International Eye Candy
March 18, 2009

How best to celebrate March Break and the slow emergence from a cold, harsh winter? Not by going outside, that's for damn sure! Yes kids, it's Todd from Twitch here with our regular foray into the world of film with a brand new International Eye Candy column to keep you amused and entertained from the comfort of your chair.

The big news lately was certainly the first trailer for OLDBOY director Park Chan-Wook's THIRST. That one's already received a good bit of lovin' on the main page here, which rules it out of the ol' IEC but not to worry: even with THIRST disqualified we've got a whopping twenty films making the grade this time out for our biggest IEC ever! We've got Johnnie To teaming up with French pop stars! Gunnar Hansen alive, well and massacring once again! French spies! Time travelling drunks! It's everything a growing boy (or girl) needs and here we go!

We kick things off with a blast from the past, courtesy of - surprisingly enough - the fine folks at Marvel. Way back before the idea of a SPIDER-MAN feature film was even a glimmer in Sam Raimi's eye Marvel licensed the character to producers in Japan to adapt for a television series. The name stayed the same, costume too, but they changed just about everything else. No Peter Parker. No radioactive spider. But lots and lots of giant robots and crazy ass kaiju monsters. Japanese SPIDER-MAN videos have been highly sought after collectors items ever since and life just got a whole lot easier for fans with Marvel snapping up rights to the entire series run, slapping English subtitles on the lot of them and releasing them a single episode per week - for free - via their official website. It's just as gloriously strange as you might think.

You can check out the trailer here

From Japan we head to the UK for a film sure to rank high on my year end list. How can I say that so early into 2009? Because its creator - satirist Armando Iannucci - is a flat out genius. Any fans of Jon Stewart out there? Prepare to have your mind blown. Iannucci has been adored in TV circles for years now and he's finally made the leap to film with Sundance hit IN THE LOOP, a whip smart and foul mouthed - at least in one character's case - satire tracking minor government officials swept up in the buildup to war. Iannucci is brilliant in his worst moments and this is one of his best.

Find the IN THE LOOP trailer here

Start practicing your Russian pronunciations because before too long Timur Bekmambetov is going to become a household name. We first got to know Bekmambetov thanks to his hugely successful NIGHT WATCH films, then he crossed over and crushed the US box office with WANTED and next he's up as a producer of upcoming post-apocalyptic animation 9, a role he shares with Tim Burton. But the US success doesn't mean Timur's forgotten his roots. Nope. He still directs back in Russia, too, and he also slings his name around to help those who have helped him. Such is the case with BLACK LIGHTNING, an upcoming feature produced by Bekmembetov and directed by a pair of his key assistants. The story? Not much so far, just that it's about a college kid who discovers a flying car and uses it to fight crime but there's a brief teaser out there now that'll leave you hungry for more.

Check out the BLACK LIGHTNING teaser here

And speaking of hungry for more, that's how we've been feeling about Rena Takeda star vehicle HIGH KICK GIRL since we first came across it. Boasting about the most appropriate movie title in the history of movie titles, Takeda stars as a typical high school girl drawn into a fight against a deadly gang, but only if typical high school girls are highly trained in the martial arts and their gang opponents are similarly well trained young women. All the fighting in this is real, folks, all of these girls well trained, and yes-indeedy it does indeed feature a bunch of fetching young things in short skirts beating the absolute tar out of each other. We've linked to promos for this one before but now there's a full theatrical trailer that includes some of the more over the top take downs I've seen in recent years, plenty of fan service, and a flaming arm.

Find the new HIGH KICK GIRL trailer here

It's Leatherface! In a slasher! But it aint what you think! Last year Gunnar Hansen got back in touch with his Icelandic roots, travelling back home to be part of the REYKJAVIK WHALE WATCHING MASSACRE and if Hansen combined with that title isn't enough to hook you, well then you just aint human. Heh. I caught an extended promo of this last year at Fantastic Fest and have been waiting for the chance to share something in public ever since and that day has come. They're being careful not to spoil any of the big gore moments just yet but the just-released teaser shows plenty of atmosphere and a little bit of Hansen, in all more than enough to prove that this thing's going to have some legs on the festival circuit this year.

Find the RWWM teaser here

Japan-o-philes were greatly confused, and mostly pleased a while back when word started to circulate about a rather unlikely partnership, one that would see splattery horror director Ryuhei Kitamura (VERSUS, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) directing rock and roll film BANDAGE, a project written and produced by arthouse darling Shunji Iwai (ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU). Kitamura has since dropped off that project but the duo have ended up working together anyway, the pair commissioned to create hour long animated film BATON as part of a celebration of the city of Yokohama's 150th birthday. No history lesson here, though ... the pair have gone out and created a full out scifi adventure using a blend of traditional and rotoscoped animation and the first trailer is freshly arrived.

Pass the BATON here

Time now for our first of two more local productions that prove you don't have to go high budget to go high concept. PHASMA EX MACHINA is a low budget genre buster coming out of the midwestern US that defies easy categorization into either the scifi or horror worlds while inviting comparison to the likes of PRIMER or THE SIXTH SENSE. Story? Simple enough. And electrical engineer develps a theory that the barrier that prevents the souls of the dead from walking among the living is a simple lack of energy and so he builds a field generator to test that theory. It works. If the trailer's any idication then these guys have smarts and style to spare.

Check the PHASMA EX MACHINA trailer here

Next we move north of the border to my own slowly thawing homeland and Trenton Lepp's CONDITION: HUMAN. This one is a six part web series due to arrive on April first, with the action set in a near-future world where believably humanoid robots have forced a wave of moral and ethical questions. The impressive thing here? Not just that the trailer is gorgeous but that Lepp got it looking that way using a consumer grade handycam available in any electronics shop and a green screen jury-rigged out of green felt set up in his living room. This is DIY film making that looks a lot better than a lot of studio efforts and for those who are curious about how it's done, Lepp plans to publish a series of tutorial videos.

Find info and the trailer here

Sick of vampire flicks yet? But what if the vampire were played by a sexy Japanese skin flick actress? The film is BLOOD, the actress Aya Sugimoto, a former pop star who returned to prominence when she divorced her husband for not having enough sex with her and then starring in a number of high end, sexually explicit, bondage themed skin flicks. And now she's getting her kit off in BLOOD, a film sure to keep thrill seekers happy while also - like most of Sugimoto's films - boasting shockingly high production values. The fresh trailer is work-safe, but just.

Take a gander at Sugimoto here

Because one good sex tale deserves another, we move on now to Belgium for SM RECHTER, or TIED TOGETHER in English. Far more arthouse than grindhouse, this one is based on the true story of a Belgian judge who opted to explore S&M with his wife to bring a little spice to their marriage, then realized that they both enjoyed the lifestyle rather a lot and pushed deeper into it, and then was disbarred and charged with spousal abuse when their relationship became public. Which seems ludicrous, but it really happened.

Check the SM RECHTER trailer here

Right! Enough with the smut! We head now to Ireland for Tomm Moore's entirely more family friendly animated feature SONG OF THE SEA. In my mind Moore established himself as a master animator worth being compared to the likes of Michel Ocelot (KIRIKOU AND THE SORCERESS) and Sylvain Chomet (TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE) with his debut feature, BRENDAN AND THE SECRET OF KELLS, and now he's back at it with his sophomore effort. SONG is probably a couple years away from release but Moore has released an early trailer / animation test for his sea fable and it's magical stuff.

Sing a SONG OF THE SEA here

We'll stick with the youthful animation tip a bit longer but the upcoming EUREKA 7 feature features less sea and more sky-surfing giant robots. If you're familiar with the anime series you're already up to speed on this but if not, EUREKA 7 takes the young boy / giant robot motif that has been a staple of anime for years and breaths new life into it thanks to some sharp story telling, a compelling coming of age element and a cool factor that most shows of the type are sorely lacking. This is one of my favorite anime series of the past few years and the feature - A POCKET FULL OF RAINBOWS, a shit title I know - promises to blend about 40% new material with reanimated sequences from the original series for some sort of distillation / expansion of all the things that made the show great.

Check the EUREKA 7 trailer here

We've covered Derek Yee's SHINJUKU INCIDENT before, sucked in by the promise of Jackie Chan's first purely dramatic role, and now it's back in the IEC thanks to a brand new Japanese trailer for the film. The irony here, of course, is that the film is banned from screening in China because of it's harsh portrayal of Chinese trying to eke out a living in Japan's underground economy while in Japan - a nation that comes off far worse in the film - it's embraced. Go figure.

Check the new SHINJUKU INCIDENT trailer here

Alright, okay, something in English to carry you through the home stretch here. I'm not totally in love with the trailer for upcoming Brit-com FAQ ABOUT TIME TRAVEL but I am rather in love with star Chris O'Dowd, best known as the lead in TV sitcom THE IT CROWD. The premise here is suitably goofy - a trio of socially awkward nerds discover a rift in time in the toilet of the local pub - and all the best bits seem to belong to O'Dowd. I'd expect no less.

ask your questions about TIME TRAVEL here

Forecasting a resurgence in the slumping Korean film industry, where the local box office has been dominated in recent weeks by a documentary about an 80 year old farmer and his ox, in a year where Park Chan-Wook and Bong Joon-Ho both have new films coming seems like kind of a no-brainer but if the resurgence is going to stick they're going to need some new blood to make some waves as well. Well, hello Park Dae-Min. Park's debut film, PRIVATE EYE, is soon to appear on the scene and this things looks stellar on all fronts - from the clever casting of a pair of dead solid character actors in the leads, to the ultra-stylish look and feel of the thing, to the clever fusion of genres, this has all the things that made us fall in love with Korea in the first place. Story? A med student in 1910 finds a body in the forest and instead of reporting it opts to bring it home for dissection and study. Until he learns that his body is the corpse of a powerful gangster's son. Then he takes it back. But there's already a new, different body there. So now he figures that he's screwed unless he can find the killers before they find him and hires the titular private eye for help.

Check out the PRIVATE EYE trailer here

Yep, the big budget Russian scifi epic is back on the radar thanks to the imminent release of the second part. You know your film is epic when it can't be contained in just one film and with the first installment of Fyodor Bondarchuk's adaptation of the Strugatsky Brothers' novel already a huge hit the producers are finally moving away from the 'keep everything hidden' approach that they used marketing the first film and are showing a whole lot more in the trailer for the second.

Visit the INHABITED ISLAND here

Okay, another one here for fans of intelligent satire, this one coming from Germany's Jan Henrik Stahlberg. Co-writer, co-director and leading man, Stahlberg's fingers are all over SHORT CUT TO HOLLYWOOD and while you can certainly make a case that parodying reality television is a bit of a chump's game since it already does such a good job of parodying itself Stahlberg is so smart about what he does, and keeps things so firmly focused on the irrational drive for fame rather than on the reality TV process itself that it really, really works. Stahlberg is a gem largely undiscovered outside of his own country so far, which is a huge shame in my book - he's one of the best in the world.

Take a SHORT CUT TO HOLLYWOOD here

Alright Johnnie To fans, here we go ...

I'll be the first to admit that there was a stretch there where I really didn't see what the hype was about To. I found PTU very over rated and was bored by BREAKING NEWS other than the opening and closing sequences. In fact, I was literally at the point where I told myself I'd only give To one more shot, one more film top prove he was worth my attention. Lucky for me, that one film ended up being the first of his ELECTION films and from that point on he's been on an unstoppable, untoppable role.

For his latest, VENGEANCE, To indulges his love for French gangster noir by hiring French singer Johnny Hallyday to play an aging hitman in Hong Kong to exact - you guessed it - vengeance on the men who harmed his daughter. Pure gold, kids, pure gold. And now gold with a trailer.

Find the VENGEANCE trailer here

I've written about my love for French spy comedies OSS 117 in this space before - Moriarty is also a big, big fan - and the spy is back again thanks to a brilliant new trailer for the second installment in the current revival of the series, OSS 117: RIO NE REPOND PLUS. The OSS 117 films first appeared in France during the 1960s before being revived just a few years back in a pitch perfect recreation of the 60's era swingin' spy caper with comedian Jean Dujardin in the lead and this new installment looks every bit as solid as the first. A basic knowledge of French will help you catch the jokes but, hell, it's got a Nazi masked wrestler and you can't ask for much more than that, now can you?

Head to RIO here

We wrap up this very long edition of International Eye Candy with the candiest piece of candy yet, the brand new trailer for Kaz Kiriya's period-set martial arts fantasy GOEMON. Now, Kiriya burst on to the international scene a few years back with his live action adaptation of popular anime series CASSHERN and while that film proved hugely divisive to audiences - I loved it, personally - everybody agreed that Kiriya is flat out one of the purest and most compelling visual talents going. This guy makes gorgeous film full of beautiful people doing impossible things. And here's two more minutes of proof.

Find the GOEMON trailers here