Ain't It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com)
Movie News
International Eye Candy! Ass-kicking Chileans in MIRAGEMAN, Japanese comedy GACHI BOY and much much more!
Yes, kids, Christmas has just rolled past and here I come with one fine, if somewhat tardy, addition to the ol’ stack of presents. It’s another edition of International Eye Candy featuring the very best stuff from around the world of film. This time out we’ve got a Chilean superhero, a martial arts basketball film and a fistful of titles from Turkey. Here we go!
We’ll start things off on a serious foot with NEFES, the debut film from Turkish commercial director Levent Semerci. The title translates to Breath and the film is the story of a squad of forty young Turks fresh to the military packed off to the south eastern district to fight terrorist factions there. Semerci shoots simply stunning film and this looks like it could be a good – and timely – one. War dramas keep getting made because they keep finding important things to say and this could well prove to be a Turkish PLATOON.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand, that’s enough of the serious stuff. Regular AICN readers may well remember Harry raving about Chilean superhero flick MIRAGEMAN when it played at Fantastic Fest – where it won the audience award – but for those who don’t, here’s the skinny. The film stars Chilean martial artist Marko Zaror – who body doubled for The Rock in THE RUNDOWN – as a strip club bouncer who sort of stumbles into the life of a masked superhero. Zaror is simply a remarkable martial artist and this shows him off to full effect. No wires, no tricks … hell, they didn’t even pull any punches when filming this so when the tagline brags that Mirageman will “Kick Delinquency In The Face”, well, they mean it. Way too much fun to be had here …
Pro wrestlers are inherently funny. Skinny Japanese kids trying to become pro wrestlers are even funnier. That’s all you really need to know about upcoming Japanese sports comedy GACHI BOY. Except I’m kind of curious to know whether “gachi” is slang for underwear in Japan, too, or if that was just an 80’s Canadian thing …
We stick with Japan for a moment with one for the manga fans out there. There are apparently rather a lot of DEATH NOTE fans out there, more than enough to make the recent live action adaptations of the popular manga a huge hit in Japan and on the fest circuit so it’s no surprise that the producers set out to make a spin off flick. What IS surprising is that they got an A-list director like Hideo Nakata – that’d be the man who triggered the J-horror boom with the original RING film – to direct it. Titled L: CHANGE THE WORLD this one, appropriately enough, focuses on supporting character L. And the footage looks mighty nice. Better, I’d say, that the DEATH NOTE films that spawned this did, in fact.
Right! Off to Korea we go where, apparently, all the buzz over the upcoming INDIANA JONES flick has not gone unnoticed. Yup, Korea now has a hat wearing, military bad guy battling, noir serial inspired treasure hunter to call their own. The film is ONCE UPON A TIME and it looks like it should be a good time.
Our second of three trips to Turkey here – the industry there is positively exploding right now – and the new trailer for supernaturally tinged costume epic ULAK. The synopsis on this is deliberately vague but the footage is very nice indeed and from what I can make out it revolves around the prophesied return of some sort of supernatural messiah-type figure.
As singers turned actors go Taiwan’s Jay Chou has carved out a pretty nice niche for himself. He had a key role in the massively successful live action version of INITIAL D, went from that to a key support role in Zhang Yimou’s martial arts epic CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER and managed not to embarrass himself acting alongside Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li, went from that to scoring major awards for small scale drama SECRET, and now he takes the lead in KUNG FU DUNK – a big, splashy martial arts infused sports movie. Hey – Stephen Chow managed to combine kung fu and soccer so why not basketball? The full theatrical trailer has just hit the web.
Right, our third and final trip to Turkey here for SEMUM, the second directorial effort from Hasan Karacadag. Some claim that his first film, D@BBE, was the first true Turkish horror film and while I’d dispute that myself you get the point. What Karacadag does is draw on the rich mythic traditions of Islam – which are positively loaded with creatures of all sorts – and package them in more familiar approaches to horror. This one looks totally campy but an awful lot of fun.
Okay, cheating a little on this one in that the film is actually several years old now and there does not seem to be a trailer available anywhere, but what the hell … I’ve been in love with it since seeing it at the Philadelphia Film Festival, it’s FINALLY coming to DVD and it deserves some love.
The film is KARAOKE TERROR and it’s got a pedigree that should make any J-cult fan sit up and take notice. It’s based on a novel by Ryu Murakami, who wrote the script of AUDITION for Takashi Miike and is a hugely acclaimed novelist, some of whose work – I recommend starting with COIN LOCKER BABIES – is readily available in translated form on these shores. The film stars cult figure Ryuhei Matsua of NIGHTMARE DETECTIVE and BLUE SPRING fame as the leader of a group of teenage boys connected only by their love of karaoke who are drawn into an extended, bloody battle with a group of similarly karaoke loving middle aged women. It’s very bloody, very funny, and immensely quotable. And while I don’t have a trailer to share – though I’ve been promised one soon – what I do have is one of the karaoke numbers featuring Matsuda et al all done up CLOCKWORK ORANGE style. Nice.
Filipino film doesn’t get a lot of love outside the Philippines these days and while there’s generally a very good reason for that – most of it is, shall we say, ungood – there are pockets of very serious talent there and also a willingness to just plain get goofy. This is one of the goofy ones. See the man all big and large in the poster? Yeah, he’s the main character. He drives the giant robot you see standing behind them all. And he’s also an actual, sitting senator in the Filipino government. I say if we settled all future political disputes with giant robot battles the world would be a better place.
For something a little less goofy we head now to France. The horror scene there has gotten a lot of love recently but overlooked in all the horror buzz is the fact that France has turned out a LOT of good gangster films recently with more on the horizon. One of the coming titles to watch out for is this one, LES LIENS DU SANG. It’s a seventies set piece and it just looks to nail everything on pretty much every level. The attention to detail is there, it’s got a great cast, and the trailer certainly seems to indicate a good balance between characters and good ol’ fashioned violence.
I’m a sucker for animation and always more than a little annoyed at how it gets pegged as being for kids only on these shores and how little of the better international stuff we get. Cue up current Danish production JOURNEY TO SATURN. If you’ve ever happened to come across a very crude piece of work titled TERKEL IN TROUBLE – unlikely outside of Europe for the reasons above – then the bandy legged characters here will look familiar and for very good reason. The team behind TERKEL are back together for JOURNEY. For those unfamiliar, here’s a little something that’ll sum up what you’re in for. TERKEL features a couple musical numbers, one of which is cheerfully titled “Fuck Off, You’re Too Ugly For Me And Your Mother Does It With Horses”. Heh. Won’t see that in a Disney film.
So, pop stars playing at kung fu with a heaping helping from the CGI gods leaves you feeling cold? Need something a little more old school to scratch your kung fu itch? Well, here it is. The film is titled AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS and it features Donnie Yen – arguably the finest screen fighter in the world today – in the lead role and is directed by Tony Ching. You know, the fight choreographer behind HERO and HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS. Ching is a legitimate legend in his own right, one of the top fight choreographers in the industry for a few decades now and this is looking big and epic in a totally old school way.
And now we come to the end of this edition of International Eye Candy, but we’re going out with a bang. A big, loud, Finnish heavy metal bang. This one takes some explaining …
Finnish metal outfit Lordi – known for playing their brand of high octane cock rock while outfitted in professional grade monster make up – burst on to the international scene a couple years back when their song Hard Rock Hallelujah won the Eurovision Song Contest, a contest typically dominated by fluffy pop stars. That win gave them massive international exposure, got them a spot in Ozzfest, and got them thinking about bigger and better things. And what could be bigger and better than a rock band having their very own movie? And so DARK FLOORS was born.
Yeah, it’s totally a vanity project dreamt up by lead singer Mr. Lordi and directed the man who has shot every single one of their music videos and, yeah, it features the band members in their stage makeup as the villains of the piece. So, yeah, it sounds ridiculous. It should be horrible. But they’re actually playing it all with a very straight face and the film, shockingly, actually looks like it could be pretty damn good. The full theatrical trailer arrived just a wee bit too late to be included in the last IEC column but we’ve got it here for you now.
Readers Talkback
