Quick!  Name the last truly great Italian horror film!  Even tougher, name the last time a new face emerged on the Italian horror scene worth getting excited over?  The decline of the Italian genre film industry - once so very, very strong - was a shocking thing to behold but there are signs that things are brewing over in the land of Argento and Federico Zampaglione is the one drawing most of the attention.  The writer-director is just putting the finishing touches on is film Shadow, a film that’s already turning heads behind the scenes on the genre circuit with a world premiere lined up at the Film4 Frightfest in London and rumors of a couple other high profile fests already locking the film down.  Here’s how Frightfest describes it:

Writer/director Federico Zampaglione’s stunning genre debut is a genuine FrightFest discovery. When David (Jake Muxworthy), a young soldier returning from Iraq, goes on a mountain biking adventure in Europe he has no conception of the terrors that lie in store when a mystifying local legend forces him to face something more terrifying than any wartime tour of duty. Interestingly, Zampaglione is the frontman of ‘Tiromancino’, a successful pop rock band.

A bit of a tease in that write-up, to be sure, buit no worries: we’ve got your first look at the trailer below the break plus stills linked below.

Continue Reading "Italy Gets Back Into The Horror Game With SHADOW"...

Just over two years back I fell completely and madly in love with the work of animator Run Wrake, specifically his surreal and stream of consciousness piece Rabbit, which was then screening as part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival.  And so, it was with much chagrin that earlier today I realized that Wrake had since completed an entirely new piece and released it for free online viewing in 2008 and I’d missed it entirely.  Well, thank god for the Fantasia Festival in Montreal for setting me right on this one.  It’s called The Control Master and I’m including the trailer below the break.  It is typically brilliant.

Continue Reading "Run Wrake Falls Under The Spell Of THE CONTROL MASTER!"...

The trailer for the US remake of the Danish film “Brødre”, simply called “Brothers”, has popped up online. There is no shortage of big stars in this one, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman (yes please) and Tobey Maguire and the thing is being directed by Jim Sheridan of My Left Foot and Get Rich or Die Trying fame. The story is revolves around when a woman finds out that her husband (Maguire) has apparently died in Iraq and his brother (Gyllenhaal) comes over to help her out, seeing that she has two kids to take care of and all. Time passes and the two start falling in love but then they find out that the dead husband and brother isn’t really dead after all (oops). This clearly puts a damper on the relationship between them but the “dead” brother is a changed man when he returns and seems to be craving human blood and flesh. Ok that last thing was a joke but things start to escalate to dramatic heights is all I’m saying.

The original film was written by Twitch favorite Anders Thomas Jensen and its director Susanne Bier but I have to confess that I haven’t seen the original.
Check out the trailer after the break.

Continue Reading "US remake “Brothers” gets a trailer."...

Oh how we have waited with bated breath for the return of Japanese director Hiroyuki Nakano to return with another film. I am a mighty fan of both Samurai Fiction and Stereo Future. I gave Red Shadow a miss and I haven’t been able to see any of the short film work he has done in recent years so his record is pretty much unblemished in my opinion. And it has been long enough since he last did a feature film perhaps all this short film work in the meantime has put him back on track to deliver us another gem. We hope Tajomaru is that film, Nakano’s adaptation of the short story “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. I’m a bit mixed about the new trailer, some parts seem a bit silly and Jpop gets me every time, but final judgment is reserved for when I can finally see the film sometime in the fall. Tajomaru is scheduled for a September release in Japan.

Naomitsu (Shun Oguri) is the second son of the Hatakeyama family and fiance of Princess Ako (Yuki Shibamoto). When he gets chased away from his home as the result of a conspiracy against him, Naomitsu flees into the mountains with Ako in tow, but they’re soon attacked by a bandit named Tajomaru (Hiroki Matsukata). After managing to kill Tajomaru, Naomitsu takes the bandit’s identity as his own. NipponCinema

Full trailer and teaser after the break!

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[UPDATE:  Two guys also capture the promo at the convention and unloaded on youtube.  It has a better view than the last video.]

Imagi Studios has set up a booth at the Anime Expo 2009 in Los Angeles and “Anime3000” has capture on camera the Gatchaman promo being on display on the floor. Of course, the video quality ain’t so great as typical with any cam-job.  We have to bear with it until a proper version comes along.  Hopefully, more news update on this promising superhero film will emerge soon. 

You’ll find the promo after the break.

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Soon to make its world premiere at the Film4 Frightfest in London, the producer of Wolf Creek will be making waves again with Coffin Rock - the feature debut from writer-director Rupert Glasson.  Here’s how the festival describes it:

In the small coastal town of Coffin Rock, Rob and Jess live an almost idyllic life, their relationship marred only by their inability to have children. In a weak moment Jess sleeps with a stranger and later learns she’s pregnant. But the shocking truth is Evan targeted her the moment she walked into the fertility clinic where he worked. Now Jess’ guilt turns to full-blown horror as Evan begins a petrifying transformation from menacing stalker to unhinged psychopath….

But don’t take their word for it, we’ve got the trailer below the break and it’s truly unsettling stuff!

Continue Reading "Obsession Turns Ugly In Australian Thriller COFFIN ROCK"...

My biggest gripe with animated films in Hollywood today is the lack of mature or edgy content for adults.  Most of the animated films getting produced are driven by slapstick gags and the characters are drawn in cartoony fashion.  Creative studio Nathan Love, in collaboration with Perspective Studios, has completed a three-minute trailer for Blood Trail that utterly go against this convention.  Its a horror piece based on writer Matt Cochran’s screenplay of the same name and its expected to be developed into a feature film, video game and/or graphic novel.  Before you watch this trailer, I must warn you that it contains extreme gore and graphic violence in full CG animated glory.  This is definitely not safe for work so keep your kids away.  What transpire in the last half had me going “oh shit!”.

You’ll find the trailer embedded below after the break.

Continue Reading "Trailer for CG Animated Horror BLOOD TRAIL"...

While in New York a week or so back I had a friend ask if I’d seen the new French trailer for Tony Jaa’s Ong Bak 2.  As with the original Ong Bak Luc Besson’s Europa Corp have gotten their hands on this one and while the rumor is that there has been a mild re-cut of the film to tighten things up a bit - I’m hearing six minutes have been removed - and some changes to the score - though nothing as drastic as the hip hop version done for the original - the new French trailer, I was told, makes Ong Bak 2 look like “the greatest action film ever made”.  I hadn’t seen it at the time, but now I have and I have to say I pretty much agree.

What do you say?  Was it the argument between Tony Jaa the director and Tony Jaa the actor over whether he really needed to get into that pit of water with a live crocodile that drove Tony to go hide in the jungle for two months?  Check the French trailer out below the break along with the extended Thai promo reel!

Continue Reading "It’s Tony Jaa Versus Crocodile In the French Trailer For ONG BAK 2!"...

With the announcement that [REC]2 will be opening Sitges 2009 the PR train is getting rolling with the first in a planned series of behind the scenes videos.  It’s in SPanish only but it does provide a good look on set of the sequel to the hit Spanish horror picture and directors Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza hard at work.

Oh, I should have seen this coming.  I really should have.  A new Jean-Pierre Jeunet film is a big, big deal in France and I should have known that the folks behind the scenes would not have been content with just the one brief teaser for the film that appeared a few days ago.  No, that would not nearly be enough.  And so now there are more.  Lots more.  As in seven brand new teasers, each of them dedicated to a different character for the film.  And all of them look like gold.

Is it better to live with a bullet lodged in your brain, even if it means you might drop dead any time? Or would you rather have the bullet taken out and live the rest of your life as a vegetable? Are zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Is scrap metal worth more than landmines? Can you get drunk from eating waffles? Can a woman fit inside a refrigerator? What’s the human cannonball world record?  Find out answers to these questions and more. A comedy in the vein of Delicatessen and Amélie.

You’ll find all eight teasers below the break!  And, for fans, the Dominique Pinon one is number seven.

Continue Reading "More Of Jeunet’s MICMACS!  Lots More!"...

It’s kind of funny how easily the reptile part of the brain can take over.  It makes us do odd things, makes us fixate on the things that make our nether regions tingle, to the exclusion of all else.  Makes us so focused - for example - on a certain Oscar-winning director casting a porn star in one feature that we cmpletely miss the fact that he’s working on another one as well, this one starring an actor with more than a little bit of awards hardware on his shelf at home.  A well ... I guess I just don’t find Matt Damon as attractive as Sasha Grey.  Such is life.

The director, of course, is Steven Soderbergh, and the film - the new one - is The Informant!, a based- on-a-true-story tale of quite possible the least competent corporate whistle-blower in the history of ever.  i can’t help but feel that the Coen Brothers stole a little bit of the stylistic thunder on this one with Burn After Reading but Damon looks fantastic in it - as, bizarrely enough, does Scott Bakula - and I got more than one good laugh out of it when I caught it screening before Public Enemies.  And, yep, it’s online now so I rather suggest checking it out.

[Udated with fresh trailers]

It aint just America making throwbacks to the blaxploitation era right now, a point well made by French effort Black, a more modern spin on the genre that we’ve been covering here for quite some time.  Starring French musician MC Jean Gab’1 - also featured prominently in Banlieue 13 Ultimatum - as a Senegalese-French thief travelling to Africa for a heist where he’ll not only have to deal with local law enforcement but also Russian mercenaries and a flamboyant arms dealer who seems to be slowly turning into a snake, Black had its premiere at SXSW earlier this year.  And with the French release right around the corner - July 15th in France for those keeping track, August for Canada - the PR train is rolling full speed.  The first proper French teaser was released in mid-June and has since been followed by a second teaser and - just now - a full theatrical trailer..  You’ll find them all along with the earlier sales trailer - English subtitled, no less - below the break.

Continue Reading "No Dynamite, Just BLACK *UPDATE*"...

If you went to watch Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs at the theaters, chances are you might have caught the second trailer for Ilion Studios’ Planet 51.  Its a sci-fi animated comedy that has been on my radar for so long.  With animation that looks just as good as any other heavyweight studios, Ilion from Spain may prove to be a major contender.

Planet 51 is a galactic sized animated alien adventure comedy revolving around American astronaut Captain Charles “Chuck” Baker, who lands on Planet 51 thinking he’s the first person to step foot on it. To his surprise, he finds that this planet is inhabited by little green people who are happily living in a white picket fence world reminiscent of a cheerfully innocent 1950s America, and whose only fear is that it will be overrun by alien invaders…like Chuck! With the help of his robot companion “Rover” and his new friend Lem, Chuck must navigate his way through the dazzling, but bewildering, landscape of Planet 51 in order to escape becoming a permanent part of the Planet 51 Alien Invaders Space Museum.

The release date is on November 20th.  You’ll find both the trailers below after the break

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Twitch has not as yet given the work of Jonathan Nix any attention. That will change. Better late than never, right? Jonathan’s work producing animated shorts and soundtracks for the same has won him critical acclaim at festivals across his native Australia and beyond, and his latest project is the very wonderful-looking The Missing Key. This planned 25-minute short appears to build on the whimsical baroque setting for his earlier piece Hello (2003), a melancholy Italianate fantasy world with a distinctive touch of the surreal, and so far it looks to be absolutely gorgeous. Find the synopsis and a two-minute preview trailer from YouTube embedded after the break.

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Though I have no idea what it’s like from the local perspective, to an outsiders eye it looks as though now is an interesting time to be making films in Australia.  Though several of the big, high profile genre films have failed to find the international traction they were expected to post-Wolf Creek the country has turned out a string of small, sharp thrillers and indie dramas that just look to be dead solid.  Films like Acolytes, Beautiful, Last Ride and Van Diemen’s Land.  And Van Diemen’s Land takes me to where I want to go - to the resurgence of the hard edged Australian period drama, the Aussie western if you will, post The Proposition.

It’s a genre pretty uniquely suited to Australia, a land with stark landscapes and an even starker history, and another very solid entry in the genre is just around the corner.  Kriv Stenders’ Lucky Country is due to hit Australian screens in mid-July.  The just-released trailer starts off looking like a period-set family drama but things quickly take a darker turn and it is obvious something is lurking below the surface.  Beautifully shot with a strong cast, this story of a failing farm and gold-seeking ramblers looks like a keeper.  Check the trailer below the break!

Continue Reading "Australia Goes Western In LUCKY COUNTRY"...