It’s been a while since the master of bullet ballet made a film in the East. This month sees the UK release of the international print of Red Cliff - a gargantuan action opus to rival Lord of the Rings. Thomas Podvin sits down with the director to discuss his career thus far.

Contrary to popular belief, the epic Red Cliff (released in Asia in two separate chapters) wasn’t, as many reported, Woo’s first directorial effort in China since he kissed Hong Kong goodbye in 1992 after completing Hard Boiled. In 2005, Woo went to Beijing to shoot a medium-length feature, Song Song and Little Cat - a segment of the Italian-produced omnibus film All the Invisible Children, made for UNICEF and the World Food Programme. The film focuses on two little Chinese girls, and at the risk of scaring hardcore bullet-ballet fans away, there’s no signs of a gun barrel. No explosions. No Mexican stand offs. Zip...

It certainly doesn’t sound like the Woo we knew, but at 59, the Guangzhou-born director made a film he has always dreamed of, a character-driven film - a pure drama. There are signs here of an evolution in Woo’s cinema.

Two years later, Red Cliff was being shot in the continuity of this evolution. Woo not only made a period war epic but also designed a film where female characters were well developed, male bonding and testosterone kept to a minimum, romanticism and sentimentality subdued and drama and action well balanced. He’s proved he was more than...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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As Salvation hits multiplexes around the globe, John Bierly brings us an overview of the franchise and we talk to McG about what to expect from his take on the series.

Joseph McGinty Nichol is one of those directors who catches far more hell than he deserves. (Though insisting to be called ‘McG’ admittedly doesn’t help much.) And yet his films - Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, and the inspiring football drama We Are Marshall - are nothing less than entirely what they were meant to be. Try telling that to the fans of the Terminator franchise, who did more revolting than John Connor in a room full of gun-toting refrigerators when it was announced that McG would helm Terminator Salvation, the fourth film in the franchise that began under James Cameron’s infinitely capable care with 1984’s gritty sci-fi/action classic, The Terminator.

Though Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance as the cybernetic assassin sent back through time (from 2029) to murder Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) before she could get pregnant with her anti-robot Resistance-leading son John was instantly iconic, Cameron initially envisioned Lance Henriksen as the villainous, “I’ll be back” spouting T-800 killing machine. Schwarzenegger was originally considered to play John’s father Kyle Reese, sent back in time by John to save Sarah (and the rest of the world, too). The idea that the Terminator would blend into crowds was quickly abandoned when Cameron...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Calum Waddell sits down with the lovely Gianna Jun - star of the live action adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire.

Blood: The Last Vampire is a title that most readers of Impact will be instantly familiar with. After all, 2000’s award winning anime outing was acclaimed across the globe and soon found itself with a dedicated cult fanbase - something that, no doubt, explains the series of spin-off mangas and novels that quickly followed. Without wishing to bore those already overly familiar with the basic plot, the star of the show is Saya - a sultry teenaged samurai whose youthful exterior camouflages the restless soul of a 400 year old vampire vixen! Well, almost: See, our lass is half-vamp and half-human (thus known as a ‘Halfling’) and her mission is to rid the world of the real deal - the toothsome night crawlers that exist to suck our blood and/or make us one of the un-dead... Hey - just another boring day at the office, right?

In the new motion picture, also entitled Blood: The Last Vampire and released to UK cinemas on June 19th, Saya is eager to hunt and destroy an evil patriarch called Onigen (think of him as the feature’s Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee - the ultimate in fanged nastiness!). Perhaps inevitably, especially considering the scope...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Ricky Morris goes behind the scenes on Blood to meet some of the UK stunt guys who worked on the movie.

Directed by Chris Nahon with action choreography by Corey Yuen, Blood: The Last Vampire makes the jump from anime and manga into live action starring Korean superstar Gianna Jun (Jun Ji-hyun) in not only her English language debut but also her full blooded action debut too, as she must battle the vampires and the demons bringing chaos to our world. Amongst the assembled vampire hordes she must face are four Western martial arts stuntmen and action performers, Impact’s Ricky Morris talks to them about their involvement in the film. We’ll begin with the four of them introducing themselves.

CJ: My names Chris Jones. I’m a full-time martial arts instructor, action actor/performer as well as running my own full-time martial arts gym based in North Yorkshire.
AT: My name is Andy Taylor; I’m a martial artist and screen action actor/stunt man from Yorkshire, England.
JP: My name is Jude Poyer. I’m originally from London. I worked as a stuntman and action actor in Hong Kong between 1996 and 2004, before returning to the UK. For the past five years I’ve continued to perform stunts and also coordinate and choreograph stunts and action for films, TV, commercials etc.

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Mike Leeder takes a look at the rise in Japanese gore action featuring strong fighting females in the lead. From Hard Revenge, Milly to High Kick Girl and beyond...

The female of the species is deadlier than the male. So the saying goes, and in the worlds of martial arts and action movies, one of the strongest sub-genres has been that of the femme fatale action movie. The genre has flourished in Asia, with Japan unleashing such female action divas as Etsuko ‘Sue’ Shiomi from Sister Streetfighter, Yukari Oshima of Outlaw Brothers and Burning Ambition fame, Michiko Nichiwaki from My Lucky Stars and many more, unleashing some major stylish kick-ass in the ‘70’s, ‘80s and early ‘90s. After a few years where the genre seemed to have been resting, the recent release of such films as Machine Girl and One Chanbara seem to have given the Japanese female action martial arts movie genre a fresh burst of energy, as they combine martial artistry with a healthy slice of blood, guts and sexuality in many of the upcoming titles set to be released over the next year or so. As Machine Girl hits DVD in the UK (see our multimedia section), Impact’s Eastern Editor Mike Leeder takes a look at some of the most exciting looking Japanese female driven titles we can look forward to....

Hard Revenge, Milly
Hard Revenge,...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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It’s officially the Impact office’s favourite franchise reboot! We talk to the actors and director, JJ Abrams, about bringing the long running series up to date for a new generation and bring you the lowdown on the movie.

It’s 11:00am on a Monday morning and I’m in Iowa. Oh, physically, I won’t be there for a few weeks yet, but in a crowded screening room in Central London I’m one of the first people in the UK to be seeing a young James Tiberius Kirk joy-riding through the US state as he tries to forget the legacies of the past and the potential of the future. But this isn’t William Shatner and not quite the Trek you remember. History, you see, has been ever so slightly changed and this young whippersnapper who we think is destined to grow up to be a famous starship captain, has a new weight of expectation on his shoulders.

And so does director J J Abrams. Abrams is the man who brought us the television hits Lost, Alias and Fringe and helmed the big-screen likes of Mission Impossible III and Cloverfield. He has now taken the reins of the most famous science-fiction franchise in the world and has given it a temporal spring cleaning. Sure enough, there’s Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, Chekov and Sulu... heck there’s even a guy in red who you just know isn’t going to last long...but this is...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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This month sees our Tokyo correspondent delve into the world of antique anime as he interviews Larry Greenburg - the man responsible for restoring some of Japan’s lost animated heritage.

Historians forever bawl out declarations that, if one is to ever effectively tackle tomorrow, you’ve got to first understand the day before yesterday. It’s one of the claims that keeps these people in a job, quite often one whereby they end up teaching you and me the very same idea - or the more enterprising individuals make Hollywood movies on the theme.

But there is a smattering of truth to this particular claim, and nowhere is it more evident than in the form of the very pages you’re now gazing upon. Prior to the publication of this issue of Impact, there were 200-odd previous issues, each better than its predecessor - yet without the inroads, ideas and growth developed in those preceeding issues, chances are that there would actually be no Impact to hold onto today.

Which makes me wonder what you would be holding instead - it’s like one of those time conundrums one might run across in an episode of Doraemon. The same, of course, goes for the subject this magazine ascribes to - anime, as much as action - and, to take up one example, the fabulous flying machines we see careening across the screen in much of...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Andrez then heads to the Tokyo International Animation Festival for the scoop on the latest releases lining up.

In March, the Tokyo International Anime Fair, better known as just plain TAF2009, cranked into operation within the huge confines of Tokyo Big Sight.

I’ve hit this event eight times in a row now, and while the first time - in 2002 - snared 50,163 visitors, this year’s instalment tallied almost 130,000 over four days, browsing through 759 booths (up 24 from last year).

Simply attending TAF2009 meant artful weaving through displays and propaganda billboards from companies like Production I.G, Gonzo/GDH, Mad House, Toei, Studio Ghibli, Aniplex, Sunrise, and Bandai. Oh, and did we mention scantily-dressed girls in whsper-thin cosplay outfits, handing out still more merchandise..?

This year’s Animation of the Year was deservedly Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, though we suspect that regular Impact readers would be far more enamoured with Mamoru Oshii’s superb sci-fi/aerial dogfight action flick, The Sky Crawlers, which picked up the award for Best Character Design (Tetsuya Nishio).

Production I.G is pushing several new features and diversions, including more minutes of anime for Kill Bill (see our extensive interview with Francesco Prandoni in the March issue), Aniplex is starting to roll out the fanfare for the brand new season of Fullmetal Alchemist, and...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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This month we cover Claymore - a slice and dice anime that sees demonically enhanced women kicking seven bells out of the local man-eating Yoma.

Claymore is an adaptation of the ongoing manga series created by Norihiro Yagi and currently running in Shonen Square in Japan while being released in the US and the UK by Viz Media. Impact’s Claire Short reviewed the first books in her manga column and I wondered at the time if it would be adapted as an anime. Madman Entertainment was the studio which brought the manga to life, adapting the first eleven volumes of the books into a twenty-six episode series under the auspices of Hiroyuki Tanaka. The series premiered on NTV in 2007 before Funimation brought the series to the US in 2008.

Claymore is set in a dark, medieval world where humanoid monsters called Yoma roam the land, feeding on human beings. These inhuman creatures, though sentient, view themselves as the top of the food chain, boasting incredible strength, speed and agility to back up that claim. They regularly disguise themselves as humans by consuming a victim’s brain and absorbing their memories, gaining the ability to transmute into a facsimile of their victim - thereby being able to take up residence in a town or village and feed nightly upon its inhabitants. For such afflicted towns, the only...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Impact takes a look at the first Bleach movie.

As a franchise with unparalleled fan support, Bleach is big enough around the globe to rival the might of Naruto. Part two of series three is currently available in the UK but, out next month is the first movie length addition to the series.

Bleach: Memories of Nobody returns to the characters popularised by the preceding anime episodes. Ichigo Kurosaki is a teenage boy who, for all his life, has been able to see and converse with members of the spirit world. Following his encounter with Rukia - a soul reaper whose job it is to send wandering spirits to the world of the dead and defend them from marauding Hollows; malevolent creatures which feed upon spirits - Ichigo becomes indoctrinated into the Soul Society. Ichigo continues to work for the Society, alongside Rukia, while attempting to have a ‘normal’ life as a teen. When he goes into battle, his mortal body drops to the floor, apparently dead, while he fights on the spirit plain - which causes no end of trouble for Rukia, who must wipe all witnesses’ memories, Men in Black style.

One day, whilst hunting a Hollow, Ichigo and Rukia find themselves overwhelmed by strange white ghosts called Blanks...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Collectors can’t get enough of them. They’re a nightmare to dust but can they be art? Impact takes a look at the world of collectable action figures throughout the ages.

It’s generally considered that George Lucas and his industry brilliance was not just in what we saw in Star Wars but in the revolutionary deals he struck before the film was ever screened for the public. Lucas told Twentieth Century Fox that, as part of the distribution deal, he wanted to hold on to the merchandising rights. In the late seventies no-one batted an eyelid. After all, what would that mean? Probably some bubble-gum cards and confectionery, a lunch-box at best and that was only if the film went big, which it probably wouldn’t.

Of course, Star Wars became one of the landmark films in cinema’s entire history and suddenly Lucas and friends were happy. The merchandising deal made them happier still and arguably richer than the profits of the film itself. Before the end of 1977, any self-respecting fan was searching for a Star Wars action figure. Most of them were played with until their limited articulated bodies broke and little plastic lightsabers were lost in the playground dirt - but if you can find one of those preliminary sets today, you could be sitting on a small fortune. By the time Empire Strikes Back and Return of the...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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It’s quite possibly the perfect Impact film - a slew of genre stars in an independent, hi-octane actioner, helmed by Sylvester Stallone. Mike Leeder takes a peek at what we can expect.

A few short years ago it seemed as if Sylvester Stallone’s career was coming to an end, after his incredible run of success through the mid ‘70s, the ‘80s and early ‘90s, his career had seemed to stall during the mid ‘90s. And while his solid acting turn in Copland drew him critical acclaim, his subsequent projects didn’t seem to catch with audiences or critics anymore. When he announced his plans to resurrect his two most popular franchises with Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, a lot of people began to take shots at him for being out of touch with audiences. But both films hit big at the box office internationally and, at the age of 62, Sylvester Stallone seems to have no intention of taking it easy. He’s currently directing The Expendables, a high octane ‘men on a mission’ action thriller with a cast that includes himself, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Micky Rourke and quite possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger...
The Expendables, written and directed by Sylvester Stallone began filming on March 3rd, 2009, with a shoot that is scheduled to take in locations including Rio De Janeiro, New Orleans and Los Angeles. The film’s plot follows a legendary...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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He made our front cover last month, but did the actual movie live up to the hype and publicity surrounding the leak of an early print onto the ‘net. John Bierly assesses the damage.

What’s scarier? The troubled young Hannibal Lecter from the prequel Hannibal Rising who kills for revenge and is driven by terrible emotional and psychological tragedies and scars from his childhood, or the cultured, educated, charismatic gentleman we met in The Silence of the Lambs who woke up one sunny morning and decided he might like to eat people? Sometimes we don’t need to know where someone came from. Sometimes it’s enough to know what they do.

The man who calls himself Logan (Hugh Jackman) tells you in X-Men Origins: Wolverine that he’s the best he is at what he does, but what he does isn’t very nice. We’ve known that from the first moment we saw him on screen in X-Men nine years ago, and in the intervening years Jackman has gone above and beyond the call of duty to honour the character and his fans both on screen (in the film’s two sequels) and off. Unfortunately, the new film honours neither Jackman nor the most interesting of Marvel’s mighty mutants.

In his introduction to the collected edition of the 2001 miniseries Wolverine: Origin, X-Men movie producer Tom DeSanto recalls his reaction to Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada’s desire to give Wolverine...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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After the pages and pages of coverage we’ve given this movie throughout it’s production, it’s finally available to watch in the UK! Impact sits down with cast and crew to look back at the making of a UK action classic.

It’s a sad fact that for every big screen action movie like Taken or Transporter 3, there are at least half a dozen direct to DVD action films that slip almost under the radar direct onto the shelves of your local DVD store, and for every one of those, there will be at least another ten that will go unreleased. The UK’s Modern Life team consider themselves lucky that not only did their first film, Left For Dead get a DVD release in several countries (including the UK), but that it also managed to achieve a certain amount of cult status. Following up on your first feature is never as easy as one might think, and in the spirit of truly independent filmmaking, two years and several aborted projects littered the way to the film they finally settled upon. A back to basics hardcore British revenge thriller inspired by such films as Get Carter and The Long Good Friday. On the eve of the film’s UK DVD release, producer Phil Hobden takes a look back at the production with some of the cast and crew.

Ten men destroyed his life, taking away everything that Ryan ever cared about....

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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This month, we look back at a teen-noir series that held on for three seasons while being overlooked by many. Veronica Mars - college student by day, private eye by night.

Tell someone that you enjoy watching the adventures of a teenage girl in high school and unless you’re a teenager yourself there’s a good chance your credibility will hit an all time low. There may even be police involved. Classroom antics may be good for the Tweenies, but it hardly seems like the last bastion of discerning action entertainment. So perhaps it’s not surprising that it took a little while for word to spread about a little show called Veronica Mars. But when it did, it certainly caught fire.

The thing about Veronica Mars is that despite the high school and then college trappings, this show was never about kids. The angst, setting and glossiness of the cast may have made it look like a Beverly Hills 901210, a Dawson’s Creek or The OC type programme from a distance but this was more a ruse to get it commissioned than a template to fashion it from. In reality it was the closest thing to a Raymond Chandler old-school murder mystery vibe as you’d see on any network. It might be clothed in the latest hip fashions but this was a classic crime thriller at heart. One reviewer hit the perfectly manicured...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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John Mosby has been away all month, and this is the reason why... Another gathering of the Highlander faithful - this time in sunny LA - sees the usual suspects revisiting the franchise that made their names. Plus, some interesting news about several affiliated projects, including an animated sequel to War of the Worlds!

It’s a sunny day in California. Three days ago the temperatures reached into triple figures, but now the heat outside is a more manageable seventy or so. Inside, however, the heat is on as the ‘Sanctuary’ event is about to launch. Nearly a year’s worth of planning is culminating in around fifteen invited guests and two hundred fans of the franchise jetting in from all over the world to celebrate the show.

Despite having an enviable brand-recognition, logic suggests a big event like this shouldn’t be happening. Highlander, after all, is no longer on the television except in satellite and cable reruns and the most recent (fifth) Highlander film, The Source, made the generally derided second Highlander film look like classic Shakespeare (almost everyone connected with it has distanced themselves from the mess it became). Yet, the busy lobby of the Westin LAX clearly demonstrates a underlying passion still exists for the bigger, wider mythology. What’s more, among the familiar stalwart fan faces are a significant number of recent converts... some only discovering the show in the last year. Some are even second-generation fans. And none of these people are the costume-wearing obsessives that some elements of the press like to...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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Beau Smith gets reflective about the inevitability of aging, even though your comicbook heroes don’t...

Through the decades that I’ve been reading and writing comic books I’ve seen most all of them change. Sometimes their change snuck up on me and other times it was gradual, like gaining weight or losing your hair. It first hit me when one day I realized that I was older than the characters that I had been reading for so long.

Characters like Robin The Boy Wonder were the first for me to pass up. That wasn’t too hard to take because I always felt older than Dick Grayso (the original Robin). Next were characters like Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Johnny Storm/Human Torch. I have to admit, it was kind of strange to realize that I had been out of college and well into the adult working world while Peter and Johnny were just hitting their twenties.

It was a bigger shock when I passed up Clark Kent/Superman, Bruce Wayne/Batman, Tony Stark/Iron Man and Matt Murdock/Daredevil. Those guys were in their 30s! What was next, being older than Ben Grimm/The Thing and Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic? Reed Richards had to be old, he had those white side walls in his hair. (That’s how they used to show that a...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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We miss Battlestar Galactica terribly. Luckily, a prequel series called Caprica is beginning soon. Impact takes a look at the pilot episode.

Gangsters, millionaires, terrorists, conspiracies and... robots. This isn’t your daddy’s sci-fi, but nor is it quite Battestar Galactica. What comes next is actually what’s gone before... As the pilot episode of the BSG prequel ‘Caprica’ gets an early DVD release ahead of the show itself, we assess the latest incarnation’s potential...

Battlestar Galactica is generally considered a benchmark in modern sci-fi action. It had all the ingredients needed for critical-acclaim: all-out action, a ‘realistic’ grit, character depth and an over-reaching mythology on which to build. If occasionally that balance tilted more one way than the other, it still managed to combine them to the extent it achieved both mainstream recognition and awards. But with the show now finished (see our Deja View feature last issue) where were the fans to get their next fix from within that fictional universe? A cylon-themed special ‘The Plan’ will be seen later in the year, but the main thrust of interest has been in a prequel series. Caprica won’t debut on US screens until early 2010, but the pilot was released on DVD in late April (and, ironically, pirated onto the Net a week before!)

It’s clear from the outset that this is a subtly different...

[ This article is available in full in the June 2009 edition of Impact ]

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