Standout film favorite Quentin Dupieux has been on our festival radar for sometime now and his latest is finally in toe with zany sci-fi adventure, Smoking Causes Coughing. That means sassy puppet characters, retro heroics, exploding monsters, innuendo and much more now offered in the delightful new trailer ahead of the film’s theatrical and digital release on March 31 from Magnet Releasing.
This will come as a shock to no one, but action films are violent. It’s simply inherent to the formula. Bullets flying, cars crashing, wild brawls, and the destruction of property are par for the course. There is also a lot of death and loss caused by that carnage. Sometimes that aspect is hand waved away with a “just don’t think about it” attitude or it’s used as motivation for even more violence. Rarely though does a film with action trappings confront the heavy thought of what loss and the associated trauma actually does to a person. That idea though is at the core of Danish writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen’s new film RIDERS OF JUSTICE.
The “grizzled older badass extracting revenge on people who unwittingly screwed with them” has become a tired trope in the years since Liam Neeson first warned of his “particular set of skills” in 2008’s TAKEN. Since then, almost every action star, or older actor trying to revitalize their career, has done a film with a similar setup, leading to understandably mixed results. With so many examples of this action subgenre around now, it takes exceptional talent and a unique approach to make one of these projects interesting.
Magnolia Pictures’ Magnet Releasing will rollout Motorrad helmer Vicente Amorim’s Yakuza Princess later this year. Magnolia EVP Dori Begley and Magnolia SVP of Acquisitions John Von Thaden negotiated the deal with Pip Ngo from XYZ Films who acquired international sales rights on the action thriller back in February.
Wilson Yip’s Ip Man saga may have come to a close, but the legend remains immortalized through other storied takes based on the titular Wing Chun grandmaster. That then brings us to Ip Man: Kung Fu Master, from director Li Liming and signaling the return of actor Dennis To (The Legend Is Born: Ip Man, Kung Fu League).
When the Universe decides what it wants, it’s pointless to resist. With his family’s life at stake, Joseph Steadman finds himself the unwilling test subject of a maniacal scientist in a battle that could save the world, or destroy it.
Spring and summer have been much ado with acclaimed director Miike Takashi, now making waves at Fantasia this summer following his most recent theatrical Japan release, Blade Of The Immortal back in April from Warner Bros. Japan. Its Cannes premiere in May led to some terrific news for folks in North America tracking the film and with none other than Magnet Releasing snagging the rights for a U.S. release to be announced.
HanWay
It’s probably some of the best news you’ll hear of it and with any luck it’ll mean a wider release granted than other titles from various distributors and their ridiculous event screenings, but the word now is that Miike Takashi’s 100th film, Blade Of The Immortal now has U.S. distribution over at Magnolia Pictures’s genre arm, Magnet Releasing in a deal with HanWay Films.
The film premiered in Japan on April 29 from Warner Bros. Japan and is currently slated as an Official Selection presentation at Cannes this week. Magnet is an especially good shingle for the film to reside at especially considering the film is home to, among its other cult titles, the first two installments of Kitano Takeshi’s Yakuza crime trilogy, Outrage and Beyond Outrage.
Based on the famous manga, BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL follows the deeds of Manji, a skilled samurai in the Shogunate era who is cursed with immortality after a legendary battle.
Haunted by the murder of his sister, Manji knows that only by fighting evil will he be able to regain his soul. After Manji crosses paths with a young girl named Rin, he promises to help her avenge her parents, who were killed by a group of master swordsmen led by the ruthless warrior Anotsu.
But this mission changes Manji in ways he could never imagine.
Oishi Tetsuya (Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, Higanjima) adapted the screenplay inspired by the popular Samura Hiroaki manga which stars Kimura Takuya (Space Battleship Yamato), Sugisaki Hana (Mozu: The Movie) and Fukushi Sota (Library Wars trilogy) along with Ichihara Hayato (Yakuza Apocalypse), Toda Erika (Death Note: Light Up The New World), Ichikawa Ebizo (Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai), and Tanaka Min (Rurouni Kenshin 2 & 3). Blade Of The Immortal is currently one of two Miike-directed titles circulating among acquisition headlines in the past week with the other being Emperor Motion Pictures’s latest remastering and re-release grab of his mindbending 2001 cult crime horror manga adaptation, the controversal Ichi The Killer.
Leave it to Slipknot’s own M. Shawn Crahan to lead the way in spearheading another ambitious venture for comic book and superhero movie lore with the new film, Officer Downe. Adapted for the screen by Joe Casey, Sons Of Anarchy co-star Kim Coates stars in the title role of the film now poised for a theatrical and VoD/Amazon/iTunes release on November 18 from Magnet Releasing following its announcement late last month.
SYNOPSIS:
Adapted from the 2010 graphic novel, OFFICER DOWNE takes you into a hyper-real Los Angeles for the story of a savage LA policeman who is repeatedly resurrected and returned to active duty via dark science technology. When a rookie officer named GABLE is recruited as back up, he discovers there’s much more to the titular super-cop than a mindless law enforcement drone warring against a twisted rouges gallery of over-the-top super-villains.
Also starring are Tyler Ross, Lauren Luna Velez, Sona Eyambe, Alison Lohman and Meadow Williams. Catch the new trailer below!
One fateful night, troubled teenager Kelly sneaks into her boyfriend Mark’s house to deliver some sobering news: she’s pregnant.
SYNOPSIS:
Watch the brand new red-band trailer below courtesy of IGN and be sure to mark the date for its limited theatrical and video-on-demand release for April 17 from Magnet Releasing!
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