Smash Cut

Hisss is the name of the newest film by Jennifer Lynch, a filmmaker who’s probably going to forever be known — much to her bemusement/annoyance/happiness/chagrin — as the daughter of David Lynch. Or, more unfortunately, as the mind behind the critically and commercially lambasted erotic thriller, 1993’s Boxing Helena.

That’s too bad, because Ms. Lynch seems to be blossoming into an interesting artist in her own right, and proof of that metamorphosis is the trailer for her latest effort, a sensuous Bollywood-styled horror/fantasy starring the ravishingly gorgeous Mallika Sherawat as a snake woman who’s able to take on human form and wreak havoc amongst mankind.

The Official Hisss Website doesn’t have much on it yet, but keep checking it for updates in the future. And take a look at the trailer here, thanks to the good folks at Twitch.

Ah, Twitch. You can always count on that site for the best updates, and this one’s no exception: an exclusive presentation of the first trailer for Samurai Princess.

I showed you the scorching one-sheet image above when I first  blogged about this destined-for-cult-classic-status, psychotronic Japanese actioner at the beginning of the month. The poster’s image of lead star/adult video actress Aino Kishi was probably enough to get your tongues wagging, but the preview delivers on many, many more levels, folks. We’re talking explosive breasts and scissor feet here.

Watch the trailer here on Twitch. You can visit the Official Samurai Princess Website for more details as they arrive.

“New Samurai is Born.” Indeed!

From the oh-so-delightfully-twisted minds behind loony Japanese genre fare like The Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police (movies that are exactly what their titles describe them to be) comes Samurai Princess. And if the poster pictured above is any indication, then Yoshihiro Nishimura — the director of Tokyo Gore Police and effects supervisor on Machine Girl and Princess — will be three for three with his trifecta of pics that deliver on the promise of their names (not to mention poster campaigns).

Distributor CREi offers this plot description:

Erotic-grotesque action film from Japan to worldwide viewers! Produced by Yoshihiro Nishimura, a world-famous special effects director!

The story takes place sometime, somewhere in a world during the Samurai era, where people live together with highly developed mechanical dolls. However, excessively-developed mechanical dolls start causing harm to the human society, leading to ghastly bloodshed happening all over the place. Under the circumstances, Kyoraku, a mad scientist, creates a female ninja mechanical doll. Equipped with 11 types of built-in weapons, the ninja doll, who will not die even if she is slashed by a sword or shot by a gun, is virtually indestructible.

As of this moment, there’s no Samurai Princess trailer, but there is an official website that is, simply, a mega-image of the poster. Nothing else to check out as of yet, but that does mean that you get an even more ginormous pic of star Yukari Tateishi than the one I’ve hooked you up with.

I must say, after my first viewing, I think that director Spike Jonze and his stalwart cast and crew seem to have done a potentially good job at adapting a tricky (and very short) children’s book.

Where the Wild Things Are, in case you missed by previous posting, is Jonze’s long-in-production (rumored-to-be-troubled) cinematic version of Caldecott Medal-winning author Maurice Sendak’s classic tale, in which a mischievous young boy who’s sent to bed without his supper embarks on a monster-filled imaginary adventure that leads him back to his mother’s love.

I’ve been eager to see how Jonze’s vision would mesh with Sendak’s, and…it’s different from what I pictured. The director (along with cinematographer Lance Acord) seems shooting for something more akin to realism than fantasy, and that could, frankly, make for a pretty banal movie. But we’ll see.

The brand-new, long-awaited trailer can be viewed here, in standard definition or HD, courtesy of Apple’s trailer page. In case you’re wondering, the music in the preview is the song “Wake Up”, by Canadian band Arcade Fire.

It was really only a couple of weeks ago when I first posted about the forthcoming live-action interpretation of the 2000 anime vampire/action classic, Blood: The Last Vampire.

Well, it now seems as if people are salivating for more, because the hype machine is still chugging along at full steam, with a brand-new trailer popping up online courtesy of Yahoo! Japan. It’s not subtitled, but a good amount of it is actually in English so you shouldn’t have any problems following along.

The thing is, now that I’ve actually heard the delivery of the English dialogue (particularly that of lead actress Gianna Jun), I’m toning down my expectations a bit. Some of the performances seem a bit…uh…stiff, which can (and should) be expected given the fact that English isn’t exactly the native tongue of many of the performers. But I can’t deny that the not-so-fluent passages are more than a little distracting. Nevertheless, director Chris Nahon obviously has an eye for flashy style, and the extended footage shows off the movie’s exciting sheen.

Check out the trailer here. (Click on the highlighted blue characters above the paragraph of Japanese text in order to access the preview.)

Probably every single person who ever went through a traditional American grade-school has read Maurice Sendak’s boy-sent-to-bed-without-supper flight of fantasy, Where The Wild Things Are. And just as probable is the likelihood that the book attained a genuinely-beloved, don’t-fuck-with-this-one-Hollywood status for every reader.

So I guess we should take the lack of total rancor towards the idea of quirkmeister Spike Jonze helming an adaptation of the Sendak story for the big screen as a testimony to our collective faith that, hey, here’s a guy who just might be able to pull this one off without totally screwing the pooch. I mean, the fella even tapped lit-wunderkind Dave Eggers to co-write the screenplay and assembled an A-list cast with the likes of James Gandolfini and Forest Whitaker to (vocally) act their furry chops off.

But then, maybe we all felt good about his live-action envisioning three years ago when the movie first entered production. It’s hard not to feel like we should prep for Disaster Mode when a film — especially one based on a short children’s tale — takes such a long time (not to mention a switcheroo between two studios) to reach our screens. Effects problems? Script woes? The dreaded “creative differences?”

Whatever the case, Warner Bros., the studio currently taking the gamble on Jonze’s opus, seems ready to unveil the pic in mid-October, and word on the street claims that a trailer will finally be seen, right before next week’s March 27 release of the animated creature comedy, Monsters vs. Aliens. Let’s hope some enterprising soul leaks that sucker online before then.

So, are you sick of reading all my continuous hype over master fantasist Kazuaki Kiriya’s latest mindblower, Goemon?

Well, too bad, ’cause I’m still jonesing over this upcoming movie, and now there’s an even newer trailer that’s gonna knock your socks off (as if the first trailer didn’t already take care of that business).

Goemon, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, is a Japanese sci-fi/fantasy/quasi-historical riff on the old Robin Hood legend: a daring hero takes on an oppressive ruler to bring the riches of the wealthy to the poor. But, clearly, he does it with a lot of style.

You can witness the glory of the new trailer over at the film’s official website. It’s set for a May 1 unveiling in Japan.

Hail, I tell you!

I’ve blogged before about my excitement over the upcoming new visual feast from Japanese wunderkind Kazuaki Kiriya, and now there’s more footage from it to whet my (and your) appetite.

Goemon is his highly anticipated follow-up to the stunning 2004 sci-fi anime come-to-life called Casshern. The latter, in my opinion, had set standards for FX-style filmmaking that have yet to be topped. Granted, it was narratively bloated, but let’s face it: movie sported a lot of eye-popping imagination and more creativity in five minutes than two hours of your usual Hollywood product can provide.

His forthcoming work is an alternate-universe ninja fantasy, and it just got a new unsubtitled trailer which offers more jaw-dropping spectacle than you can shake a stick at.

The official Goemon website is over here.

Click below for the preview, and prepare to be blown away.

Well, what are you waiting for? Here’s what is, perhaps, the best theme song ever. Ever.