We begin our Districtly interesting coverage with a look at this parkour-paced sequel. Luc Besson pens the full-on action follow-up and Paris will never be the same again!

District 13 (aka Banlieue 13) was one of those rare movies: one which harkens back to the classic in-your-face antics of 1980s Hollywood outings and yet done with such aplomb and style (and lack of CGI) that it was liable to have you applauding at its sheer audacity and fun. In a era where stunts and set-pieces are so impossibly enhanced by computer graphics and green-screens, there’s always something refreshing about seeing naturally snappy action which speaks for itself. What’s more, the art of ‘parkour’ (in which wireless actors bounce off every surface imaginable) proved so shaking and stirring that it would be used to kick-start Daniel Craig’s premiere outing as James Bond.

District 13’s story, owing more than a little to Escape from New York but with a more basic execution, was a good enough thrill-ride to be enjoyed on its own merits. It’s moderate success, domestically and internationally, has now led to an inevitable sequel.

District 13: Ultimatum picks up three years after the events of the first movie. However, we’re largely in for a similar ride, albeit with a sense of momentum that more than a few sequels miss out on. There’s something to be said for...

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

View more articles from the reviews west category

More Alien Nation than Independence Day, this monsters-amongst-us epic, set in South Africa has been getting rave reviews. John Bierly examines a case of alien apartheid.

Once upon a time, a giant flying saucer with all the texture and grace of a primitive steel factory came to Earth. Just as surprising as its arrival was its location - it didn’t stop above any of the usual suspects like Manhattan, or Washington, D.C., or Chicago. It came to rest in the skies directly over Johannesburg in South Africa - and it just sat there. No heat rays. No invading alien armies. No agenda. The whole world waited with baited breath for a first contact that never came, so we flew up there and cut our way inside to find a dying hive of insect-like creatures whose appearance earned them the derogatory nickname ‘Prawns.’ Not content to let them live (or die) on their ship, we dragged them down and gave them a home called District 9 while all the world’s nations tried to figure out what to do for them - or with them.

As those first few months became twenty years, the fenced-in District 9 devolved into a dirty, dangerous, militarised slum. Multi-Nation United (MNU) was formed to manage the Prawns, though their interests were focused far more sharply on harnessing the Prawns’ alien weaponry for human...

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

View more articles from the reviews west category

July was the month for comic conventions... Impact takes a look at the London Film & Comic Con and the ever-growing San Diego event!

Whether you were in London or San Diego in the last month or so, it would have been impossible to miss the fact that geeks have inherited the Earth. London’s Earls Court was surrounded by more storm-troopers and cos-play characters than you could shake a wand at. The casts of Transformers mixed with Stargate, Harry Potter fans queued alongside wookies and we’re pretty sure there was more than one Jason Vorheese stalking the aisles. A week later the San Diego Conference Centre positively heaved under the attendance of over 140,000 attendees of the city’s annual comic-con with the casts of Twilight, Doctor Who, Fringe, 24, Chuck, Smallville, Fast Forward and many more holding court and all the major comic companies touted their latest titles.

While the London event might not match the sheer size of its transatlantic cousin, it could certainly boast a strong line-up of guests and enthusiasm. The LFCC is primarily a chance to meet and get the autograph of key genre celebrities but is now hosting more and more talks. This year the number of seated guests stretched completely across the Court arena. The likes of Scott Bakula, Michael Shanks, Jewel Staite, genre veteran Michael Ironside and Danny...

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

View more articles from the festivals/conventions/events category

After years as a key supporting player, Danny Trejo has just started filming Machete - a movie that will put him centre-stage at last. He talks to Impact about the project and his views on Hollywood...

A few years ago, we caught up with Danny Trejo during his visit to the Bradford Film Festival. Promoting not just an action movie but a documentary about his own life (Champion) it was clear then that here was a driven man, informed but not defined by his troubled life prior to stepping in front of the camera. He wasn’t resting on his laurels and certainly hasn’t since.

In the last few years he’s been in so many projects, it’s a wonder the IMDB can keep up. From Stargate: Atlantis, to the Hallowe’en remake to Desperate Housewives and Eyeborgs, to providing voices for Spider-man, King of the Hill and generally being an imposing presence in any number of projects, Danny’s Rushmore-esque face and voice are unmistakable.
Now Trejo is re-teaming with his old friend and regular director Robert Rodriguez to fulfil a long-standing promise to create a film around him. The film Machete was first referenced when Rodriguez and Tarantino joined forces for Grindhouse - the Death Proof and Planet Terror double-bill (though Danny played Uncle Machete in the Spy Kids movies and has frequently been named after blades in Rodriguez‘s outings). The film may have been treated fairly ambivalently...

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

View more articles from the interviews category

Critics, including Impact’s editor John Mosby, are already calling this one of the best films of the entire year. In the first of a two-part feature, we examine its journey to the screen.

Ask any soldier and they’ll tell you that war, far from being glamorous, is a special kind of hell - neither entertaining nor attractive. It doesn’t pause for commercial breaks nor pace itself according to power-ballads. However, ask any of those self-same veterans and they’ll probably also admit that it does carry with it a special kind of adrenaline rush that can be as addictive as any drug and as compelling as any love affair. Cinema, on the other hand, is ALL about entertaining. Even the most though-provoking dramas are essentially there to get your bum on seats and turn over enough filthy lucre at the box-office to keep the studios afloat and the talent employed. For anyone to make a film about war, never mind a contemporary conflict still raging across the headlines, it takes a huge amount of skill, a great deal of hope and more than a touch of audacity. The metaphorical minefields of taste, etiquette and accuracy on either side of the tightrope you walk, make such projects seem ill-advised at best and, at worse, slipshod, insulting and opportunistic.
So when you hear there’s a new ‘action-drama’ set in Iraq, you’re allowed to be more than...

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

View more articles from the reviews west category

Calum Waddell takes his monthly walk along the controversial borders of extreme action. This month he casts his eye over gross-out-fest Grotesque and the superior 13: Game of Death.

As these words are being typed Lars von Trier’s mesmerizing Antichrist is causing all kinds of controversy as it kicks off its UK theatrical run. Predictably, much of the whining is coming from the right wing press with Christopher Hart, in The Daily Mail, stating (without any hint of self-awareness) “I haven’t seen it myself, nor shall I... But it would poison my mind and imagination, with explicit, ferocious scenes of sexual violence that would stay with me forever. Isn’t that good enough reason to ban it, or at least demand extensive cuts?” Yes, mate - you are right! We should ban any film that might cause you some personal upset - even if you have already made a decision not see it.

Anyway, he goes on: “But have we - that is to say, the hesitant, fumbling, comfortably cushioned, value-free Leftish elite who now govern us - got the guts? I doubt it.” Hilarious stuff, of course, from the newspaper that - twenty-five years ago - was trying to convince people that the real threat to UK society was not unemployment and the crippling of white collar industries, but rather the free availability of The Evil Dead and Zombie Flesh-Eaters...

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

View more articles from the asia extreme category

Andrez Bergen takes a look at Sengoku Basara - the latest project from Production IG.

Sans Wikipedia, you’d be forgiven for not immediately guessing when the Sengoku Period took place. So let’s indulge in a quickie history lesson here... Also known as the ‘Warring States era,’ the Sengoku Period covers a time of dramatic political and military flip-flop that gripped then-divided Japan, from the middle of the 15th century to the beginning of the 17th, when shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu took charge.

Think something akin to the barbarity of Europe’s Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), minus the religious hogwash but with occasional earthquakes added into the mix, and you may begin to get an accurate picture. Some 357 years, two months and six days after the peace treaty that ended the European equivalent of complete chaos (in other words, on July 21st, 2005, just to save your fingers), Japanese videogame producer Capcom - the makers of similarly rough-and-tumble games like Street Fighter and Resident Evil - released Sengoku Basara (Devil Kings) for
PlayStation 2.

Obviously the game’s specifics revolved around the mayhem of the Warring States period, and it starred three real-life historical warlords as the central cast: Sanada Yukimura (once dubbed the #1 warrior in Japan), Date Masamune (nicknamed the One-Eyed Dragon, for obvious reasons), Takeda Shingen (the...

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

View more articles from the anime category

Andrez Bergen meets Mamoru Oshii to discuss his future projects.

Mamoru Oshii has a hell of a lot of artistic mileage under one very liberal assembly belt. This is the man who directed the innovative post-cyberpunk anime movies, Ghost In The Shell (1995) and its sequel Innocence (2004), and offered up his own enigmatic fusion of live-action and digital effects in Avalon in 2001.

He also wrote the story behind the dark alternate reality that hallmarked Jin-Roh: The Wolf’s Brigade and helped to conceive Blood: The Last Vampire - the first fully-digital Japanese animation feature, and the first anime film to chop and choose between both Japanese and English languages.

While Hayao Miyazaki continues to be the current international golden boy of Japanese animation thanks to an Oscar back in 2004 for Best Animated Feature (for Spirited Away), and due to the high-profile American release this year of Miyazaki’s last movie, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (with voices provided by Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Cate Blanchett and others), Oshii has been quietly and methodically helming his own critically-lauded projects.

Innocence was selected to compete at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for the coveted Palme d'Or prize, making it the first (and thus far, only) anime to be nominated, while Japanime...

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

View more articles from the anime category

Festival favourite One Chanbara hits UK shores with a new name. Anime Attack investigates...

The New York Asian Film Festival (see last issue) seems to serve as an annual pointer for the DVD releases that reach our shores the following year. A highlight of last year’s festival was OneChanbara - the heroine of which made the cover our 200th issue - and this month sees the DVD release of the film, courtesy of Manga Entertainment. Somewhat appropriate, as this film is pretty much live action anime through and through...

An adaptation of the Japanese video game series OneChanbara (re-named Chanbara Beauty for the UK release), helmed by Yohei Fukuda (also responsible for the much derided Grotesque - reviewed in Asian Extreme elsewhere in this issue) this marks the cinematographer’s directorial debut. A low budget action horror based around a bikini clad, stetson wearing, sword wielding angel of death on a mission of vengeance - there’s plenty to love about this movie - but can it side-step the curse of the game adaptation? (Yes Super Mario Brothers - we’re talking about you and your ilk.)

Set in a post apocalyptic future where a zombie plague has been unleashed upon the world by a mad scientist called Dr. Sugita who is on a mission to perfect the ultimate...

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

View more articles from the anime category

The Hong Kong release of Murderer, the directorial debut of Roy Chow [Chow Hin-yeung], starring Aaron Kwok [Stormriders], has racked up a successful run at the box office, but also a huge amount of controversy. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder brings us the first UK review.

Murderer opens with the discovery of Tai (Chen Kuan-tai), a detective barely alive after a brutal assault - while another Detective, Ling (Aaron Kwok), is found unconscious nearby. Ling wakes up in the hospital suffering memory loss and unable to explain what happened and what is going with a particularly disturbing case that his team had been investigating.

Ling’s memory loss seems suspiciously convenient to other members of the police squad and he finds himself a suspect - not helped by various clues pointing to his possible involvement. Ling is in torn apart, struggling to uncover the truth and identity of the serial killer he’s investigating, while constantly worrying that maybe he is guilty himself... suffering from a split personality that he can’t control.

As the case grows and more deaths occur, Ling finds himself increasingly at odds with his fellow officers, several of whom begin to openly question his motives. His own wife (Ning Chang), his adopted son (Tam Jan-yut) and sister’s (Josie Ho) concerns for him, serves only to make him more paranoid. Ling begins to question himself, his colleagues, his family and his own sanity as he struggles to find the person responsible for the terrible situation he finds...

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

View more articles from the reviews east category

Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder talks to Murderer director, Roy Chow [Chow Hin-yeung].

The success story at the Hong Kong box office this summer has been the first film from director Roy Chow (Chow Hin-yeung) Murderer, starring Aaron Kwok (Kwok Fu-shing) as a man whose life takes a nightmarish turn for the worst. Despite its success at the box office, there has been much controversy surrounding the movie with both Chow and his scriptwriter Christine To, coming under fire, it would appear, for the crime of having made a successful movie. Impact’s Eastern editor, Mike Leeder, talks to Roy about the genesis of the film and the resulting controversy in this exclusive interview.

Impact: Roy, can you begin by telling us how you first got involved with the industry?
Roy Chow: I came into the industry just after I graduated, as part of a new creative development team for Edko Films and, after a year or so, I was given the opportunity to work more closely with Edko’s boss, Producer Bill Kong (Fearless, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon). I started off working as his assistant and was given the opportunity to get an insight into many different aspects of film production and development, from reviewing potential projects and scripts, working with directors, working with the...

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

View more articles from the interviews category

Korean movie-making may be expanding, but how difficult is it to earn a good living as a stuntman within it? Mike Leeder goes behind the scenes...

It almost seems as if you need to be a little bit crazy to want to become a stuntman, you’re risking your life in the name of entertainment, but too often you’re the unsung hero. While the actor takes the credit and acclaim, you’re sitting in the shadows nursing your wounds. In the world of Asian action cinema, for every Jackie Chan or Sammo Hung who makes the leap from stuntman to superstar there’s a thousand tales of those who didn’t make it - Action Boys takes a look at the highs and lows of a group of Korean stunt performers and the obstacles they have to overcome both onscreen and off.

Korean action cinema has made quite an impact on audiences around the world in recent years, films like Shiri, Bichunmoo, Champion, Crying Fist, My Wife is a Gangster, City of Violence, Old Boy and The Good, The Bad & The Weird have entertained audiences around the world, featuring some incredible martial arts and stunt work that rates alongside Hong Kong at its finest. Impact takes a first look at the documentary.

Directing and starring in his own movie has long been a dream of Jung Byung-gil’s and Action Boys allows...

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

View more articles from the behind the scenes category

Ross W Clarkson shoots people for a living... and they like it. Impact meets one of the most talented action cinematographers in the business...

Hong Kong based Ross W Clarkson has made a name for himself around the world, by shooting people! He’s shot Jean-Claude Van Damme several times in numerous countries, Scott Adkins, Dolph Lundgren, Lau Ching-wan, Simon Yam, Steven Seagal, Wesley Snipes - he’s shot them all, hell he even shot a Shark In Venice for Nu Image! And let’s not even get into Sex & Chopsticks: The Forbidden Legend! Clarkson has built a solid reputation with such credits as Undisputed 2: Last man Standing, The Victim, The Suspect, The Mechanik, Replicant, Ninja and most recently Undisputed 3, as one of the best action cinematographers in the business. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder caught up with Clarkson in Hong Kong for the following interview.

Impact: Ross, how did you first get involved with the industry and at what level? Were you always interested in being a cameraman/
cinematographer?
Ross Clarkson: I always had some interest in filming and photography, but it was when I was about thirteen or so, I saw a news crew filming and thought that maybe I could pursue a career as a cameraman. I spoke to my teachers and they listened to what I had to say and then...

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

View more articles from the interviews category

After breaking heads in her bone crunching debut Chocolate, Thailand’s first lady of fighting females, Jeeja Yanin, looks set to break hearts as well as heads in her most welcome second starring role, Raging Phoenix which opens in Thailand this month. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder takes a first look at the project.

Yanin’s debut movie Chocolate was directed by Pracha Pinkaew who, of course, helmed both of Tony Jaa’s breakout projects Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong/Warrior King, while Thailand’s premier action director (and former action hero himself), Panna Rittikrai and his team handled the film’s fight and stunt choreography. Now, for her second film, known in Thai as Du Suay Doo (which translates as ‘stubborn, beautiful but fierce’), or Raging Phoenix as it’s called in English, Jeeja is teamed with young director Rashane Limtrakul who had successfully combined elements of action, comedy and music in his movie 4 Romances, while Pinkaew oversees the production and Rittikrai and his team handle the fight and stunt choreography once again. Playing opposite Yanin as her leading man and potential love interest is French/Chinese actor and stuntman Kazu (aka Patrick Tang from the ‘Tri-X’ martial arts tricks and stunt team).

While the plot for Chocolate was revealed long before the movie was released, producers Sahmongkol are keeping the main aspects of the Raging Phoenix storyline under wraps until the film hits cinemas across Thailand later this month. But the release of an English subtitled trailer suggests the film focuses on human trafficking, and Yanin’s efforts to...

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

View more articles from the reviews east category

Each month impact looks at the shows you should be watching or seeking out on DVD. This month we look at the continued success of the hot-blooded vampire outing True Blood.

It has to be said that vampires have never really gone out of fashion. Since Dracula came ashore in Whitby, literature and entertainment has thrilled to the world of bloodsuckers and their prey. Recently it seemed as if the Nosferatu were a little busy getting the teeth into angsty teenagers with the likes of Twilight having the kind of huge box-office draw only previously seen in the demographic by Harry Potter.

So, it’s probably about time that adults took back the night and the show best doing that is True Blood - currently rounding off its second season in the US and its first season doing quite nicely over in the UK. If you haven’t caught on to the show, then it’s about time you did (it’s already out on Region One DVD and will be out on Region 2 soon).

The series follows the story of Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) a barmaid in Bon Temps, Louisiana who also has the gift for picking up the stray thoughts of others. Given that her town is already a hotbed of secrets with affairs, petty crime and lustful yearnings, she has to deliberately shield herself from accidentally learning people’s inner-most thoughts. However, one day...

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

View more articles from the television category

With more key roles cast, Impact takes a look at the progress made in bringing the Green Hornet to the silver screen.

After seemingly languishing in development hell for what seems like decades, The Green Hornet finally looks set to hit the big screen in 2010, with Seth Rogen from Funny People and Knocked Up playing the title character. Until very recently it appeared that Hong Kong comedian Stephen Chow Sing-chi was set to not only play the role of Kato, but also direct the movie. But ‘creative differences’ reared their head, causing Chow to relinquish the director’s chair to Michael Gondry, and finally Chow has stepped away from the project completely. A world wide casting search is under way to find someone to fill the role of Kato, originally played by Bruce Lee in the 1960’s TV series. Impact’s Eastern editor Mike Leeder takes a look at the history of the character as production prepares to begin.

The Green Hornet was originally created by George W Trendle and Fran Striker for an American radio show in the 1930s, and has since appeared in comic book form, film serials in the 1940s, and most famously an American live action TV series starring Van Williams as ‘The Green Hornet’ and a certain Bruce Lee as ‘Kato’. Britt Reid is a seemingly...

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

View more articles from the behind the scenes category

GI Joe is loud, proud and brassy but has fared better with film critics than its other Hasbro stable-mate, Transformers. Impact finds out why...

Let it be known that leading toy maker Hasbro are probably quite happy with their spreadsheet this year. They have not one, but two tie-in movies that are likely to recharge their merchandising market. Despite the critical mauling, Transformers 2 is cinematic catnip for the actual robotic toy-range and the movie has taken a huge bite out of the summer box-office. Now, hot on its heels, comes another franchise multimedia opportunity as American soldier-palooza GI Joe explodes onto screens.

While the UK had Action Man, the US’s version of the concept opened up a more overtly patriotic-based entourage of a team of warriors fighting for truth and justice. The film reflects more of the international (but American-led way) aspects developed for the later comic franchise and toy range. Basically, ‘the Joes’ are now an international super-equipped task force that can be called upon when the super-equipped baddies get a little too nefarious. Both sides seems to have the a gazillion dollars of resources, top secret bases, futuristic weapons, sexy outfits to kick ass in and an unhealthy disregard for collateral damage. Especially, this time, anything French.

James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), CEO of Military Armaments Research Syndicate (that’s MARS to you and me)...

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

View more articles from the reviews west category

What is even scarier than zombies? Nazi zombies! John Mosby talks to the director of the festival-favourite and distinctly silly Scandinavian guilty pleasure Dod Sno / Dead Snow.

If the young, upwardly mobile bankers of the 1980s were ‘Yuppies’ and the date-friendly flicks are ‘rom-coms’, then one suspects that the villains of Dead Snow can only be referred as to Zimbies. That’s Nazi Zombies, to you and heaven help you if you steal their booty. Dead Snow (Dod Sno) tells the story of a group of Norwegian medical students who head up to a cabin in the frozen wastes for a weekend of fun and frolicking. There’s snow-mobiling and sex and camp-fire stories, but soon after things start going bump in the night in a good way, things start bumping really badly. It appears the cellar of the cabin hides a long-discarded chest of treasure, hoarded by a group of blood-thirsty Nazis. In the dying days of World War II, the townspeople inflicted some righteous wrath on their oppressors, but it appears that hell didn’t want them either. Now they want revenge and the trinkets and a side-helping of human flesh. Soon enough, there’s blood-trails amongst the snow-tracks.

While there isn’t anything terribly new here, it certainly isn’t a terrible film. Far from it, Dead Snow is an affectionate riff on a time when horror movies were not weighed...

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

View more articles from the reviews west category

Beau Smith is back with his insider’s view of the comic-book industry. Still on the theme of the undead, he wonders why zombies can never get an even break (except with a cricket bat or other assorted blunt objects!)

In the pop culture world of horror, being a zombie is always shown as the bottom of the boot. In fact, that’s usually where you end up if you’re a zombie, at the bottom of somebody’s boot. Beau Smith takes a look at his history with the undead...

If you’re a zombie in the comics, the movies, on TV or in a novel, you’re usually shown as not being very bright, you have a plodding, heavy-footed walk and your hygiene stinks - literally. Your oratory skills suck and you have skin that a leper would shun. I know these things. I’ve shackled zombies in my own stories with these clichés in my IDW Publishing series, Wynonna Earp as well as in Guy Gardner Warrior during my run on it at DC Comics. Why? Well, because it was the easy way.

In horror, the vampires are the elite. Like zombies, they’re also the undead, but they dress nice, have a way with the ladies and are well spoken world travellers who sleep all day and party all night. How unfair is that, if you’re a zombie?

Even the rest of the lower level monsters have it better than zombies. The hunchback assistants get to...

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

View more articles from the comics category