AICN & TwitchFilm's International Eye Candy! SEVEN SAMURAI Remake! Benny Chan! SEXYKILLER! Miike's YATTERMAN! And Much More!!

Yes, boys and girls, it’s Todd from Twitch here with another edition of International Eye Candy, our regular collection of the very finest the world has to offer, along with a reminder to always save your work. Seriously: automatic security updates and restarts while certain writers are away from the computer tending to matters of personal hygiene absolutely suck. And with that in mind here goes this week’s IEC, Mark II. This time out? Sonny Chiba in a remake of SEVEN SAMURAI! Gordon Liu goes to Bollywood! Danish noir! Indian cowboys! We got the good stuff, kids, and here it comes! We get things rolling with Hiroyuki Nakano’s remake of Akira Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI. Nakano built quite a cult for himself with his brilliant SAMURAI FICTION – Tarantino cribbed some shots from this film for KILL BILL – before kind of spinning off into his own odd little world of hippy-love and a series of films, books and nature videos linked by the initials SF. Seriously, Nakano’s a bit of an odd guy but he’s also a genius with a camera which makes the fact that he’s doing anything at all a momentous occasion. And what is he doing? Well, as mentioned, it’s a remake of Kurosawa’s SEVEN SAMURAI. Sonny Chiba fills one of the lead roles and several members of Kurosawa’s original creative team have been enlisted to get the look just right. And it really does look gorgeous. This being Nakano, though, there have to be some twists and in this case one major one is a soundtrack made up seemingly entirely of Rolling Stones tunes. Oh … and also there’s the little fact that this isn’t a theatrical release. Or a video release. Or a TV release. Or a web release. Nope … this film was made to be played on a specialty pachinko machine so if you want to see it you’ve got to go gambling. In Japan. Kurosawa must be spinning in his grave … Click here for details and trailer links From gambling samurai we go to 1960’s Germany, when drugs were cheap, love was free, and terrorism was rampant. Coming soon to German theaters – no pachinko parlors there, I guess – is DER BAADER-MEINHOF KOMPLEX, a docu-drama following the notorious Red Army Faction terrorist group, which orchestrated bombings and assassinations throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Production values on this look incredible and if there was ever an appropriate time to be examining extremism on film, this would be it. The great Bruno Ganz fills a key role. Check out the trailer here I have just saved my work. A bit of a Hong Kong curiosity here in the form of Benny Chan’s CONNECTED. What makes yet another high energy action film from Chan a curiosity? Well, Asian fanboys like to cry about Hollywood’s tendency to buy up and remake their favorite titles while ignoring Asia’s penchant for unauthorized remakes of Hollywood films (BODYGUARD FROM BEIJING, anyone?) and Chan’s latest is a straight up, fully sanctioned remake of Hollywood hit CELLULAR, with Louis Koo and Barbie Hsu in the leads. And it actually looks pretty good. More stuff blows up in Chan’s trailer alone than did in the entire original film Just announced as part of the Midnight Madness program in the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s Spanish horror-comedy SEXYKILLER! And what else do you really need to know? The film describes it’s lead character as an equal cross of Paris Hilton and Hannibal Lecter and the blood flows freely … Sexy death awaits you here Is there a director anywhere better suited to taking anime into the live action world than Takashi Miike? Nobody leaps to mind, really. Miike’s films are loaded with exactly the sort of crazy angles, eye popping color schemes and physics-defying action that you need to bring anime into the real world and so I’ve been greatly anticipating his big budget adaptation of YATTERMAN for what seems like forever. And the wait just got both shorter and longer at the same time. Shorter because the first teaser has just arrived, providing a first glimpse of what Miike is up to. Longer because the teaser is so damn short and I want more! Now! Argh! Torment yourself here I have just saved my work. From Japan we travel back home to the warm bosom of Canada and Kim Nguyen’s TRUFFE, which just took a bow as the opening film of the Fantasia Festival. The premise? Global warming has turned Montreal into a veritable hothouse and valuable truffles are sprouting everywhere, which means wealth for everyone until – of course – big business muscles its way in and pushes the little guys out. The last man standing? Renegade truffle hunter Charles (Dupuis), who uses his superior sense of smell to find the tasty morsels before the big guys can. It’s a bizarre film with an absolutely gorgeous trailer that plays like equal parts Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jim Jarmusch … Get digging here Any fans of Michel Gondry out there? How about THE HOST’s Bong Joon-Ho? If so, then you are already aware, no doubt, of TOKYO, the three part anthology film that debuted at this year’s Cannes Festival. Gondry, Bong and Leos Carax each direct a story set in Japan’s capital for this one and while the screening I tried to hit packed out and I couldn’t get in the response to the film there was very strong and I’ve been waiting for a proper look at it ever since. Et voila. A proper trailer and clips from each of the three shorts has arrived online. And they’re tasty. Check it out here Korea’s film industry finally seems to be on the verge of breaking out of an extended slump, thanks in no small part to the major players finally realizing that the time had come to break from old trends and patterns. An example? Summer is traditionally horror season in Korea, with a healthy number of locally produced horror flicks hitting screens every year. This year? Only one Korean horror film produced and that film is GOSA. A teen slasher – another sign that people are shaking things up, slashers are quite unusual in Asia – built around the incredibly high stress midterm exams all Korean students must take, there are no major players in this one but the promo materials so far all look quite strong. Could be less is more … Get bloody here Nope, the SAVEN SAMURAI remake wasn’t enough revisionist sword play for us here at International Eye Candy, we’ve got to give you more. And by more I mean the full trailer for ICHI, Fumihiko (PING PONG) Sori’s take on the classic blind swordsman character Zatoichi. The twist here is that Sori’s character is a young – and rather attractive – young woman and the film actually occurs in the same universe as does the original Zatoichi stories. Beyond that bit of playfulness, though, Sori has put together a film that is remarkably true to the spirit of classic Japanese chanbara films. I’ve seen this one and it’s a real treat for fans of the genre. Check it out here I have just saved my work. Better put your steaks away, boys, because here comes QUICK GUN MURUGAN, the karmic cowboy sworn to protect all cattle! Yes, you read that right … it’s a loopy, technicolored Indian western about a vegetarian gunslinger doing battle against the would-be creator of a chain of all-beef dosa restaurants. It’s goofy madness, boys and girls, one that may just out-do TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER one the bizarre western charts. Watch for the gun fight sequence … it’s brilliant … Oh, it does me good to bring you this one. While the world’s been eyeing up one Korean western (THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE WEIRD), CRYING FIST director Ryu Seung-Wan has been quietly working away on the feature length version of his earlier short film DACHIMAWA LEE - a western tinged, espionage laced, comedic action adventure. I caught the promo for this in Cannes and immediately fell in love with it. Every frame is loaded up with so many visual ideas, the color schemes and set designs are fantastic, the lead actor charming and very funny and – as you’d expect from Ryu – the action smoke. The film’s first teaser included no footage at all from the actual film – the producers are trying to stay clear of the behemoth GOOD, BAD, WEIRD freight train – but the full trailer is out and it’s just as good as I remember. Get some action here I defy you to watch this without breaking into a great big grin. If this does not make you smile then you are not human, or at least not the sort of human I want to spend any time with. It’s Måns Herngrens’ ALLT FLYTER and I need a speedo. Everybody in the pool! I have just saved my work. Ryuichi Honda has just earned my love forever simply for dressing Chiaki Kuriyama (KILL BILL) in sky-high boots and a vintage 1960’s go-go dress and then letting me look at her for a little while. Yep. The film is GS WONDERLAND, a period piece set in Japan’s 1960’s music scene, a scene dominated by the Group Sounds phenomenon – the Japanese response to the music flowing freely from Britain and the US at the time. And if Kuriyama dressed in 1960s psychedelia isn’t enough to convince you, Honda has actually gone and recruited some notable GS era songwriters to create a totally original but also totally authentic sound track for the film. Sweet. Don’t make me ogle alone Is it the horror buzz film of the year? It certainly looks like it from where I’m sitting. Pascal Laugier’s MARTYRS shocked crowds at its first market screenings in Cannes and the chatter has been building ever since. The French ratings battle – it was originally slated for a rating even more restrictive than a US NC-17 – got people to take notice as well, and the public will finally get a chance to see what all the talk is about when it premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. OR, if you prefer, you can just check out the brand new theatrical trailer. Check the trailer and two earlier teasers here So, if the Bible Belt set get all worked up about the presentation of magic in Potter-land – which they very definitely do – how do you think they’ll react to a film based on a novel subtitled “The Satanic Mill”? Probably not at all, honestly, since it’s German but if KRABAT were made here you can bet people would be going ballistic. It certainly got my attention to, though not for “corruption of the children” reasons but because it looks like a killer spin on 80’s style dark fantasy, only with MUCH better effects. Check out the bird transformation shots … wicked … Mom thought Dungeons and Dragons was evil. She’ll hate this. Another one culled from the Midnight Madness program at the Toronto International Film Festival, this time out Australian horror picture ACOLYTES. Think teen horror’s all played out? How about three teens trying to blackmail a killer into taking out the bully that torments them? Pretty sure that hasn’t been done before and if it has not with the kind of style on ample display in the brand new trailers for Jon Hewitt’s flick … Kids. They’re wacky. We’re getting to the end now which means, yes, the promised bit of Gordon Liu in Bollywood is coming soon but first I’ve got a pair of spectacular looking Danish noir-thrillers to share. The first is KANDIDATEN, a straight up thriller starring Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Kim Bodnia – two of my favorite actors in the world – in a slick, taut story of sex, blackmail and intrigue. Politics are dirty and dirty politics can be very entertaining. We’ve written in the past about the first teaser for this one but the full trailer is out now and looking even better. Check it out here Less a straight noir than a darkly comic, Coen-esque spin on the genre is Henrik Ruben Genz’ TERRIBLY HAPPY, the story of a man with a troubled past taking a job as village constable in a remote town as a way of restarting his life. But the thing with small towns is they’re always hiding something … Kim Bodnia’s in this one, too, as are a number of other notable actors and Genz obviously knows what he’s doing with the camera. Film work is fantastic and there are a few moments in this trailer that I’ve played over and over again just to savor the details … Turn the lights down and volume up And here it is: Shaw Brothers legend Gordon Liu in a full on Bollywood song and dance martial arts epic. I’ve taken some heat over on Twitch for saying the trailer for CHANDNI CHOWK TO CHINA – it’s the story of a cook mistaken for a martial arts master who travels to China to try and actually become one – reminds me of Stephen Chow’s KUNG FU HUSTLE but, damn it, it does! What really makes this work for me is that someone high up in the production was smart enough to realize that there are a LOT of common points between a certain stream of Bollywood films and the classic Shaw titles where Liu made his name and they’re exploiting those connections to the fullest. Very fun. Check it out!