Fist Of Legend director Gordon Chan will soon be bringing a cast of Colin Chou, Anthony Wong, Crystal Liu, Deng Chao and Ronald Cheng to the big screen with The Four - a fresh adaptation of popular story The Four Constables.

An undercover agent is assigned by his corrupt chief to infiltrate a rival department and sabotage their investigation of counterfeit currency. What he discovers is the counterfeiter's real plan. To overthrow the capital. Not by flooding it with funny money, but with an army of undead.

Fusing elements of action and horror together, it looks like Chan is aiming to take a trip back to Hong Kong's glory years and the days when these sorts of hybrid films - think The Bride With White Hair - were a regular event.

A first teaser showed up a while back and has now been followed by a full trailer. Check it out below.

[Updated with trailer embed]

Japanese director Toshiaki Toyoda carved out a very distinct niche for himself with his first trio of narrative features. Pornostar, Blue Spring and Nine Souls planted the director quite firmly as his nation's pre-eminent auteur of teen angst, his films a stylish portrayal of youth coping with crisis through violence. Toyoda has had some crisis of his own since then, legal issues pushing the director into a sort of self imposed exile.

Since his return to the big screen Toyoda's work has been decidedly more introspective, even melancholic when compared to his early pieces but it looks like he's getting back to his early form with the Tatsuya Fujiwara and Ryuhei Matsuda starring I'm Flash.

Written and Directed by a visionary filmmaker Toshiaki Toyoda (9 Souls), starring Tatsuya Fujiwara (Death Note) and Ryuhei Matsuda (Taboo); The story about Rui(Tatsuya Fujiwara), charismatic young master of a religious cult group, whose fate changes astonishingly when he makes crucial decision.

The first trailer for the film has just arrived on Yahoo Japan and is very well worth a look. Check it out here.

The greatest benefit of writing for this Twitch is the soapbox effect.

This site gives our staff the ability to champion projects that we believe in that often fall through the cracks at larger outlets. Astron-6 is a perfect example of this effect. Ever since we first scoped out their brilliant short film Lazer Ghosts 2: The Return to Laser Cove, we've had our fingers on the pulse of this crew of miscreants from Winnipeg and have attempted to bring you the latest news as well as promote them as the incredible talents they are.

After a successful run of short films, released last winter on DVD by Troma Entertainment, Astron-6 produced two feature films almost simultaneously, Manborg and Father's Day. Manborg was a self-funded micro-budget ($1,000) sci-fi adventure that slayed them at Fantastic Fest and numerous other film festivals since last fall. Father's Day was, well, something else.

Father's Day began its life as a fake trailer, not unlike the Hobo with a Shotgun trailer that landed fellow Canadian Jason Eisener his first feature film. However, rather than the almost magical experience shown in the Hobo with a Shotgun Making of Doc, "More Blood, More Heart", Astron-6 signed a deal with Lloyd Kaufman at Troma, and things seemed to have gone downhill ever since.

No Sleep, No Surrender is a feature length documentary from the Astron-6 folks showing the entire production process behind Father's Day. Every step of the journey is detailed, from conception and pre-production to distribution, and it seems to get a bit ugly by the end. As you'll see in the second half of this trailer, Kaufman stooped to selling bootleg DVDs of the film during his tour for its opening, and when Astron-6 first saw the poster design, they were perturbed to find their logo missing while Troma's was in plain sight. Bad times all around.

Yesterday I posted a rather ranty update to the Blu-ray specs for Father's Day, which dropped several key bonus features and the proposed soundtrack CD. This announcement coming just one day after Best Movie News Ever premiered the No Sleep No Surrender trailer. Well, it would appear that this is par for the course and Troma is taking revenge on Astron-6 for daring to speak out against their poor treatment by the legendary independent studio. I'm very close to boycotting Troma product, except that I love this damned film so much that I can't imagine not picking it up and reviewing it. The film deserves to be seen, but part of me, and I'm sure most of Astron-6, wishes that they'd had a viable crowd funding option for this so that they could have retained control over it from beginning to end. Thankfully, they've taken that tact with their next project Fireman, which I'll link below for those of you inclined to donate.

Today on their Facebook page, Astron-6 deflected questions about the changes to their Father's Day disc, instead urging fans to question Troma about the decision. However, in the same breath, they made sure to let people know that No Sleep No Surrender will be available in some form, and I hope it's in a way that most directly benefits Astron-6, who deserve more support than they appear to have gotten.

Viva Astron-6!

Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral has proven to be one of the more challenging and divisive titles at Cannes this year - check the links below for Brian Clark's positive take on it - and those wondering what the chatter is all about now have a chance for at least a little taste.

Syd March is an employee at a clinic that sells injections of live viruses harvested from sick celebrities to obsessed fans. Biological communion - for a price. Syd also supplies illegal samples of these viruses to piracy groups, smuggling them from the clinic in his own body. When he becomes infected with the disease that kills super sensation Hannah Geist, Syd becomes a target for collectors and rabid fans. He must unravel the mystery surrounding her death before he suffers the same fate.

A clip from the film is now available online and you can take a look below. What say you? Does Cronenberg live up to the family legacy?

Dear Korea, your filmmakers are trying to tell you something. You need to clean up your rivers. First they spawned a monster in The Host. And now they're just skipping right over the middle man and making the general public mad in Deranged. The AsianWiki describes the film like this:

An epidemic of drownings, with victims jumping into the river causes panic around the country. The government declares a state of emergency. Medical supplies salesman Jae-Hyuk (Kim Myung-Min) suspects his family is showing symptoms of the drowning victims. Through his brother, Detective Jae-Pil (Kim Dong-Wan), Jae-Hyuk learns an antidote may be stored by at a warehouse.

The first teaser for this Park Jung-woo disaster thriller looks very solid indeed. Check it below.

What? You expected restraint from a movie titled Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter? Give director Timur Bekmambetov a man with an axe and, by god, he's going to make use of it. And he does that and more in the brand new international red-band trailer for the film.


It amuses me to no end to see people decrying this trailer as unrealistic and unfaithful to the book. Because, you know, the source material was so incredibly realistic and faithful to history. This is big, stupid entertainment and it looks like an absolute blast. Check the trailer below.

Liev Schreiber narrates Felt, the dark tale of a bunny cursed to forever appear happy and friendly on the outside while his insides are anything but. Darkly hilarious, the five minute short film delights in twisting and subverting expectations and is absolutely one of the best things you'll come across today. Take a look below.

Leos Carax's Cannes-selected Holy Motors is a weird one. And it's got itself a weird trailer to match.

Carax's first feature since 1999's Pola X, fans will recognize ties to his contribution to 2008's short film omnibus Tokyo here. Take a look below. Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes (!), Kylie Minogue (!!), and Michele Piccoli star.

Hey Toronto! Twitch and MO Pictures - the genre imprint of Canada's Mongrel Media - will be presenting a screening of Eduardo Sanchez' Lovely Molly on Saturday, May 26th at 11pm in the Bloor Hotdocs Cinema and we want you to be there. Director Eduardo Sanchez will be conducted a live Q&A session via Skype following the screening and this special event isn't even a contest! You can just go ahead and sign up for free tickets right here until they're all gone!

When newlywed Molly Reynolds returns to her long-abandoned family home, reminders of a nightmarish childhood begin seeping into her new life. A malevolent force, whether her own haunted past or some supernatural 'thing,' tirelessly seeks to overwhelm her.

Alone and isolated in a centuries-old manor, she soon begins an inexorable descent into depravity. Somewhere in the house, in the terrible space between psychosis and possession, lies an evil that will pull Molly and all those around her into darkness and death.

Check out the trailer below!

Walter Salles' adaptation of Jack Kerouac classic On The Road takes a bow in Cannes this year and US distributor IFC Films / Sundance Selects have just premiered a pair of clips to give audiences a first look at Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart as Sal Paradise and company.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn . . ."
--- Sal Paradise

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Walter Salles and based on the iconic novel by Jack Kerouac, ON THE ROAD tells the provocative story of Sal Paradise (Sam Riley), a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund), a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou (Kristen Stewart).
 
Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of "it" -- the pure essence of experience.
 
Seeking unchartered terrain and the last American frontier, the duo encounter an eclectic mix of men and women -- Bull (Viggo Mortensen), Camille (Kirsten Dunst), Carlo (Tom Sturridge), Jane (Amy Adams), Terry (Alice Braga), Galatéa (Elisabeth Moss) - each impacting their journey indelibly.
 
ON THE ROAD stars Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst and features performances by Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Alice Braga, Elisabeth Moss and Viggo Mortensen.  The screenplay is by Jose Rivera (Academy Award® nominee for THE MOTORCYLE DIARIES).  The MK2 Production was produced by Nathanael Karmitz, Charles Gillibert, Rebecca Yeldham and Roman Coppola for American Zoetrope.  Executive Producer Francis Ford Coppola has been developing the project since 1978.

ON THE ROAD will be an IFC Films and Sundance Selects major theatrical release for late Fall.

Take a look at the clips below.

Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (Jagten) has had a warm reception from both critics and distributors in Cannes - the competition title has already been picked up for distribution in more than twenty territories around the world - and the Danish trailer for the film has arrived online.

Following a tough divorce, 40-year-old Lucas has a new girlfriend, a new job and is in the process of reestablishing his relationship with his teenage son, Marcus. But things go awry. Not a lot. Just a passing remark. A random lie. And as the snow falls and the Christmas lights are lit, the lie spreads like an invisible virus. The shock and mistrust get out of hand, and the small community suddenly finds itself in a state of collective hysteria, while Lucas fights for his life and dignity .

Casino Royale villain Mads Mikkelsen stars. Check the trailer below.

Fresh from its premiere in Cannes, two clips and seven character posters have been released from John Hillcoat's prohibition era action-drama Lawless.

LAWLESS is the true story of the infamous Bondurant Brothers: bootlegging siblings who made a run for the American Dream in Prohibition-era Virginia. In this epic gangster tale, inspired by true-life tales of author Matt Bondurant's family in his novel "The Wettest County in the World", the loyalty of three brothers is put to the test against the backdrop of the nation's most notorious crime wave.

The clips feature a pair of quieter character moments, both of which take great advantage of the physical menace projected by Tom Hardy. Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce, Mia Wasikowska and Shia LeBeouf also star. Check the clips below and the complete set of character posters on our Facebook page.

If ever a talent were engineered specifically for the TV minds at HBO I imagine that talent would emerge looking very much like Aaron Sorkin. The creator of The West Wing and writer of David Fincher's The Social Network, Sorkin is simply one of the most gifted writers in the industry - one who seems to effortlessly balance human drama, comedy and larger social matters while demanding that his audiences pay attention if they want to catch all of what is going on. Sorkin has had his successes on network TV, of course, but cable - where he will be far more free to play to his core audience without having to worry about mass appeal and selling ads - should suit him far better.

And so we come to Sorkin's latest creation, The Newsroom, which is due to premiere on HBO on June 24th.

Boasting a stellar cast - Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Alison Pill, Dev Patel, Sam Waterston - Sorkin's TV newsroom based effort is looking more than a little bit promising. Check out a pair of teasers below.

This Friday, May 25th, Disney and UTV are taking another stab at the Indian film market with the 2D CG animated epic, Arjun: The Warrior Prince. The film has been in the works for several years, and I recall seeing promo trailers as much as three years before this release. However, this time the film is actually going out into the world for real.

Regular readers will know that this is not the first Disney production on Indian shores. This is, in fact, the second animated feature, and fifth major feature co-produced by the house of mouse over the last five years. The last animated feature we saw was the charming, though rudimentary, Roadside Romeo, which tanked at the box office in spite of the voice talents of Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor.

Unfortunately, apart from the critical success of Do Dooni Chaar, Disney's other forays into the Indian market have all fallen flat as well. Child superhero film, Zokkomon, disappeared quickly from theaters, in spite of its Spy Kids-esque charm, and the Telugu fantasy extravaganza Once Upon A Warrior (Anaganaga O Dheerudu) was a critical and commercial flop that suffered from a serious lack of focus and some poor support for the solid acting of Siddarth in the lead role. Reviews for both can be found in the archive and via links below.

I have pretty high hopes for Arjun, though. The trailer looks quite slick, and I can't see a whole lot of a gap between this and Disney's American cel animated films in terms of quality. I don't know the story, but the film looks pretty breathtaking, and will mark the first time that a quality animated feature from India has debuted simultaneously at home and abroad. Our own Peter Gutierrez caught the film at a preview screening today and will have a review up by the weekend.

The main obstacle I see standing in the way of Arjun's success is the fact that India lacks a domestic market for children's films. The vast majority of successful children's cinema in India is imported, and even then, most children simply go see whatever their parents are seeing. Attempts have been made to jump start this latent market, but to little financial gain. There are really no great success stories involving children's' films in India, which is a shame, but there hasn't been much of a desire, so who can blame them. Nevertheless, Disney seems determined to create the market, and with UTV on their side, they certainly have a decent shot this time around, at least at making some headway.

Arjun: The Warrior Prince opens worldwide on Friday, May 25th.