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International Eye Candy: SAMURAI PRINCESS, ONECHANBARA, MOTHER And Much More!
International Eye Candy April 15th, 2009 It may have only been two weeks since the last installment of International Eye Candy, but what a two weeks. There have been enough major films releasing trailers to fill a regular year, so much so that it's no wonder there are rumblings out of Cannes that programmers are afraid they're going to have to turn away some major names simply because there's not enough room. Two of the weeks biggest - Johnnie To's VENGEANCE and Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST have already drawn the attention of Harry and Co on the main page here but there's more. Oh, yes. There's more. Park Chan-Wook! Bong Joon-Ho! Nicolas Refn! The latest from the director of TOKYO GORE POLICE! There's a whole lot going opn out there and now is the time for our regular trawl through the pages of Twitch for a look at the best of it.
What the hell, let's start with the pulp and work our way up to the serious stuff. And when it comes to pulp nobody does it better - or more - than the Japanese.
The original ONECHANBARA - adapted from a video game of the same name - was built around a simple premise: Put a hot girl in a bikini (and cowboy hat), give her a sword, and put her to work battling zombie hordes and geeky men will pay good money to watch. Which is exactly what happened. And enough geeky men paid enough money to justify the making of a sequel and so ONECHANBARA VORTEX is now on the way. More zombies. More splatter. And, most importantly, more bikini.
As pulpy as ONECHANBARA may be, however, when it comes to Japanese splatter Yoshi Nishimura is the undisputed king. He did the effects work on MACHINE GIRL. He directed and did the effects for TOKYO GORE POLICE. And now he's producing - and doing effects - for SAMURAI PRINCESS, the directorial debut of his TOKYO GORE screen writer. What's he got up his sleeve this time? Scissor legs, flying chainsaws, breast grenades and a guy punched so hard that his skeleton pops right out of his body. And what would a Nishimura film be without gallon after gallon of blood?
For our final piece of pulp we move a little closer to home with Canuck writer-director Lee Demarbre's tribute to the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis, SMASH CUT. Lewis himself has a significant role in this one, horror icon David Hess plays the lead, Michael Berryman has a key support role and porn starlet Sasha Grey stars in what I believe is her first non-porn role. This is all bright colors, extreme angles and wildly over the top camp.
We now call and end to our non-stop string of films starring women known for the propensity for nudity - yes, the female leads in both of the Japanese films share the same career path as Sasha Grey - and instead present to you Scandinavian semen. All class here at International Eye Candy. All class.
You may not know director Peder Pederson by name but I can virtually guarantee that you've seen his work thanks to a string of high profile television commercials, Indiana Jones adventures animated in Lego and a music video resume that includes Aqua's Barbie Girl. This? A feature length sex comedy whose title translates to WHITE GOLD. You can work it out from there.
And now we leave the sex behind entirely - I think - and head to Mexico for a film that I might actually be able to watch with my mother. New from the director of THE CRIME OF FATHER AMARO is BACKYARD, a thriller based on a true south-of-the-border serial killer case. Jimmy Smits plays a key role - surprised he hasn't featured in more recent Mexican film, actually - but the real star here is the oppressive environment created by director Carlos Carrera. Very creepy. Very real. Very effective.
People have been declaring independent Japanese animator Makoto Shinkai (THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS) the next Miyazaki pretty much from the day he appeared on the scene and I hereby declare CENCOROLL director Atsuya Uki the next Makoto Shinkai. Here's the story. A few years back Uki published a one-shot manga titled AMON GAME, the story of a boy with a giant pet monster, that went one to win some significant manga awards in Japan. And Uki decided that he liked the story so much that he wanted to make an animated version of it, so that's what he did. All. By. Himself. This is a one man show here and it is DAMN impressive.
From the unknown to the rising star, we move on now to Mamoru Hosoda and his upcoming feature SUMMER WARS. Who is Hosoda? He's the guy who, a few years ago, directed THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME and had the stones to release it head to head with Studio Ghibli's A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA - a film with a monstrous publicity budget, directed by the son of legendary director Hayao Miyazaki. Observers figured that Hosoda's film was destined to die an ignoble death, trampled into the ground by the Ghibli juggernaut, but the exact opposite happened. GIRL built a huge buzz via word of mouth, audiences grew steadily, and by the time all was said and done Hosoda's film came out of the head to head combat as the clear winner. And a new star was born.
SUMMER WARS reunites all the kep minds behind THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME and gives them better resources to acheive their goals. Details are sketchy - it's some sort of magical adventure story but little else has been said - but very clearly Hosoda's stuff. Only two films in and the man's already got a clear, distinct style. Impressive.
One more from Japan here - this being a very Asian-focused edition of the IEC - in the form of Miki Satoshi's INSTANT NUMA. Miki is a hugely popular television director in Japan who has been steadily pushing into the feature film world over the past several years with his most recent film - ADRIFT IN TOKYO, starring Jo Odagiri - ranking in my mind as an absolute masterpiece. It's full of gently absurd humor and detailed characer work and seems to me to be the work of a man who has just figured out exactly who he is and what he's good at and has the good sense to cast good actors and let them do their jobs. And this new one looks like more of the same. It's the story of a laid off office worker who inherits an antique warehouse and while the synopsis doesn't sound like much I need only remind myself that ADRIFT is nothing more than the story of two men going for a very long walk to realize plot isn't the point when Miki's on his game. The road is more important than the destination and the just-released trailer for this looks totally in line with his best stuff.
Vikings. Refn. I am sooooooo there.
The film is VALHALLA RISING, the new viking epic from Nicolas Winding Refn, the director of the stunning PUSHER films and recent Sundance hit BRONSON. It stars Mads Mikkelsen, probably the best character actor of his generation. And, somehow, despite being worlds removed from the urban grit of PUSHER, and every other film he's ever made, this looks to be instantly recognizable, vintage Refn. Which is to say genius.
Somehow it has taken only three feature films for Korea's Bong Joon-Ho to firmly establish himself in my mind as one of the very best film makers in the entire world today. You probably know him as the director of hit monster picture THE HOST but his prior work - true crime picture MEMORIES OF MURDER and black comedy BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE - are every bit as impressive.
And with his upcoming film - titled simply MOTHER - Bong seems to be taking a quick breather, a return to "small film" territory after the massive production of THE HOST and before the even bigger SNOW TRAIN which he'll direct with OLDBOY's Park Chan-Wook producing. Like MEMORIES this is a crime thriller from an unusual perspective, in this case the story of a woman well past middle age struggling to prove that her mentally disabled son did not commit the crime he was pressured into confessing to.
We've run an early - and very scanty when it comes to footage - teaser for this one before but now the first proper trailer has come out with a first proper look at proceedings. Film of the year? Might be ...
If Bong's new film fails to dominate the Korean box office this year the most likely candidate to keep it from doing so is this: future collaborator Park Chan-Wook's vampire picture THIRST. The first trailer for this one was a solid tease, a tease followed soon after by a leaked trailer that seemed a little muddled and was followed wherever it went witha flurry of cease and desist notices requiring people to take it down. Whoopsie! Turns out that one was an unfinished piece, prepared for internal use and not at all ready to be let out in to public. The one they released a few days later? That was the finished, public version and DAMN does it look good.
Disappointed by Park's foray into romantic comedy with I'M A CYBORG AND THAT'S OKAY? Well, the master's back, kids. The master's back.
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