gamingeek said:

Foolz said:

Why is Dexter Spiderman?

You just blew my mind.

Holy shit Space Nazi's

Day one

Iga_Bobovic said:

Holy shit Space Nazi's

Day one

That's finally got a release date? Yay.

Well Go USA Drops LET THE BULLETS FLY Red Band Trailer!

The time has come for China's highest grossing feature ever to land on US shores. Jiang Wen's Let the Bullets Fly is coming to selected theaters and VOD this March 2nd, and to get you pumped, Well Go has delivered their red-band theatrical trailer for this rollicking good time!


I was fortunate to catch Let the Bullets Fly at Fantastic Fest last year, and I really enjoyed it. The film runs a little bit long, but I've gotten used to that with Asian features in the last few years. The all-star cast of Jiang Wen, Chow Yun Fat, Carina Lau, and Ge You make for a great team on screen, and keep the plot rolling along nicely, in addition to numerous fantastic action and comedy set pieces. Here's what Well Go has to say about Let the Bullets Fly

LET THE BULLETS FLY


IN THEATERS MARCH 2, 2012


In the lawless land that is rural China in the 1920s, legendary bandit "Pocky" Zhang (Jiang Wen) and his gang stage a train robbery. They are quite unhappy to discover that instead of silver, the only thing left on the train is the con man, Tang (Ge You). Desperate, Tang explains that he's on his way to Goose Town, where he's bought himself a governorship. If allowed to live, he will help Zhang assume the governorship in his place... where Zhang can make more money in one month as a corrupt politician than he can in a year's worth of train robberies. With Tang as his prisoner/counselor, off they go.


But neither realizes that Goose Town is already under the iron rule of the wealthy Master Huang (Chow Yun Fat, The Killer, Hard Boiled), whose charming exterior conceals a ruthless, conniving crime lord. As Zhang begins to see how badly Huang oppresses the citizens of Goose Town, he decides to do something about it, and Huang quickly senses a major threat to his empire.


Thus begins an escalating series of hyper-violent (and hilarious) mind games between the bandit and the crime lord, while the devious Tang tries to play both sides until he can exit the situation...preferably with a profit. The stakes quickly rise to ludicrous proportions in this masterfully vicious, pitch-black action-comedy (China's highest grossing film of all time), and you'll be laughing the entire time as double- and triple-crosses, razor-sharp wordplay, and hundreds of thousands of bullets explode across the screen.


LET THE BULLETS FLY will hit theaters on March 2, 2012.

Video

IRON SKY Twitch review - Space Nazi film

"But probably the biggest problem with the film is that a large amount of the humor is dated, most likely due to its long production timeline (we've been covering its development on this site for nearly five years). This is almost strictly Bush-era satire and it's honestly staggering how irrelevant and stale it all feels today. When I first saw that the President of the United States in the film was a thinly-disguised version of Sarah Palin, I shrugged it off as a throwaway joke. But sadly, she ends up playing a pretty major role in the film. And a plot point about the Nazis needing an iPad to power their death machine is just embarrassing.


Really though, Iron Sky is not an unqualified failure. It's got Udo Kier, a moon-base shaped like a swastika, and a sexy, endearing performance by Julia Dietze, so it's certainly not all bad. But Shaun of the Dead it ain't, and at the end of the day, it probably is more fun to talk about the film than actually watch it. The space Nazi movie in your head is probably better than the one on screen."

MIIKE TAKASHI Talks ACE ATTORNEY

AV: The couple sitting next to me thought they were about to see a serious murder drama, so I warned them that this wasn't going to be something like "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo". (we all laugh)

And they liked the movie as well. But this does make me wonder: you were under pressure to keep the story close to the one told in the videogames, yet wanted to make a film most people could enjoy. How did you approach that problem? I noticed you kept pretty close to the games. Did it take a long time to get to a filmable script?


Miike Takashi: We actually were still changing and tweaking things during filming. It happened like this: even before the script had been finished there were contractual obligations to Capcom, and the creators of the games were allowed to judge whether or not we had understood the gist of the games. So the script had to reflect that we knew what the games and the characters were about, this had been agreed already. There are people who are mainly interested in the murder mystery, who want to know "whodunnit", or who are interested to see what tricks the heroes use. We had to cater to them. But on the other hand we agreed that the dramatic storytelling side of the original games was underdeveloped, and this we could build by ourselves. It was a big challenge to make one cohesive story out of it as well, given that we were basing it on five games, some of which are only loosely related in plot. It took us all a lot of time to create a script that made sense as one big story. And we needed to flesh out several of the characters, and kept embellishing them even on set during the shoot.

WAR OF THE ARROWS Twitch review

"I firmly believe that this is among the most well-rounded action films that Well Go USA has released in the last year, up there with The Man from Nowhere and Shaolin. It doesn't suffer from the propaganda that puts a slight damper on films like Ip Man or Legend of the Fist, but still manages to deliver the goods in an epic fashion. War of the Arrows is the real deal, and despite not having any huge names in the cast, it is a fantastic film, and probably the most exciting Korean film I've seen since Man from Nowhere. Highly recommended."

ABRAHAM LINCOLN VAMPIRE HUNTER - Secret Life Featurette with Tim Burton & Timur & Cast!

VIDEO

Ace Attorney Is the Best Video Game Movie Ever

(Take That, Hollywood!) says Kotaku

Kotaku said:

Gyakuten Saiban—the movie based on Capcom's visual novel series, Ace Attorney—was released in Japan to sold-out theaters this past weekend.


Staying closer to the source material than any video game movie before it, does this film prove that games can successfully be adapted into movies or does it reiterate the idea that games and movies are fundamentally incompatible forms of art? (Hint: it's the former.)


Gyakuten Saiban, the movie, closely follows the plot of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney—specifically the overarching story of the first, second, and fourth cases in that game. Upon finding his mentor, Mia Fey, murdered, rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright finds himself trapped in the middle of 15-year-old mystery. With the help of Mia's little sister, Maya, Phoenix sets out to match wits against prosecutors Miles Edgeworth and Manfred Von Karma to unravel the conspiracy that connects them all together.


A movie like this could find no better director than Miike Takashi (Ichi the Killer, Audition). Known in the West mostly as a horror director, he's actually done everything from children's fantasy films to classic anime adaptations in addition to his horror work. His ability to merge the real and the surreal does more than hold the often-comical/often-serious drama of Gyakuten Saiban together: it crafts a world where such things feel natural.


If you've ever complained that a video game movie strays too far from the source material, then Gyakuten Saiban is the movie for you. Everything from hair styles to the Blue Badger come straight from the game with little to no embellishment. Much of the game's music returns—now fully orchestrated—and even the set design perfectly mirrors the in-game locations.





That said, the movie and game are not identical as Miike doesn't hesitate to take the ideas present in the game and run with them to their logical conclusion. In a world where all trials last for a maximum of three days, Miike treats courtrooms as the world's most popular sport, where fans buy tickets and lawyers face off in pre-fight interviews.


Moreover, witnesses are developed into true characters with their own complete stories and motivations far beyond source material. This extra insight provides the key to some of the film's most emotional-and haunting-images.


But by far the best thing in the movie is Miike's insistence to show, not tell. Deconstructed to its core, the Ace Attorney series is about a group of people standing around talking in a courtroom. But in Miike's Gyakuten Saiban, being visual is key. When a witness is testifying, we see the events happen via flashback. When a spirit medium contacts spirits of the dead, we don't just see a woman writhing around; we see the ghostly figments of death and the hellish landscape beyond.


This is the very reason for one of the film's most obvious additions, the holographic evidence windows. Ostensibly made to emulate the game's court record, they do far more by creating a way to make even the most mundane piece of evidence exciting and engaging. They also serve to set the time period, with comically large CRT monitors being used in flashbacks.


Full size

If the movie has any weakness, it's the casting.

While most of the cast, especially Phoenix, Edgeworth, and Von Karma, are spot on, the same cannot be said for the supporting characters. Maya, a 17-year-old who is far more child than adult in the games, comes off less like an innocent girl and more like an emotionally unstable woman in her 20's. Gumshoe, on the other hand, comes off looking like an intelligent, clean-cut rookie cop rather than a middle-aged screw-up.


But as a whole, Gyakuten Saiban is by far the best video game adaption I have ever seen—though given how low that bar is, I'll do you one better. Gyakuten Saiban is on its own a fun, engaging mystery/comedy and a legitimately good movie.


I'll end this review with a little story. I had the pleasure of seeing this film with a non-gamer who had never even heard of the Ace Attorney games. He came out of the theater raving about the swerving plot twists, great characters, and amazing direction. He then proceeded to download Gyakuten Saiban 123 HD—the new iOS HD versions of the first three games—onto his iPhone. I don't know if there's any bigger praise than that.

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