eric jacobus
THE HIT LIST: January 30, 2017
Filmmaker and actor/stuntman Eric Jacobus gets in touch with video game personas, Tekken’s Devil Jin and Street Fighter’s Balrog for two cool character movelist videos. Following that are stunt reels by stuntwoman Brianna Goldie, stuntman and filmmaker Fernando Jay Huerto, and fellow stunt players Morgan Benoit, C.J. Padera, Thanh An Nguyen, Devin Regan, Cody Robinson, Timothy Johnson and the stunt canucks over at the newly established Action 88.
THE HIT LIST: December 19, 2016
The short is just the latest to arrive from Shakesheff in the weeks since the announcement of his latest starring and directorial debut, Kamikaze which is now available on DVD in the U.S. courtesy of Indican Pictures. It’s the first film of its kind to come out of Wales and Shakesheff’s work, stemming from his credits as a bonafide Hollywood stuntman and extended further to online netizens and fans of martial arts action is sure to further put Wales on the map for years to come.
THE HIT LIST – April 18, 2016
This week’s installation of The Hit List presents some great pieces to share, and without a doubt I will be resurrecting another lovely piece of shortfilm worth viewing for those not in the know.
THE HIT LIST – March 28, 2016
First up is, Hammergirl, a piece I still pride myself on after all these years of following fight choreographer Vlad Rimburg’s work, and the second comes right from the bowels of EMC Monkeys with a test fight of their own with Tony Sre and Bryan Sloyer.
THE HIT LIST – December 14, 2015
My weekend started off as a really loaded one. But, again, I was determined to squeeze in this week’s round up of amazing experimental fight action and cinematic stuntwork by some of today’s inspired performers…
That said, it’s been more than a year since I started conceptualizing these articles as Hit Lists and if you’ve been following us long enough, you already know how this goes: Stunt reels! Alas, you get two Vimeo exclusives from stuntwoman Thekla Hutyrova and fight coordinator Matt Berberi, followed by a YouTube-friendly playlist of fellow stunt performers in the form of an extended reel from martial artist and filmmaker Shaun Charney, and stunt reels by Brandyn T. Williams, famed Batman (1989) double Dave Lea, martial artist Nikki Stanley new reels from filmmakers Tony Diaz and actor Dennis Ruel, and a new 2016 reel by the award-winning martial arts performance troupe, Team Sideswipe.
Thekla Hutyrova Action Reel 2015 from Thekla Hutyrova on Vimeo.
MATT BERBERI 2015 FIGHT COORDINATOR REEL from matt berberi on Vimeo.
And now, off to some teaser news of which there are two; the first I found comes straight from the bearings of 233 Film with Ghanan director Antoni-Jordi Owusu for the upcoming short, The Exchange, which has some terrific shots to sell itself to an audience. The second hails from a Film Combat Syndicate team favorite, Lunar Stunts who’ve, for better or worse, prove that it’s neither too early nor late for a zombie movie with the upcoming short, The Highway.
Press play and feel the groove!
Time to get on board with some fight action this week, and as such, have a look at these samplers from Dardrex‘s own Darren Holmquist and Martin Chan, another sampler from Kefi Abrikh and Djibril Newik Chase, the EMC Monkey’s newest – Super Park Fighters, Eric Jacobus’s newest Doom-inspired Go Pro fight with Thomas Tan, actor and stuntman and newly-decorated Karate black belt Chuck Johnson’s latest endeavor with Quiet Flame Stunts in Poster Boys featuring Yasufumi Minowa, Corridor Digital’s Cat Dog Kung Fu, Ronnie Shalvis’s latest Star Wars-inspired freerunning lightsaber short with CBR Stunts and T. Ryan Mooney’s newest spectacular action piece, Tooth For A Tooth.
And lastly, the likely final Super Powered Beatdown of 2015 from the folks over at Bat In The Sun. Darth Maul goes toe-to-toe with your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, featuring respective performances by Dirk Ellis and Power Rangers: Dino Charge co-star Yoshua Sudarso, with fight choreography by Alvin Hsing, and with all votes cast for this latest video, fans can expect a new edit with an alternative ending in January. Enjoy the cosplay debates and the action-packed simulation below!
And there you have it. Subscribe to these channels for all the content you need and be sure to catch any of last week’s entries if you missed them. Moreover, we’re down to the wire for 2015 so if you wanna make Hit List history and have some awesome content you think deserves a spotlight, shoot it over to us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com!
THE FIGHTING JOURNEYMAN: An Interview With Eric Nguyen
He acts and occasionally performs stunts, but he especially exercises his strengths behind the camera as well with his brother, Irvin, and fellow Lunar principle, Mikey Arce, among the team getting down and dirty to help manifest Eric’s vision. It’s an honor to see people like him doing what he does and a true gift to the genre as it adds to the potential quality it often starves within the mainstream, and you needn’t look further than the content on his channel with projects like Eat.Pray.Ninja. and the Pandora’s Box trilogy, and several of his collaborations with other filmmakers which are also online.
THE HIT LIST – August 17, 2015
Well, Monday night has arrived and I pretty much consider myself well-rested seeing as how I ended up back in blogger-mode on Sunday night. Some days you burn out, and on others you just start clicking…it’s funny, really.
Anyway, with our return to the start of a new week, the Hit List is back just as well, lending nods to a meaty handful of stunt professionals every week in attribution to their hard work shown in reels and shortfilms alike. Alas, the new stunt reel playlist for the week is now up and running with reels by Donovan Sheehan, Boris Martinez, Marco Pancrazi, an awesome action reel by Raze co-star Allene Quincy, Jacob Sebastian Malm‘s latest reel featuring his Turandot stunt team from the summer in an illuminous new fire showreel, and actor David Sakurai in a new Vimeo-exclusive action reel of his own assembled from several of his recent action projects, including Dark Samurai and Echoes Of A Ronin!
David Sakurai Way of the Sword from サクライ on Vimeo.
Now onto more web content with some more specials, and if you were watching the last reel carefully, you may have recognized Andy Le who can also be seen among his principle team members at Martial Club in a new video up and running by Just Kidding Films where they learn all the ins and outs of Tricking. And if you know Just Kidding Films, you know your face is going to hurt plenty by the end. Enjoy in all it’s delightful laughs!
I seldom spot fan videos, although when I do, quite a handful of them present just the right amount of flair attributed to the respective works they acknowledge. It’s a case in no way dissimilar in actress and stuntwoman PeiPei Alena Yuan‘s latest love letter to martial arts action star Donnie Yen by way of the opening B-Boy sequence in Yuen Woo Ping’s 1995 Hong Kong action comedy, Mismatched Couples. Yuan also happens to be a dancer, and her credentials notwithstanding (i.e. Step Up 3D, Battle B-Boy), her talent speaks for itself. Watch and leasrn!
Now let’s get into some more action-oriented material with a nifty handful of trailers – one including some updated and rather crazy cool poster art as of late.
Aside from making other videos, Rising Tiger Films’s latest, Black Scar Blues, has clearly been a more concentrated effort at something larger in scale. The film is directed by Leroy Nguyen who stars along with Edmund Shum and Queen Sayat, and focuses on two drug traffickers whose bond of friendship is slowly eroded through a series of events when personal ambition, lust and greed get in the way.
Nguyen will be presenting the film later this year at the Urban Action Showcase and Expo in New York City for the last of its year-long festival run boasting a slew of laurels and accolades well-earned, including as recently as the past two weekends in California at An Anti-Hero Production Genre Film Festival and The L.A. Neo Noir Film And Script Festival. Hopefully by then, the short will be released on YouTube unless it acquires a decent on-demand or purchase platform beforehand. In the meantime, it’s got a fresh new trailer now running online with an updated poster, and once more, it has a quote. By me! And you’re welcome.
We also have a new behind-the-scenes featurette with Nguyen explaining the four year-long process in working up to the high creative plateau presented for the film’s final fight. Having seen it for myself, I have to say it really does deliver the desired effect.
Other trailers just beneath include the second promo for Dance Nocturnal creative Jyo Carolino’s new action short, I Am Spartan, Tokyo-based action actor Chuck Johnson’s upcoming surreal action comedy short, Fists Of Absinthe, and 3 Strands Of Rope Productions’s Assassin/Darkside, sequelizing actor Calvert David Miles’s 2014 awarded short, Assassin: Origins.
New short action vids are also circulating the web this week, and kicking this next leg off on the Hit List is League Of Legends themed short, Udyr’s School Of Kung Fu, initially released back in May from Art School Dropouts and Fighting Panda Productions. Actor and fight choreographer Joey Min leads this one and its one adding to his resume of years of awesome action shorts and films, which makes it all the more awesome and honoring that he’s now a part time contributor to Film Combat Syndicate to provide his perspective of action on film from time to time.
Check it out below as well as other new action projects this week, including Narayana Cabral’s Spy Vs. Spy with Angela Bend and Danielle Stahl, the long-awaited release, Grave Error featuring Darren Holmquist and the one and only Eric Jacobus, and…well, probably the sickest Mortal Kombat fan short you’ll ever see online..ever. And if you know RackaRacka, you know this ain’t gonna no PG-13 shit. So consider yourself forewarned!
Finally, a few new action shorts have also been unveiled this week in slightly longer duration. Azi Rahman’s cerebral action thriller, Drake is now online starring Cengiz Dervis in the role of a man trapped in his own mind amid spiritual battle with inner-demonic forces. The action is largely fueled by the music for a more dramatic affect so don’t expect any foley effects as the stuntwork is solely visual.
And last but not least, gladly continuing the vision of R-rated superhero fanfare with brutal and gory action sequences is the latest sequel offering from Workhorse Pictures, Storms Of Carnage: The Black Panther Unleashed Part 2. Actor and director D.A. Jackson reprises his role once more opposite K. Jackson in a story of espionage, betrayal and the moral paradox that arises when battling evil, ultimately pitting the Black Panther against opponents on both sides of the spectrum, humans and mutants alike.
Fans familiar with the source material may either love or hate this one depending on the viewer as these things normally tend to be slightly more controversial than intended (see Adi Shankar’s Power/Rangers). For what it’s worth though, this one has quite the admirable traits for something truly worth the enjoyment as it’s full of special effects, explosive action and dramatic intensity to accomodate the epic final fight between our embattled couple.
Twenty minutes and counting, folks. Press play and enjoy!
There is at least another short that I haven’t gotten around to yet as it’s forty minutes long and dated only by about few years, but I will share that one next week. For now though, if you have time to kill then last week’s Hit List may be worth your remaining minutes at the moment. Above all else however, do subscribe to the channels above, and if you or someone you know makes awesome, QUALITY action and stunt reels, films and shorts like these, send them to us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com!
CHASING SOULS: Catching Up With Actor, Martial Artist And Musician J. Cheung
Film Combat Syndicate: Greetings J, and thanks for taking the time to chat for a bit. It’s been a few years since our previous interview in the company of your group, thr3guys at the time. How have things been?
THE HIT LIST – February 18, 2015
I kinda think K&K are onto something!