Van Damme's BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, a Bangladeshi TARZAN, 100 YEARS OF EVIL, More!!
As the observant among you will have noticed the International Eye Candy took an instalment off last time around as I was busy in the madness of the American Film Market but I’m back now, recharged and loaded up with the good stuff. Yes, once again this is Todd from Twitch with an assortment of the best, the worst and the strangest from around the globe. In this edition of International Eye Candy we’ve got a double shot from Uwe Boll, a Bangladeshi TARZAN, a 3D sex film from Hong Kong, A Jean-Claude Van Damme reality television series and ... okay, this time out it’s mostly the strange stuff. But onwards! Eye Candy awaits!
Let’s kick things off with the Van Damme, shall we? Freshly announced in the cast of the new MUPPET movie – where the betting money is on the Muscles From Brussels making a pass at Miss Piggy and having his ass kicked – we will first be seeing Jean Claude in BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, a new reality TV series to air on ITV in the UK. A few snips from the show have been aired as an initial teaser for UK audiences in which we witness Van Damme urinating and very nearly being urinated upon. Really. And yet people persist in viewing reality shows as low brow ...
Sticking with the kicking theme we head now to Japan for karate star Rina Takeda’s sophomore starring vehicle KARATE GIRL. Takeda’s first film – HIGH KICK GIRL – is, frankly, not very good but she’s pretty fantastic in it. I mean, what’s not to like? She’s a teenaged pin up girl who also happens to be a real life karate prodigy who does all of her own fight and stunt work without the aid of wires, CGI or body doubles. In other words she’s every geeky kids most ideal and most frightening woman rolled into one. KARATE GIRL promises more of the same from Takeda though the production values – so far – look notably better than her first effort. We’ve got both a teaser and a behind the scenes training reel to show off her skills.
Find the KARATE GIRL 
From the land of karate we head to the land of batshit insanity, AKA Bangladesh. In recent months I have become convinced that Bangladesh is producing the craziest films to grace screens anywhere in the world today. They did their uber-cheap KING KONG. They’ve knocked off THE INCREDIBLE HULK. And now it’s time for Tarzan. JUNGLE DIPER TARZAN, to be precise. Are you ready for four minutes of loincloth madness? Because it’s coming for you regardless.
Also moderately insane – or is it? – is (mostly) Swedish documentary 100 YEARS OF EVIL, a film that explores the possibility that Hitler didn’t die in the bunker after all but actually escaped the country and lived for decades in the USA with a body double taking the fall. DONKEY PUNCH director Olly Blackburn had a bit of a hand in this, though it looks nothing at all like his work on that film. Could he have lived? Judge for yourself.
Here’s the thing about Steve Coogan. His work in the UK is brilliant. His work in the US, not so much. Nobody on local shores seems to have figured out how to properly put the man to use just yet but, luckily for us, his current endeavour is a UK based one titled THE TRIP. Presented as a film at the Toronto International Film Festival in September it’s actually a short run television series in the UK, with Coogan reunited with his TRISTRAM SHANDY director Michael Winterbottom and co-star Rob Brydon for a highly improvised road trip based very heavily on their own personalities. The story is that Coogan was hired to write a restaurant review column for a London paper, a job he took as an excuse to have an all expense paid romp through the north of England with his girlfriend. But she left for America at the last minute so he takes Brydon along instead. Have I said this is brilliant yet? Because it is and there are two clips to prove it.
If, as I assert above, Bangladesh is the current home of cinematic insanity then Greece is the new home of arthouse tinged brain melters. DOGTOOTH messed people up mightily last year and it looks like this year that same task may have fallen to KNIFER. Yup, that guy on the poster is wearing a crocodile head. I have no idea why that would be the case in a movie supposedly about a guy taking care of two dogs. And that’s not the only thing that baffles me but it all baffles in an intriguing way.
Who’s the Japanese director most likely to fill the void left when Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki finally retires? The smart money has been on Makoto Shinkai for years, Shinkai fusing science fiction themes into touchingly simple domestic dramas for years now in a way that few others could even hope to match. It’s been a little while since Shinkai last released a feature but he’s got one coming soon in the lengthily titled CHILDREN WHO CHASE LOST VOICES FROM DEEP BELOW and the teaser looks like vintage stuff. Which is to say gorgeous.
Onwards now from the sublime to the ... not sublime. Yup, it’s time for a double dose of Uwe Boll. In one corner we’ve got the good doctor’s recent big budget effort BLOODRAYNE: THE THIRD REICH. And in the other corner we’ve got BLOODRAYNE’s idiot twin, BLUBBERELLA, Boll’s fat female superhero film shot fast and cheap on the BLOODRAYNE sets and apparently, in some cases, recycling actual BLOODRAYNE footage. Watch if you dare.
Need a palette cleanser after that? Off, then, to Scandinavia and the international production KING OF DEVIL’S ISLAND. This one’s a based-on-a-true-story affair starring Stellan Skargard and Kristoffer Joner as the minders of a truly oppressive prison for young offenders. Oppressive, that is, until their methods and the arrival of a rebellious newcomer spark a full-on uprising. As good as Skarsgard and Joner are – which is very – methinks the face to watch here is said newcomer. Young actor Benjamin Helstad looks fantastic. And, yes, the trailer is subtitled.
Guess what movie just topped one of Paul Verhoeven’s Dutch box office records, knocking the biggest director the Netherlands has ever produced into the number two slot? That’d be Dick Maas’ deliberately and gloriously B-film, Christmas themed slasher SINT. Because everybody loves a bit of blood and gore in holiday season, apparently, and SINT both promises and delivers exactly that. The 80s look and feel to this isn’t a throwback, either. Mass got his start in that era with cult titles like THE LIFT and AMSTERDAMNED and he’s wisely held on to all the things he loves about the era.
Why, yes, that IS a barbarian warrior grabbing his balls. It’s a frame from upcoming animated feature RONAL THE BARBARIAN and coming from the folks behind hysterically vulgar efforts TERKEL IN TROUBLE and JOURNEY TO SATURN it’s fair to assume there will be much more ball grabbing in the completed feature.
The Danish version of the first teaser circulated a while back but the producers debuted the new English dub – which is quite good – leading in to the AFM and it’s pretty hysterical stuff.
Na Hong-Jin created waves around the world with his debut feature, the gritty and grim cop thriller THE CHASER. And now he’s looking to do it again with outing number two, a picture once known simply as MURDERER but now retitled THE YELLOW SEA. All the elements that made his first film a success look to be at play here, too, from the grimy blue-collar take on the criminal underworld to the everybody loses aesthetic. Which is to say that I thoroughly expect this to be one of the best of the year. A second trailer – significantly longer than the first – has just arrived.
THE LAST CIRCUS is very likely the film that will go down as Alex De La Iglesia’s master work. It’s a huge, sprawling, gloriously messy sort of film built around circus clowns swept up into a wildly escalating grudge match that can only end in death. It’s spin on the Spanish Civil War is one of the most grand and deliberately absurd ever put on screen and there is more visual inventiveness in this single two minute trailer than many directors will be able to cook up over a lifetime. Yes, I like this film a lot.
And, finally, we end with sex.
In 1991 producer Stephen Siu created an international cult sensation with his Hong Kong sex comedy SEX AND ZEN. And by sex comedy I mean sex comedy, the film featuring a whole lot of skin in a whole lot of intimate situations. And now, with the arrival of a whole new generation of 3D technology, Siu is looking to do it again.
Using his own film as inspiration, Siu is currently wrapping up 3D SEX AND ZEN: EXTREME ECSTASY, a film graphic enough that he had to import a pair of Japanese porn stars to take the female leads presumably because being in the film would have been too damaging to any Hong Kong actresses’ long term careers. So, yes, it’s explicit. But more than just being a T&A fest this thing has stellar production values, an obvious sense of humour and an equally obvious desire to entertain as more than just a skin flick. The best way I can think to describe it is as what would happen if you fused Russ Meyer with a golden age TVB martial arts drama and a 1970’s Nikkatsu Roman Porno film. Don’t know what that all means? Well, there’s an uncensored – so be aware of who’s around when you watch it – trailer out now.
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