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AICN & TWITCH present our International Eye Candy Column with: FEDOT, DRUCKBOLZEN, CHIKO, RED BARON, EVANGELION, and more!!
International Eye Candy March 19, 2008 Here there boys and girls, it’s Todd from Twitch here with another edition of International Eye Candy, the wondrous bi-weekly column that brings you the best and / or strangest films that the world has to offer. Yes, you read that right, this column likes both kinds of weeks. Yes, that was a very bad joke. I apologize. I guess I’d best get on with things before I feel the urge to continue with the poor comedy … In this week’s column: The re-launch of an anime classic! Korean zombie soldiers! A German flying ace! And quite possibly the best film ever made for under five hundred bucks!
Heh … we kick things off with the animated Polish man in the silly bunny suit. Why? Because it’s an animated Polish man in a silly bunny suit. And also because it’s the first television effort from Platige Image, a Polish CG animation company that has been Oscar nominated for their short film work and is, to my mind, one of the truly great undiscovered gems of the international animation world. Seriously, if Platige is involved it’s going to be good, it’s that simple. Anyway …the series is titled NIEZLY KANAL the series follows the bizarre events in the lives of a family who spend all of their time inexplicably dressed in silly bunny suits. It’s strange, more than a little bit absurd and very, very funny.
This is going to be an animation-heavy edition of the ol’ IEC and for the next stop we head to Russia and the new CG animated film FEDOT THE SHOOTER. This one’s based on a story by Leonid Filatov and just looks excellent. Animation style is very unique and proves, finally, that Russia – a country with a very extensive animation history – can do the CGI thing as well.
From Russia we head to Germany for the aforementioned Rather Good and Rather Cheap short film. Readers of this column may recall the trailer we posted for a German genre mashing short called KINGZ a little while back, well this next one is the first directorial effort from the duo behind KINGZ. Titled DRUCKBOLZEN, it’s an eight minute short film set in a nightmarish future world that would do Alex Proyas proud. Watch it and enjoy it once with no pre-conceptions, then go back and watch it again bearing in mind that it was shot on a total budget of under two hundred and fifty Euro, which is significantly under five hundred bucks. Stunning.
We’re going to stay in Germany for a little while longer, here, looking next at CHIKO, the directorial debut of young Turkish-German writer Ozgur Yildirim. What have we got? One hard edged drug and crime drama, complete with coke being snorted off of a hooker’s ass. Yildirim set out here to make a film that captured the realities of the poor Hamburg neighborhoods where he grew up and believe me when I say that you’ve never seen Muslim characters portrayed this way before …
And here’s today’s final German entry, the big budget action-adventure biopic THE RED BARON. It’s the life story of the legendary German flying ace and while it’s a little bit odd to see him cast as a heroic figure – the wonders of a shift in perspective at work, there – there’s no denying that the production values on this are stellar and the dogfight sequences just scream to be seen on the big screen. Compare, if you will, the crappy CG on display in the hugely expensive trailer for the new HULK film and the CG on display in the flight sequences here and then ask yourself how it is that the Germans are beating Hollywood so easily at their own game.
Holy crap! We’re six entries in to the column already and we haven’t been to Asia yet! What the hell’s happening!?! Here’s the cure for that: the new trailer for the second new EVANGELION feature film. Any anime fan will tell you that NEON GENESIS EVANGELION is an absolute landmark series in the animation world so this project has been stirring up a lot of interest. The original creative team behind the show has been taking the television storylines and remolding them into a series of feature films – all of them completely re-animated to give them a much better look than what the original limited budgets could allow – with the ultimate end being a final feature of all new material. The first of the new EVA films hit Japan last year and the second is coming soon, hence the fresh trailer.
If EVANGELION represents the high point of the older school anime, then Masaaki Yuasa may very well represent the future. Still barely known outside of Japan Yuasa was the force behind brilliant animated feature MIND GAME and also my favorite animated series of the past decade, KEMONOZUME and he’s back at work on television with KAIBA. His visual style changes dramatically from project to project so it comes as no surprise that this looks nothing whatsoever like his earlier work but I can’t wait to see it.
Here’s the part where we get all arty on you. Upcoming US indie THE HEART OF NOW is the latest from a collective of film makers known as Sabi, who are also behind the brilliant short I FUCKING HATE YOU, which you’ll probably be seeing on the fest circuit soon. Plot wise it’s your standard thoughtful relationship piece but the big draw here is the absolutely gorgeous photography and the sense of rhythm in the editing. These guys know their way around a camera like nobody’s business and it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood comes calling …
Korean zombie soldiers. If that doesn’t hook you nothing else I say will so I’ll largely leave it at that. GP 506 is the latest from the director of military ghost story R POINT and while the trailer hints at a lot more than it actual shows it’s already got the fanboys buzzing on Asian message boards all over.
Need proof that when Jaycee Chan says he doesn’t want to mimic his famous father’s acting career – that’d be Jackie, incidentally – that he really means it? Here it is. PK.COM is a new mainland Chinese thriller that I think might just make Jackie’s head explode were he to sit down and try to figure it out. Either that or he’ll use it as an excuse next time he gets pissed drunk, jumps on stage and steals the microphone from the performer during a pop concert. “Sorry, man … my kid’s movie just fried my brain. I didn’t know what I was doing.” But I digress. I’ve got no idea what this trailer means. I really don’t. But, damn, I really want to see this film.
If Australia’s THE SQUARE hasn’t already been picked up for US distribution I’m willing to bet it will be soon, and good thing. The screen writing debut of very in-demand actor Joel Edgerton with his brother Nash at the helm, this thing is an atmospheric thriller that revolves around a man whose life crumbles after his mistress presents him with a big bag of cash. Which is a problem I wouldn’t mind having, really.
The cast in this has an interesting pedigree, drawing heavily on stunt performers who worked on the MATRIX films, STAR WARS, SUPERMAN and just about every other major film to shoot in Australia recently. Plus the trailer’s just really, really good.
We close now with ridiculous amounts of gore, courtesy of the full theatrical trailer for Thai shocker ART OF THE DEVIL 3. These films are so over the top it’s a miracle that they get away with it in heavily censored Thailand and the female lead won the Thai equivalent of an Oscar for the previous entry so you know the talent doesn’t all lie in the effects and make up departments. You will cringe. Yes you will.
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