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International Eye Candy! Giant Korean Robots! Finnish Horror! Isabella Rossellini insect porn! And much more!
Yes, boys and girls, it’s time for another edition of International Eye Candy and we’re bringing the good stuff. It’s been a hectic couple weeks and we’ve got Finnish horror, giant robots from Korea, Isabella Rossellini insect porn, a giant penis cannon, more giant robots from the Philippines, Danish astronauts and more! More! More! Here we go!
We’ll get things started with a bang here, with the first teaser for what is easily one of my most anticipated films of the coming year – Finnish horror flick SAUNA. Director AJ Anilla turned a lot of heads with his debut feature JADE WARRIOR, a time hopping fantasy film that fused Finnish epic legends with Chinese wuxia traditions, and for his next he’s making a hard edged horror film. They’re only half way through shooting it but have just released a teaser anyway and it’s looking tasty.
No trailer for these, unfortunately, as the films they’re from are so short that a trailer would basically have to be the films themselves, but Isabella Rossellini has made a series of short films titled GREEN PORNO in which she dresses up as insects – always the male, for some reason – and acts out insect sex. No, I’m not making this up and, yes, her marriage to David Lynch suddenly makes a lot more sense.
And speaking of well respected actresses of a certain age behaving oddly, how about this one: Faye Dunaway traveling to Wales to play a one armed Memphis cop – with a wooden prosthetic – hunting down an undead rockabilly teen leaving a trail of corpses in his wake? The film’s called FLICK and, yeah, it’s an instant cult title in the making …
And speaking of unusual prosthetics – see how these are all flowing together? That’s skill, that is – we now head to the set of TOKYO GORE POLICE, the new Japanese splatter film directed by the effects guy behind THE MACHINE GIRL. He did a drill bra for MACHINE GIRL and he did breast guns for SUKEBAN BOY so it was only a matter of time before he moved his attention to the male anatomy. Yup. Giant penis cannon. This one stars the female lead from Miike’s AUDITION, incidentally. Again, no trailer yet but there are loads of effects and prosthetic model shots.
Let’s do some giant robots, shall we? Posting about RESIKLO over at Twitch provoked the ire of a very angry Asian man but knowing nothing at all about Filipino politics I have no clue at all whether it’s a good thing that Senator Bong Revilla Jr stars in this. All I know is that people manning giant robots made of scrap battling off alien invaders and it looks like way too much fun in a totally b-movie drive in sort of way. We linked to the first teaser in an earlier IEC column and now we’ve got the full trailer, which includes lots more giant robot action.
We’ll stick with Asia a little while longer to check out Fumihiko Sori’s upcoming ICHI. Sori’s one of the great under appreciated talents in Japan. His live action debut PING PONG is an outright gem of a film and his big budget scifi anime VEXILLE will be unleashed on our shores soon enough for all to marvel at – it’s big and very pretty, I like it a lot – and now he’s working on this. What is it? A rather different take on the classic ZATOICHI blind swordsman story, this time out casting the wandering blind masseur / swordsman / defender of the poor and downtrodden as a rather attractive young woman. Insert obligatory massage joke here. First teaser’s on the official site and it looks fantastic.
Right! We leave Asia now for something that isn’t technically international, being from the US and all, but it’s my column and I can write about what I like. And what I want to write about is DEAD ON, the new George Romero doc by Chicago area film maker Rusty Nails. Nails has been working on this thing for years and has amassed literally hundreds of hours of interview footage with literally everybody who is anybody in the Romero world and, having seen a decent chunk of this, I can tell you honestly that Nails has a remarkable gift both as interviewer and editor. This is going to be absolutely fascinating stuff loaded with goodness for long time fans and neophytes alike. I’d even say this will become the definitive film on the life of Romero.
Canada’s international, right? Well, not for me since I live here, but for most of you reading this trust me: our fixation with potatoes, cheese and gravy is a strange and marvelous thing unheard of in your backwards thinking United States. Plus we talk kind of funny.
But I digress … Anchor Bay just snapped up rights to made in Canada – just a few hours to the east of me, in fact - creature feature JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER. And it’s not hard to see why. Robert Englund costars in a film about a plumber who must battle off a swarm of bloodthirsty monsters. It just looks very, very fun.
Sticking on the monster tip for a bit longer, we’ve written about upcoming Finnish horror film DARK FLOORS in the column before, so you should be up to speed but if not, this is the film starring Finnish metal band Lordi as the leaders of a demon horde crossing into our world to wreak havoc. Trailer’s old news by now but there are four fresh clips from the film now available.
Right-o. Time for more giant robots. Or, giant robot, really, as there’s only one ROBOT TAEKWON V. Originally an animated feature produced in Korea during the early 70s ROBOT TAEKWON V was a huge success on its initial release, spawning a number of sequels before quite literally being lost. The lone surviving print was rediscovered just a few years ago and digitally restored, originally for a 30th anniversary festival appearance which proved so popular that it got into general release and was a huge success a second time. Koreans dig their ROBOT TAEKWON V and so it seems like a no brainer to update the franchise using current technology to bring it in to the live action world. The new version is targeting a 2009 release to go head to head with TRANSFORMERS 2 – and it will very likely hand Michael Bay and co their collective ass on release – and while that’s still a long way away the producers have released an early animation test of the big metal guy. And, yow, this is still very early animation but it looks really, really good …
Yes, we’ve talked about Tony Ching’s upcoming AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS in this space before as well but a) Ching’s a well deserved living legend in the martial arts world, b) star Donnie Yen is arguably the best screen fighter in the world right now, and c) the new trailer is longer, features a lot more fighting, and is just generally better. Old school kung fu action, baby, there’s nothing like it …
Of course, if there’s old school kung fu out there that implies that there’s also new school and the title to watch on that front right now is Dennis Law’s FATAL MOVE. Law’s been promising an exceptionally violent film this time out and the Cat III rating the film just received in Hong Kong – it’s the local equivalent of NC17 – seems to bear that out. The cast here is exceptional – Simon Yam, Sammo Hung, Lam Suet, and Wu Jing, who also starred in Law’s FATAL CONTACT, are the biggest names but there are more – and the first trailer is looking very good.
And now for something completely different. Anybody out there remember a very high end Turkish scifi comedy titled GORA that did the festival rounds a few years back? Well writer/star Cem Yilmaz is back with AROG! They’re actually still writing the GORA sequel, with aims to shoot this summer, but Yilmaz and co have already shot a three minute promo and it looks hysterical. Alien baby! Alien baby!
And, once again, it’s time for something completely different, with Norwegian drama LONSJ. This one marks the return of one of my very favorite actors in the whole world, Aksel Hennie, who some of you may have seen in a couple of films easily available on these shores, UNO and HAWAII, OSLO. And if you haven’t seen those I really recommend that you do, they’re both fantastic. Anyway, Hennie’s been off screen for a while thanks to a couple of aborted projects but he’s back in a new one from the production company behind NEXT DOOR – also easily available and also highly recommended – and REPRISE – ditto. It’s a multi-plot character drama, which may not sound all that compelling on the surface, but think early P.T. Anderson and you’re getting into the right neighborhood. Trust me on this one and just check it out.
Heh. Head on right: Andy Serkis. Head on left, Reece Sheersmith, who Brit comedy fans know as a member of THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN or, alternately, from his recurrent role on SPACED. Film in question, THE COTTAGE, a very bloody, very funny horror comedy in the same general vein as SEVERANCE. Trailer good. Trailer very good.
Holy crap! It’s one you’re actually going to be able to see in theaters! Sergei Bodrov’s Genghis Khan bio-pic has found a home with Picturehouse who plan to roll it out later this year and have just released the first domestic trailer for it. Too much Mr. Movie Voice but man, the visuals just kill. The picture stars Japanese mega star Tadanobu Asano as the Khan – if you’re an Asano fan and had notice his hair getting progressively longer over the past couple years this film is the reason why – and played to great acclaim at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Yes, it’s really good.
It’s been a long column but we’re nearing the end here with Greek psycho-sexual thriller TALE 52. Greece hasn’t really had much of a profile on the international film scene in recent years but this could – and hopefully will be – a sign of more interesting things to come from that part of the world. It’s just a beautifully shot story of a man’s descent into a jealousy fueled madness and the trailer kills.
And finally we arrive at the first proper trailer for Danish animation JOURNEY TO SATURN, the latest from the team behind the hysterical and hugely politically incorrect TERKEL IN TROUBLE. There was an animation test / teaser for this released earlier but this is a much larger and more impressive bit of work that shows the team has lost none of the crude, irreverent edge that made TERKEL so much fun …
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