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AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy: THE FORBIDDEN DOOR , DEADGIRL, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, AROG, And More!!
International Eye Candy November 12, 2008 Yes, boys and girls, two weeks have passed since the last edition of International Eye Candy which means it is once again time for our regular stroll through the pages of Twitch for a look at what's happening across the globe. And among those happening things are French parkour! Giant rats! Indonesian snuff! And the proverbial so much more! Strap in because here we go …
We'll get things started with the aforementioned film from Indonesia, that being THE FORBIDDEN DOOR from writer-director Joko Anwar who the observant may remember from his previous films JONI'S PROMISE and KALA. This one's a dark thriller about an artist who stumbles across a snuff ring and like all things Anwar it boasts impressive production values and a nice slow build of dread. Keep an eye on this guy, he's pretty much the best thing going in that part of the world.
From Indonesia we head to Turkey, the land of – appropriately enough – TURKISH STAR WARS, TURKISH SUPERMAN, and 3 DEV ADAM – a film that has Santos and Captain America team up to battle a green Spider-Man. None of this has anything to do with AROG but Turkey's film history is so unrelentingly goofy that I just can't help going there from time to time. AROG is the latest from Cem Yilmaz, a hugely popular local comedian who reminds me a good bit of Mel Brooks and had a huge hit with scifi comedy GORA. And, yes, AROG is a sequel / inversion of that film, with this one sending Yilmaz's character back to the past. We pointed to four teasers from this one already and now we've got a fifth. They're all golden. I'm partial to the frozen urine joke, myself.
From Turkey we head to Sweden where we find the first in a series of films based on the hugely popular crime novels by Steig Larsson. The literal translation of this one is MEN WHO HATE WOMEN but they're going with the English title of the first book for this one which is THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Now, I like girls with dragon tattoos as much as the next guy but I don't see what the two titles have to do with one another, either. These things are going to be huge and they're starting the series off right by recruiting this year's Danish Oscar submitted director to helm it.
Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel’s DEADGIRL has been turning heads on the festival circuit all around the globe this year and, honestly, you'd pretty much have to expect a film about two teenage boys having sex with the undead girl that they find in the basement of an abandoned hospital to do exactly that, now wouldn't you? The teaser's been appearing and disappearing from the official website as the film runs the fest circuit but we've managed to get ourselves a permanent version at the link below.
Doen with America for the time being it's time to slam back a shot of vodka and head to Russia for MORFIY. This appears to have taken some inspiration from the writing of Mikhail Bulgakov but the film takes Bulgakov's material into sex and drug fueled territory that he never dreamed of but would do David Lynch proud …
Any fans of Takashi Miike's ZEBRAMAN out there? How about Sori's PING PONG? What those two movies have in common is writer – and sometimes director – Kankuro Kudo. We included Kudo's latest directorial effort SHONEN MERIKENSAK in our last IEC column and this time around we've got one that he adapted from his own stage play for a friend to helm. This one's titled DONJU and it stars Tadanobu Asano as a rather dim writer who becomes the target of multiple assassination attempts but is just too damn dumb to die. Asano and Kudo together? That's gold in my book.
Giant. Space. Rats.
My job here is done.
Oh, how to even begin with this one … DIE SCHNEIDER KRANKHEIT is, without a doubt, one of the very oddest – and very best – bits of film that I've come across this year. What is it? A Spanish shot mock doc shot like a 1950's era German propaganda film about a viral outbreak spreading across German after a Russian space monkey crashes into German territory. Don't try to understand, just enjoy.
Seemingly in production forever – the release date has been pushed back several times now – the new adaptation of Nikolay Gogol's classic ghost story VIY is shaping up to be one of the most expensive Russian productions ever. And where have they spent that money? Not just on getting the period detail correct. No, quite a lot of it has gone to the floating ghost and hungry vine effects that give this thing its delirious b-movie edge. They're banking on an international market for this one – they're going to need some big foreign sales to avoid losing a fortune – and have produced a fully English trailer to cater to exactly that.
Ah, it does my heart good to see this. DISTRICT B13 – or BANLIEUE 13 in France – introduced a great many people to the action duo of martial artist Cyril Raffaeli and parkour co-creator David Belle a few years ago and despite the film being a huge international success Belle and Raffaeli have been largely absent from screens ever since. But no more! Like all good genre films DISTRICT B13 is getting the sequel treatment – it's titled DISTRICT B13: ULTIMATUM – and the duo are back to work. No trailer yet but there are three extended behind the scenes reels where you can see them in action. Yes, please.
Any fans out there of Sean Ellis' CASHBACK? How about actress Lena Headey, currently gracing the small screen on TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES? Well, the two are working together on Ellis' second feature, supernatural thriller THE BROKEN. We're still waiting for an American trailer for this one but while we wait for that the Japanese have cut themselves a dandy and it looks every bit as good as you'd expect from someone with as good an eye as Ellis.
Look at that lovely couple there. Go on, look at them. Now imagine them brandishing hand tools whilst beating the crap out of some pretty young thing. Don't you just love family dynamics? The film is MUM & DAD, a new low budget shocker that's been winning raves in the UK and with the theatrical release just around the corner a new trailer is on the scene. Grisly but good.
Okay, anime geeks, buckle up for this one. Japanese production house Studio 4C – arguably one of the very best animation studios in the world today – has been hired on by – I believe – a Russian outfit to produce FIRST SQUAD, an anime spin on the Russian campaign against the Nazis in WWII. And what do you get when you turn Studio 4C on material like this? Brilliance, that's what. Sure, there probably weren't really a whole lot of katana-wielding school girls amidst the panzers and artillery when this was all going down for real but, by golly, I kind of wish there had been.
If Tarkovsky had been Japanese I have to imagine that a film like THE CLONE RETURNS TO THE HOMELAND would be the sort of film to result. It's a meditative, philosophical bit of scifi set in a world where clones are used to extend the human lifespan with a new version of a person created to replace one who dies. Certainly less flashy than the rest of what's in here this time around but quiet can be good, too.
Spaniards are weird.
More from Russia? Okey dokey … like VIY above it seems like we've been talking about INHABITED ISLAND for a good while now and like VIY the release of this one is finally approaching. What is it? Huge budget Russian scifi by the director of stunning war picture THE 9TH COMPANY based on a novel by the Strugatsky Brothers who, back in the day, wrote a little story you may have heard of called STALKER. Russia's got a long history of scifi film, a history developed largely in isolation from American scifi while the nation was behind the Iron Curtain, and I always find it fascinating to see how their take on the genre has diverged from our own. Plus it looks damn pretty and has a lot of stuff blowing up. Nice.
And, finally, we head to Norway. Alas, no scantily clad Viking women a la FATSO this time around but instead we have Aksel Hennie – for my money one of the finest actors of his generation anywhere in the world – is the title role as MAX MANUS, a legendary real life saboteur who lurked in the shadows, blowing the hell out of Nazi equipment throughout the Nazi occupation of Norway during WWII. And though Manus is a real guy and this certainly treats his story seriously the film is actually based on novelisations of Manus' life and seems more interested in putting together a local-hero praising, rip snorting action-adventure tale than it is in subjecting audiences to a two hour history lesson. Yup, looks good.
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