Ooh Purdy. We have been paying a lot of attention to Death Instinct (L’Instinct de Mort) and Public Enemy No.1 for some time now. Starring the hugely talented French actor Vincent Cassel it is the telling the true story of notorious international criminal Jacques Mesrine - who plied his trade throughout France, Canada, the USA and Venezuala. Everything we have seen so far has been very impressive and now we have been given a link to the French Press kit. It’s times like these that I wish I paid more attention in French class and less attention to the dynamic clicking action of my ball point pen.
You can download the press kit here. It’s VERY pretty.
Thanks Mary.
It is great to see how emerging animation studios progress and see their projects develop. Case in point, Studio Flying out of Korea. Not known as a hot bed of animation it is studios like this one that get Korean animation the attention it deserves. Their project Aachi & Ssipak is already a cult classic in animation circles and they drew a lot of attention last year with Mad Monkey. And now we have another full feature called Dokkaebi, which is Korean mythology not unlike Japanese Yokai.
And thanks to the watchful eye of our reader TheOrientalNightfish and the mighty website Catsuka we now have a smack of images of the character designs right from the studio walls. Find them after the jump!
As reported by Variety, Montreal-based distribution company Evokative Films has acquired Canadian rights to Pierre Laffargue’s French action film Black. The film stars French rapper MC Jean Gab’1, who Twitch readers might recognize from his small role in Pierre Morel’s Banliueue 13 (District 13), and Carole Karemera. Jean Gab’1 plays the titular Senegalese bank-robber (born and raised in France) who plans on going straight after a botched heist. His cousin interrupts his brief retirement with a call from Dakar, where a briefcase full of diamonds presents a new opportunity.
One might ask what differentiates this film from the pack? The trailer, which is currently being re-cut for the Canadian market, gives a hint. The French and Senegalese locales, the witchcraft, the Afro-beat music, the European heavies and the overall vibe invokes the black action films of the 70s but with a modern international vibe. Evokative Films is the first international distributor to purchase rights for Black, and the United States rights are still up for grabs. Who will be next? Stay tuned to Twitch.
Continue Reading "Evokative Films Acquires Canadian Rights for French Actioner BLACK"...
Much like the release pattern of indie produced Bubba Ho Tep, Bruce Campbell‘s latest lure to his fan base, the goofy meta-laden My Name is Bruce, is getting a slow ‘tour date’ style roll out release. The first date is in Austin with the Ain’t it Cool News folks at the Alamo Drafthouse on October 26th. Then it (I’m assuming a single print) slowly makes its way across the wide US of A.
While the My Name is Bruce does not look like it achieves the level of ‘special’ or ‘beloved’ that Don Coscarelli managed to with Bubba, I expect these individual screenings should be very fun.
Cities and dates up to Christmas 2008 after the Jump.
Continue Reading "The Chin is coming to your City: Call him Bruce."...
Twitch recently presented a piece on Seppuku Paradigm (aka the Cortez Brothers), the creators of the soundtrack for Martyrs and Eden Log. The introduction to that article made special note of the “killing me softly” main theme from Martyrs. The name of song is Your Witness and the Cortez Brothers kindly provided Twitch with the music video. Anyone who has seen the film may experience a moment of déjà vu so mild spoilers are appropriate. A world of sound and images awaits beneath the fold.
Continue Reading "Seppuku Paradigm Music Video from MARTYRS"...
There is one thing that the world can never have enough of and that is martial arts movies with female leads. Thank the maker that there is another project on the horizon as we await the arrival of Coweb. What is even more shocking is that Coweb marks the directorial debut of Xiong Xin Xin, our beloved Clubfoot from the Once Upon A Time in China [and in America] movies. Holy crap, it took this long for him to get his own project? He was everywhere in the 90s and just sort of slipped out of the picture in the new millennium. Production of his debut began back in May, has already wrapped up the shoot and in is post. Expect to hear and see more about this film near the end of the year.
I digress, what is Coweb about? Newcomer 蒋露霞 Jiang Luxia, a finalist of The Disciple reality TV show, plays the lead role as Guangdong wushu coach Nie Yi Yi who gets implicated by a kidnap case in Hong Kong. It’s up to her to battle waves after waves of fighters to rescue her employer and his wife who are kidnapped. Little did she know that her fights are being captured on video and broadcast live via a website which serves as an illegal online gambling den...
Be sure to check out the trailer. From the trailer it looks like Coweb could be a showcase featuring of all the great scenes in other martial arts films. I like what I see from Jiang. I hope that Xiong Xin Xin had the foresight to put his own flavor or style into a scene though. Penalty for rehashing if he didn’t.
Thanks to reader EdBailey for heads up.
It has only been a few days since we announced local boy Justin McConnell and the folks at Unstable Ground were preparing the follow up to their short film Ending the Eternal which would be aptly titled The Eternal. A quick recap of the film in question.
Samuel Gradius has lived too long. In his 500 years on earth he has seen empires rise and fall, changed the course of history with his bare hands and experienced countless revolutions first hand. Samuel Gradius is a vampire, perhaps the only vampire, and he’s had enough. He wants to die.
No longer content with the idea of simple suicide, he makes the decision to go out in the ways of old. He wants a warrior’s death. THE ETERNAL follows Samuel on the pursuit of his own personal oblivion, he hopes, at the hands of someone worthy.
So now we can add a couple names to the cast list. Adam Wilson will play the lead role of Samuel and joining him will be James Lorinz of Frankenhooker and Street Trash fame. Ah, Frankenhooker. That one DVD that was always kicking around but I never managed to grab and watch for fear it would turn me on to dead hookers. I grew up in Port Coquitlam, B.C. We’ve got a bad history with dead hookers. Google it.
Full press release after the jump.
Continue Reading "First bit o’ casting news for Canadian vampire film ‘The Eternal’."...
Its not very often to hear a studio willing to produce an edgy animated feature film with mature themes for the R-rated audience so when word got out in March that Paramount is developing another Heavy Metal anthology (the first film came out in 1981), I was quite pleased. Based on a dark sci-fi and fantasy comics magazine of the same name, the film will contain eight or nine segment with each directed by a different director and much like its past predecessors, there will most likely be bloody violence and sexual content. Director David Fincher is already attached to the project with CG animation provided by Blur, the studio responsible for various intro cinematics in video games and an Oscar nominated animated short. Then in July, Paramount has decided to put the project on hold, citing its “too risque for mainstream audiences”. Apparently, that was not entirely the whole story. Kevin Eastman, the co-creator of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and owner of the Heavy Metal magazine, gave us the lowdown on the real reason for getting the plug pulled and where the project has moved.
“We developed it for Paramount in January… And it was time for them to make a decision [about going forward with the project] and they were at odds with Fincher over another project, ’The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,’ [because] they wanted him to reduce the running time… and so they said, ‘Until you step up to do what we want you to do with Benjamin, we’re not going to greenlight any other of [your] movies.’ And David said, ‘Fine, f*ck you, I’m going to set up [Heavy Metal] somewhere else,’ so we jumped over to Sony and set it up there.”
Eastman also dropped a few names of director who express interest in helming one of the segment. These include Guillermo del Toro, Gore Verbinski, and Zack Snyder. What a hell of a line-up if they manage to get all of them onboard. The tentative release date is sometime in 2010.
You could consider it an inevitable progression, looking at his career. Lee Chang-Dong started as a novelist (a very acclaimed one at that), and then moved to writing screenplays for some of the biggest names of the early 90s, including Park Gwang-Soo. After striking consecutive jackpots, from 1997’s 초록물고기 (Green Fish) to 2000’s 박하사탕 (Peppermint Candy), from 2002’s 오아시스 (Oasis) to last year’s fabulous 밀양 (Secret Sunshine), he’s become one of the most renowned directors in Asia, and perhaps Chungmuro’s most acclaimed voice. Lee’s new project was among the 30 titles from 17 countries supported by the PPP (Pusan Promotion Plan), which also included 타짜 (Tazza: The High Rollers) director Choi Dong-Hoon’s new sageuk, 전우치 (Jeon Woo-Chi).
Screen International just revealed a few more details about Lee’s next project, which is tentatively entitled 시 (Poetry). The film, which will be distributed by Fine Cut, tells the story of an old woman, living alone with her teenager grandson. In some ways, it sounds like a more “poetic” version of 집으로 (The Way Home), with a mischievous young boy and an elder trying to tame him, this time through her first ever poem, which will try to guide his behavior from now on. Nothing else to report other than the film’s predicted release for next year, and the fact Lee is writing the script as we speak. We’ll keep you posted on this in the coming months.
[Screen]
So, I’m about to disappear into the vortex of the Toronto International Film Festival, which will eat waking moment of my time for the next two weeks or so, but before I disappear, here’s a bit of news too good to not mention.
That there are a host of Chuck Palahniuk novels wending their way through development to become feature films is not exactly news. At one point - I believe shortly before Rant was published - it was widely reported that every single book the Fight Club author had written had been optioned by someone, somewhere, and the only real question was which would come first. Two answers.
One, Francis Lawrence is currently working on Survivor. Also not exactly news, but a fact that makes me happy. It’s one of my favorites and I think Lawrence will do well with it.
Two, a mystery Swede has got the green light for Lullaby. He’s not exactly a mystery, in that Palahniuk was quite happy to share the news with JoBlo, it’s just that they don’t know how to spell his name. Again, this makes me happy. Lullaby should make the transition to the screen rther easily, it’s a cracking read, and I think that the Nordic film sensibility should mesh exceptionally well with Palahniuk’s very dry, very morbid sense of humor. Bring it ...
Fantastic Fest has announced its final set of films for 2008. Attendees can now add titles like Astropia (Dorks and Damsels), The Chaser, The Good The Bad and The Weird, The Late Bloomer, and Repo! A Genetic Opera to their list of films to watch. The full list, which does not include secret screenings and other last minute additions, is beneath the fold. The 2008 schedule with screening times will be announced online on Thursday, September 4, 2008.
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To date from the 65th Venice Film Festival we have shown you Coffin Joe, Fabrice Du Welz, Kaiju and now Hayao Miyazaki! A super size image of him at the festival today is at the link below and several more added super size images from Ponyo On The Cliff. Hayao Miyazaki was at Venice screening his latest work and proclaiming his steadfast and unending love for non-computer animation. He told reporters after the Ponyo screening:
“I think animation is something that needs the pencil, needs man’s drawing hand, and that is why I decided to do this work in this way. Currently computer graphics are of course used a great deal and, as I’ve said before, this use can at times be excessive. I will continue to use my pencil as long as I can.”
More from Silvia Aloisi of Reuters
We have already seen Coffin Joe stomping down the red carpet of the 65th Venice Film Festival (here) and now at last we see Minoru Kawasaki stomping down the red carpet Takemajin-style! While audiences and critics seemed shocked the Coen Brothers, heaven forbid, would make a silly comedy, Kawasaki was sexying up Venice with gigantic romping kaiju action. Click the link below to witness pictures from its showing at Venice and images from the film itself, Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit that feature destruction, confused world leaders, kaiju paparazzi, mayhem and… Takemajin and Guilala locked in fierce deadly fighting!
Jose Mojica Marins’ latest film Embodiment of Evil (Encarnação do Demônio) played for press yesterday at the 65th Venice Film Festival and will screen publicly on Sunday, August 31, 2008. Blake Ethridge found some fantastic images of Marins and cohorts at Venice, including an image of Marins walking the red carpet in full Coffin Joe regalia. The photos as well as the Twitch film review can be pursued below.
Vinyan, a film we have been covering fairly thorough here at Twitch, had its world premiere today at the 65th Venice Film Festival. Reviews and comments should start streaming in over the course of the next 24-48 hours. At the moment we have Neil Smith from the BBC talking to Fabrice Du Welz and Emmanuelle Beart (here) and a rather grumpy take on the film by Andrew Pulver at the Guardian (here). I expect Vinyan to be somewhat divisive as its rumored to be a very strong and emotional film told with cracking and feverish intensity. Basically anyone walking into expecting to see something like Bogart in The Africa Queen will probably be disappointed. Strongly told films tend to cause strong reactions.
Super size images from the world premiere at the link below.
