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BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE—A Critical Overview

2009-07-10T15:35:15Z

Sufficiently entertaining, but just so, Blood: the Last Vampire relies heavily on its production pedigree and its existing anime franchise to promote its vampire adventure. Renowned producer Bill Kong—responsible for such sumptuously mounted vehicles as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; House of Flying Daggers; Curse of the Golden Flower; and Lust, Caution—teams up with director Chris Nahon (Kiss of the Dragon) for this English language adaptation of the popular award-winning anime film of the same title by Production I.G., released worldwide in 2000, and directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo (the key animator for Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira). The story is set in Japan during the fall of 1966, when the United States involvement in Vietnam has turned into a full-scale conflict. A stunning 16-year-old girl named Saya, wearing seifuku and armed with her katana, is sent by a mysterious “organization” to hunt down vampires that are hiding amongst the inhabitants of the Yokota U.S. Air Force Base, a small American enclave 30 km from Tokyo. Saya’s youthful exterior hides the tormented soul of a 400-year-old “halfling.”

CHOCOLATE Star Jija Yanin Gets Bloody - And Bendy - In The RAGING PHOENIX Trailer!

2009-07-10T15:20:18Z

Got to hand it to the production team behind Thai martial arts film Ong Bak: They know a good thing when they see it. And after seeing the way their female star Jija Yanin performed in her debut picture Chocolate, they went straight to work on her sophomore picture. In the process Sahamongkol Film not only got away from the in-production-for-years cycle that has plagued their recent releases but they’ve also pushed into some new territory in their approach to action and martial arts.

Tailored specifically to Yanin’s personality and skills, Raging Phoenix introduces a romance element to the story while also fusing Yanin’s martial arts skills with hip hop dancing and other elements. I wrote about this one during Cannes, when Sahamongkol released the first promo reel for the film, but there is now - finally - a public trailer to show. The focus is purely on Yanin - her romantic introduce is barely present at all - with a good taste given of the hip hop fusion fight style. And for those who worry that the romantic side will mean toning down the violence ... well, I think the first shot will cure you of that notion.

Check out the first trailer for Raging Phoenix below the break!

Full Theatrical Trailer For Jeunet’s MICMACS Arrives!

2009-07-10T14:30:43Z

Just because, you know, having a whopping eight teasers released a full three months before release just isn’t enough, the first proper theatrical trailer for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs A Tire-Larigot has just arrived. This one starts off identically to the first of the series of teasers, focusing in tight on Danny Boon’s character, but don’t worry - it soon expands out to include the rest of the cast and showcases the intricately designed, off kilter world that Jeunet has created beautifully.

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 can find the trailer and all the teasers below the break!

Free Tickets For The US Premiere of BRENDAN AND THE SECRET OF KELLS!

2009-07-10T13:55:58Z

How impressed was I by Tomm Moore’s Brendan And The Secret Of Kells when I first saw it? Impressed enough that I said at the time that Moore deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Michel Ocelot (Kirikou And The Sorceress), Sylvain Chomet (Triplets Of Belleville) and - yes - even Hayao Miyazaki. This is one of those rare films that truly deserves the label of ‘instant classic’ and marks its creator as a fierce and unique talent. And now you can see for yourself.

The New York International Children’s Film Festival is about to host the US premiere of the film with screenings at New York’s IFC Theater on July 18th and 19th and they’ve been good enough to offer one pair of tickets to each screening to you, the faithful Twitch reader. To throw your hat in the ring, simply with the word TWITCH as the subject and they will draw their winners on Monday.

The Official BRUNO Discussion Post

2009-07-10T13:47:01Z

Just seen Sasha Baron Cohen’s latest and want a place to talk about it without needing to worry about spoiling the joke for those who haven’t seen it yet? This is the place. No holds barred, anything goes, so if you don’t want to read spoilers then go no further.

More News From Fantasia 09!

2009-07-10T13:33:17Z

Craving another source of information from Montreal’s Fantasia Festival, which got underway just yesterday? Look no farther than the official website. This year the festival has brought in Kier-La Janisse to cover the festival from within and she’ll be updating throughout the day every day with a collection of exclusive interviews and articles from the festival. Articles such as

Fantasia 09 Review: TERRIBLY HAPPY

2009-07-10T13:28:02Z

[Our thanks to Olivier D’Amour for the following review.]

There’s more than just a little Coen brothers and David Lynch in Henrik Ruben Ganz’s Terribly Happy. The Danish director tries his darnedest to give the movie a unique look and feel, but he’s not entirely successful. He’s no copycat though. His film’s stylish quirkiness doesn’t feel forced and his story has potential, especially in its first half.

More Concept Art From Poland’s HARDKOR 44!

2009-07-10T13:05:38Z

It’s quite unusual for me to get this excited about a project that is still in the pre-production phase but, from time to time, I simply must make an exception. Hardkor 44 is one of those times. The feature length debut from Polish production house Platige Image - best known for their stellar CGI animation work - and director Tomek Bagiński, Hardkor 44 is a scifi re-imagining of the events of the Warsaw uprising in WWII, the actual history of the event re-cast as a sort of steampunk epic. Of the two pieces of concept art released thus far - both of them incredibly atmospheric - only one hinted at how far the scifi element would be pushed but Polish website Opium have today run a series of additional pieces of concept art in which it becomes very, very clear that this is going all out - the designs featuring both full-on robot warriors and cyborg creations. If Platige comes anywhere close to their normal standards of quality this is going to be absolutely stunning.

Our thanks to Opium also for the following translation of the official synopsis:

The action will take place at the end of 1944. The Germans direct to Warsaw a squad led by oberführer SS Wagner, infamous for his cruelty and deformed face. He is supposed to wipe the capitol of Poland off the face of the Earth. Meanwhile, on the Polish side of the barricade there a mysterious man called Arnold appears. He is a handsome soldier who disappeared without a trace in 1939. He assembles a group of insurgents from slyboots from Praga and Wola (districts of Warsaw). Together with a few criminals, collaborants and other types of suspicious characters Arnold will try to get the spoil of war that Wagner accumulated.

In Warsaw, however, a surprise awaits our heroes. Wagner has an ace up his sleeve - a squad of cyborgs built from metal and organs of the worst recidivists found in prisons and concentration camps by
psychopathic Nazi scientists. Only Arnold’s team will be able to oppose such power and at the same time they will discover the truth about themselves.

Japan Cuts Review: HALFWAY

2009-07-10T12:49:54Z

[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]

“Go Don’t.” In a late scene in Eriko Kitagawa’s lovely and bittersweet high school romance Halfway, love-struck senior Hiro (Kii Kitano) scrawls these two Japanese characters on a piece of paper, a gesture that perfectly expresses her confusion over whether to let her boyfriend Shu (Masaki Okada) go to college in Tokyo, far from her hometown of Hokkaido. Hiro, in the waning days of the school year, has finally landed the dreamy basketball star she has been pining after for a very long time. This happens by very serendipitous circumstances, when she feels faint while watching Shu at a game and has to see the school nurse. Hiro relates excitedly to her friend Meme (Riisa Naka) her intention to finally tell him how she feels, and soon after goes to sleep. When she awakens, she talks of her dream in which she finally gets the courage to express her love to Shu. Unbeknownst to her, Shu has been listening, also at the nurse’s office to fix a nosebleed. Later, Shu approaches Hiro and asks her out. Hiro plays coy at first, but finally cannot hide her excitement that her dream has come true. This euphoria comes to an abrupt end when one of Shu’s friends tells her that he has applied to Waseda College in Tokyo, while Hiro is set to attend a local university.

Johnnie To’s VENGEANCE to open HK’s Summer IFF

2009-07-10T12:26:39Z

It has just been announced that Johnnie To’s latest crime thriller will be making its Hong Kong debut on August 5th as the opening film of the 2009 Summer International Film Festival.

Other highlights include Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer, Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, Sam Mendes’ Away We Go and a trio of fantastic-looking Japanese flicks in a category entitled The Hippest and the Cultest: Miki Satoshi’s Instant Swamp, Fish Story director Nakamura Yoshihiro’s superbly titled The Foreign Duck, The Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker and…oh yes…Nishimura Yoshihiro & Tomomatsu Naoyuki’s Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl.

Consider me very happy - and fully booked from 8/5 - 9/7!

The press release is below:

Terminator Salvation review

2009-07-10T10:03:53Z

Fashionably late with my Terminator Salvation review here, just consider it a little warm-up for the DVD that’s obviously going to arrive in the near future. I just saw this one in theaters here, and since there hasn’t been much talk about this film since it’s actual release in theaters, I might just well throw in my 5 cents.

When the latest edition in the Terminator series was announced, I had little hope for a good film. McG, director in charge, has a less than appealing portfolio and the process of reviving yet another old and popular movie series didn’t really sound too creative either. But against all odds, Terminator Salvation turned out to be a worthwhile visit to the theater, although true fans of the series might be quite disappointed.

Want to find out why? Check out the full review after the break.

Brüno review

2009-07-10T07:01:16Z

Once you’ve seen “Brüno”, you may never look at your penis the same way again (where applicable, of course). The film is the latest from the seemingly fearless comic actor Sasha Baron Cohen, and like his previous hit, “Borat”, it is a difficult-to-label smash-up of “reality” and staged spectacle. Also like “Borat”, the story follows an eccentric foreigner on a simple quest, making for many awkward interactions with unsuspecting victims. Where Borat was on a mission of understanding, Brüno is out to become, as he puts it, the biggest Austrian celebrity since Hitler. This takes him all over the world, but mainly to various parts of the United States, including Hollywood, and the Deep South.

In all of this – and this includes Cohen’s “The Ali G Show” television series from whence these characters originated – Cohen’s mission seems to be one of harshly exposing ignorance and intolerance, in the most comedic and confrontational way. With “Borat”, it was an exploration of the xenophobia lurking in America (particularly in the South). This time, Cohen presents a double-whammy of sorts. Yes, to call Brüno “flaming” is like calling Freddie Mercury an “okay” singer, but his over-the-top homosexuality is just one part of what makes the character alienating for many. I posit that, like Borat, it is the fact that Brüno is foreign, complete with a heavy accent and token broken English that makes him just as alienating, if not more so than Borat, to good number of the unsuspecting foils in the film.

‘Let the Right One In’ director Tomas Alfredson to embrace the Cold War

2009-07-10T05:37:21Z

Geez, that was quick. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, who amazed the world with last year’s Let the Right One In, will make his English language debut adapting the John Le Carré novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Oscar-nominated screenwriter Peter Morgan is currently writing the adaptation, which tells the story of a retired British intelligence officer who is asked to seek out one the senior ranks of his old agency said to be a Russian spy. Alfredson had kind words to say about the upcoming project stating that, “It is both satisfactory and uplifting to make my debut in the English language in the good company of Peter Morgan and Tim Bevan.”

Betwitched by Comics: Unwritten, Wednesday Comics, Fearless Dawn, Olympus

2009-07-10T03:28:24Z

(As I continue to search for movies that haven’t been covered at Twitch, I thought I’d share further observations on new and recent comic books.)

The Unwritten #3 (Vertigo) is a decent transitional issue for this limited series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. The first issue was nearly double-sized and set up great chunks of a good story about Tom Taylor, a man haunted by his late father’s best-selling series of children’s fantasy books featuring a character named “Tommy Taylor.” Details are filled in, but it feels like more of a set-up for what’s to come than an entirely satisfying read.

Wednesday Comics #1 (DC) hearkens back to the Golden Age. Like a newspaper comics section, it’s printed on newsprint using, I’m guessing, the four-color printing method, with all the hazards of newsprint publishing. (In my case, two pages were mis-registered, so the colors look blurry and ugly.) The issue is loose-leaf (unbound) and folded into quarters. Unfold it, and you can read 15 different comics, each on its own page (14 inches by 20 inches).

THE HURT LOCKER Review

2009-07-09T23:49:21Z

[I originally reviewed Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker when it screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival and with the film finally receiving a limited release now - opposite the Bruno marketing behemoth, a factor that does not bode well - I figured it could use a little love and have pulled the original review forward.]

I present to you a basic Hollywood reality that should have been recognized long ago but apparently has not been: This is a bad time to be making an Iraq War film. Good film, bad film, big cast, no cast, fiction, documentary, it really doesn’t matter. Whatever the merits of the film in question - and there have been a number of good ones made - if it is about the Iraq War it is destined to fail at the box office as has been proven repeatedly over the last year. The conflict is still far too fresh, still far too much in the news and an audience overloaded by Iraq every night on the six o’clock news simply won’t pay money to see more of the same on the big screen. Too bad for Kathryn Bigelow, then, because with The Hurt Locker she has put together one potent piece of work.