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International Eye Candy: VALHALLA RISING, PATIENT X, SERBIAN FILM & much more!!!
International Eye Candy September 7, 2009 Yes, boys and girls it is once again Todd from Twitch here with a belated edition of the International Eye Candy. We’re coming in late this time out thanks to a massive rebuild of things over at Twitch but that’s all up and running now and, honestly it’s all to your benefit. Because, you see, with the big Toronto International Film Festival just around the corner there has been an absolute flood of good stuff and we’ve got it for you. A superheroic Woody Harrelson? Check. Japanese robot-boys? Check. French cowboys? Charles Manson? Vikings? Check, check and check. It’s a big one, kids, and here we go!
Let’s kick things off in Viking style, shall we? One of the big titles due to take a bow at TIFF is PUSHER director Nicholas Winding Refn’s VALHALLA RISING, a film that stars CASINO ROYALE baddie Mads Mikkelsen as mute Viking warrior One Eye. This one’s been featured in the IEC before but it’s back thanks to a new, leaner and meaner trailer. And if this one doesn’t get you excited, well then, you deserve to killed in a painful was as a sacrifice to Odin.
From Denmark we’re going to head to the Philippines, where SIGAW and THE ECHO director Yam Laranas is currently hard at work on his latest shocker, PATIENT X. This one is built around the legend of the aswang, a creature from Filipino folklore that feeds on the entrails of its human victims. Though it’s still in production they’ve already cut an early teaser for this one and it’s looking good.
Don’t watch this one near your mother, okay? Or your boss. Or your priest. They’ll all frown upon it. The simply titled SERBIAN FILM takes the whole torture-porn genre a good bit more literally than it ever has been before, casting a former porn star into a snuff film that he can only to emerge from alive. It’s graphic, it’s shocking, it’s sexually explicit, it was made at least partially with government money and it’s also remarkably well made.
Well, I know I need a little palette-cleanser after that one and luckily Australia is offering up just the thing: an aboriginal stoner comedy titled – appropriately enough – STONE BROS. Yes, if you’ve seen one stoner comedy you’ve seen them all – with the possible exception of PINEAPPLE EXPRESS – but the Aussie aboriginal angle gives this one just enough of an exotic flavour to make the jokes fresh and funny again.
Look out! It’s Woody Harrelson! And he’s got a beating-stick! Now, I’ve actually had the chance to see the made-in-Canada superhero flick DEFENDOR already and while it’s certainly not without a good dose of humor, what’s going to strike people is just how tragic Harrelson’s performance here is. He’s really fantastic in this and the film just refuses to play out quite how you’d expect it to. I’m not one to root for the home team just because they’re the home team, but this is one Canuck film that I truly hope proves to have some serious legs because it’s just really, really solid.
What happens when the directors of MACHINE GIRL, TOKYO GORE POLICE and JUON join forces for Japanese television? You get THE ANCIENT DOGOO GIRL, a ridiculously exploitative cult series about a thousands-of-years-old teen girl revived from some sort of coma to fight an assortment of monsters clad only in a clay bikini, wielding the powers of her glowing breasts.
I’m not making this up.
Once again I find myself in need of a palette-cleanser and this time I turn myself to Hong Kong for the answer. And there I find six minutes of ACCIDENT, the new film directed by Soi Cheang (DOG BITE DOG) and produced by Johnnie To. This one is about to screen in Toronto and word from those who have seen it is that the film – which revolves around a group of hitmen who stage their jobs as elaborate accidents – is absolutely stunning.
For an interesting lesson in international marketing I invite you to step away for a minute and take a look at the US trailer for the upcoming ASTROBOY feature film. Then come back and watch the Japanese one. They could be for entirely different films. Wacky.
And now for something completely different, we’re back to my home and native land and a big stack of clips from Reg Harkema’s LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL. First up, points to anyone who recognizes who he lifted the title from. Second, this one is sure to attract some attention in the ol’ U.S. of A because in it Harkema uses the Charles Manson trial as the central element of a satire of American social structure. The trailer hit Apple a little while back and there are now six additional clips out there in advance of the premiere in Toronto.
Sadly, there is not yet a trailer for Thai kids adventure film THE INTRUDER but I’ll bet you when there is one it’ll have snakes! Lots of them! Crawling in and out of every available bodily orifice! ‘Cause that’s what the posters have! This is probably going to be horrible, but god I love these posters.
No more quirk! No more indie! No, now we head back to Europe for Alejandro Amenabar’s massive AGORA, the historical epic with Rachel Weisz as famed philosopher, mathematician and teacher Hypatia. Well, fame is a relative thing in the world of ancient math and while I think Amenabar is moderately insane to believe that there’s enough of a market for a film this explicitly about philosophy and religion to actually make back its huge production budget, there’s no doubting he spent every last cent on screen. This thing is gorgeous and there are four new extended clips out there.
Has Romero rounded back in to form? With his last two forays into zombie-land having drawn decidedly mixed reviews the old master needs to deliver a real hit, something to keep the fans happy, or he risks being relegated to the scrap heap. And so there’s a bit of anxiety around this first clip from SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD but no worries: I already like it a whole lot better than either of the last two.
And should Romero stumble, who will take over the zombie crown? Look to Spain, my friends. Look to Spain. The original [REC] was a huge hit and the original creators are back with [REC]2, looking to up the ante and make this one ALIENS to the original’s ALIEN. The full trailer has finally arrived, following a string of teasers, and it’s looking gooood.
I believe readers of this column should be well familiar with Hong Kong martial arts fantasy STORM WARRIORS by this point, but here’s a quick primer for those who may have missed out. A good several years back a heavily CG enhanced fantasy picture titles STORM RIDERS made a big splash on the international scene and eventually became one of the top grossing films in Hong Kong history. The story is a hugely popular one and the sequel was considered inevitable but it took a good long time coming, only now in the works with visual stylists the Pang Brothers now taking the helm and doing things 300 style: lots of green screen, virtually nothing in the film that doesn’t involve digital enhancement. And it looks stunning. There have been a pair of early trailers on this one and now they’ve released two extended sequences from the film to show off the look of things.
What do cherubim, masked wrestlers, barking dogs and nuns have in common? I have no clue whatsoever, but apparently BIG MAN JAPAN director Hitoshi Matsumoto does because he’s jammed them all in there for his second film, SYMBOL. The man obviously delights in confounding his audience and the entire ad campaign for this one has made no sense at all but I’m totally hooked. The recent TV spot has the most imagery of anything so far.
Will THE INTERCEPTOR be the next NIGHT WATCH sized hit in Russia? The producers are certainly hoping so – they’ve hired the NIGHT WATCH effects crew to handle this trilogy of films adapted from the work of popular scifi writer Vasily Golovachev. Secret agents, time jumping, angels, bizarre cable / tentacle / energy weapons ... it’s definitely something unique and some of the visual ideas are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
I really wish the trailer for Mamoru Oshii’s ASSAULT GIRLS felt a little more finished than it does, but hey. When you’re talking about the director of GHOST IN THE SHELL making a live action sci-fi feature starring Oscar winner Rinko Kikuchi as some sort of sword-wielding, sandworm-fighting, post-apocalyptic angel, I’ll take what I can get. Yep.
Who is that old guy there? Could it be one-time John Woo cohort Chow Yun-Fat? Why yes! It is! And while it’s been a good long time since Chow has made anything anyone in North America has given a damn about he still carries enough clout in China to have been cast as Confucius in a bio-pic about the iconic philosopher. It’s an entirely dialogue-free look so far, but a lengthy three minute trailer from the film has now been released to remind you what Chow looks like when he’s actually acting as opposed to whatever it was he was up to in DRAGONBALL.
I really wish I was the bearer of better news when it comes to Shinya Tsukamoto’s TETSUO THE BULLET MAN but having seen the return to his roots from the iconic director I gotta say that the film just isn’t good. It’s probably the worst of his career, in fact, but still ... a new TETSUO film is a new TETSUO film and the first trailer for this one has just arrived.
Upcoming Russian feature Я is not the sort of thing that summarizes easily so I’ll just say this. The entire film takes place in the mind of a dying man and – as such – doesn’t exactly adhere to the laws of logic and it blends together his memories and feelings of time spent in a mental hospital to avoid military service, what looks like a healthy drug habit, and time spent as a documentary film maker in the midst of the Chechen War. And I’ll also say that the look of this thing is absolutely fantastic ... It’s got a completely unique vision, one killer DP, and a fascinating fusion of images that range from full-on flower children to bursts of horrible violence. I want more.
We’re almost at the end now but before we get there we pause in Australia where chilling moc-doc LAKE MUNGO has been on the fest circuit so long that it’s frankly shocking that the first trailer is only arriving now. This one has just been announced as one of this year’s After Dark Horrorfest titles and while I think it’s a great film that deserves an audience I really question whether the After Dark audience is the right one. Because, you see, while the moc-doc is the story of a haunting it doesn’t really try for much in the way of scares – instead creating an atmospheric story of grief. I’ve never seen anything quite like this one – make sure to check out the original before the Hollywood remake, already announced and looking to change the material significantly, squeezes the original out of the way.
And, finally, we end in France, where the upcoming live action adaptation of Morris and Goscinny’s western hero LUCKY LUKE has just landed itself a pair of new character teasers – one each for Calamity Jane and Billy the Kid. I love everything about this thing, really, from the choice of James Huth to direct and Jean Dujardin to star through to the close translation of comic book physics in to the real world, to the goofy slapstick humor. Yep. This’ll be good.
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