Actor, martial artist and stunt-multihyphenate Marcus Shakesheff is in the works with Keeping Secrets, a new spy thriller he’s writing and developing out of his independent Beat ‘Em Up Films production banner. The film will be his second venture into feature film production after breaking ground in 2016 with Welsh action thriller, Kamikaze.
Stunt professional David Newton‘s debut turn at filmmaking drew great prospects in the last few years with assassin thriller, The Take Down. Formerly titled “Amber“, the film brings aboard stunt performer and debut actor Jack Jagodka for a strong feature outing that has garnered nearly two-dozen awards for its festival run.
I’m actually a little upset that I came across a few of this week’s entries as late as I did, particularly having tried to been on top of it. Such is why I need at least two more of me (especially since one could use the extra sleep ?).
At any rate, tireless and forever tired as I am (a phrase coined by my friend Philippe), my quest continues to help bring notable independent content and stunt talent to the spotlight per our weekly vehicle here at the Hit List. Let’s load up on paramount stunt talent with the latest stunt and training reels from today’s talented stunt performers beginning with Dylan Rampulla, Jessica Barfoot, LeRoyal Tutt, Alina Andrei, Kage Yami, Damali Ross, Tony Vittorioso, Donny Nichols, Niko Dalman, Camran Bostanabad, Johnny Zhao Haitao and Darrell McLean. We round out this playlist with a tasty teaser reel by a fantastic group from the land down under called Dauntless Movement Crew, and a delighful and adventurous parkour mini doc by performer and filmmaker Remi Girard.
Onto a few promotional bits this week and we revert to an earlier piece I did for Stephen Vitale’s upcoming chanbara horror proof of concept, Sword Of The Dead. The teaser is available in the campaign video I wrote up on here but you’re more than welcome to view an isolated version just beneath. And, by all means, stay tuned for our forthcoming interview.
Last and far from least is the latest creative effort from Chasing The Dragon and London Has Fallen co-star, actor Bryan Larkin with Dead End, the latest entry in a series of shorts here from director and co-star Carter Ferguson. Filmed on a shoestring budget, London, Hong Kong and the U.K. serve as the backdrop for the narrative with Larkin starring as a contract killer whose latest job with a young hitman goes awry, forcing the two to question their motives.
Larkin wrote the self-funded Dead End which was also crowdfunded in an effort to help circulate through festivals, so keep an eye out for this one.
And onto the business we go of bringing hearty fight action by way of a select number shorts and action practice gems, starting with a pair of offerings via Vimeo with Ulrik Bruchholz and Andy Long having brought their six-year old test bout to my attention over the weekend with Do Not Disturb. The second comes courtesy of one of my favorite people in film and action, Tanay Genco Ulgen who harnesses his strengthening storytelling for a gripping crime thriller capped off with brutal action featuring Starlise Waschuk in One Eight Seven.
For the playlist just beneath, our good friends at Lunar Stunts warm up the crowd with an L.A.-set installment of Eric Nguyen’s The Fighting Journey while Kai Ferris and Ben Van Huis aim to please with a slick new lightsaber gem, and Gaetan Caillot trades fisticuffs and prop-knife warfare with Gabriel Senges over at Stunt-Do Fighting as the start of this week’s Fights And Films playlist. Following that is David Lavallee‘s own triskadekaphobic action short offering with The 13th Friday as one of two shorts this month reviving the Jason Voorhees fandom – the other being Flawless Films‘s newest fanfight pitting the resurrected killer against the Gingerninja himself, Aaron Gassor as Spider-Man.
Filmmaker and fight choreographer Lawrence Yip assembles his own throwdown with performers Sam Jaikaran and Nhan Du for hitman short, Just Another Job, before we take a Critical Coffee Break with a couple of guys named Trevor and Orion and learn their swift and applicable techniques for breaking a werewolf’s curse, Troy Sandford and Vladmir Ershov delve right into a spectacular action short with an anime twist for Said Chaou’s My Revenge, and Rooster Teeth’s latest shortfilm thereafter ties into the Volume 5 premiere of RWBY, focusing on the rising underdog, Yang, and I highly recommend watching the series now available online via YouTube or Rooster Teeth, or Crunchyroll.
Inanna Sarkis and Anwar Jibawi return with a second episode of spy comedy webseries, Secret Life (watch the first installment HERE), while Brian Lee and Matthew Sumner clown around over at Beat Down Boogie for an Epic Clown Fight that’ll slap you so hard your momma will feel it.
Brazen Action Design sets forth an impressive debut this month with Jackie Zenders’s action proof-of-concept, Providence, set in a dystopian world as we witness seeds of betrayal and family upheaval between forces of law and order, and lingering factions of chaos. Zenders directs from her own script, co-written by Veto Swarn who stars along with Jonathen Wallace, Monique Avila, Jake Moore, Daniel Masterson, Austin Durden, and Hayden Lam among the B.A.D. cast.
Last and far from least is a brand new comedy short by stuntman and filmmaker, actor Marcus Shakesheff who is never one to shy away with his love and fandom for all things comic book and DC. Here in The British Superman, he leads as mankind’s ill-gotten and unpopular savior named Neville at the center of his own documentary in which a professor puts our less-than-enthusing hero through a series of trials to prove he’s from the planet Krypton. It’s a less-action oriented affair but Shakesheff plays the role fittingly and entertains viewers from start to finish.
Enjoy the hits!
There’s plenty more where hits like these came from and you can catch them by clicking here. Share The Hit List with friends and help grant these creatives the audience they need to grow and thrive in the name of awesome cinematic action, and by all means, if you or someone you know is in the market for support as a filmmaker or a stunt performer with a kickass new demo reel or a project with Hit potential, hit us up at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com!
I had some great downtime this weekend despite working. It definitely gave me something to do apart from relaxing a little bit more, which reminds me…
The U.K.’s talent pool continues onward in bustling fashion as we approach the 25th installation of the Raindance Film Festival in September. Stuntman and freshman director David Newton aims to join the party accordingly now with his turn at the helm well on its way in the new thriller, Amber.
Well, at least for me the bad news is that I relapsed again and now I have another cold. That makes two this summer.
The good news is I had stuff to do so I got in some time to write two reviews, one of which you can check out on your own time. As for all else, I had people sending me stuff for the Hit List and there was no way I could pass up sharing it. Some of you know me as much.
Kicking it off this week is a brand new block of jam-packed stunt and action reels starting with the latest from Black Site star, actress and martial artist Samantha Schnitzler via Vimeo. The playlist beneath cues onward from there beginning with legendary stunt coordinator Bruce Law followed by reels from Alyma Dorsey, David Conk, Tyler Witte, Jonathan Pang, Marissa Labog, Lee Gifford, Jyo “Six” Carolino, Leonard Zhang, Ryan Carr, Mami Spéede Ito, Yavuz Topuz and Martial Club’s own Andy Le.
Samantha Schnitzler : Action Reel from Samantha Schnitzler on Vimeo.
As far as promotion goes, some of this is pretty large scale and I only have mostly Vimeo uploads to work with, so my apologies ahead of time. The stuff here is pretty intense and especially with what lies ahead from Felix King and Eric Van Arsdale in the upcoming short, Broken Wing. Stunt and action sequences respectively from Elizabeth Davidovich and choreographer Gui DaSilva aren’t much to sample from here in this teaser but we have Spencer Mulligan engulfed in flames and looking several degrees of pissed. I smell vengeance coming.
Following that is a project I’ve had the pleasure to screen among the workstash of actor, martial artist and budding filmmaker Peter Jang with the new crime thriller, Nothing Is Sacred. Jang and actor Christian Howard present a grim tale of betrayal and redemption where a gang enforcer’s only means of protecting his sister and niece from his adopted mother’s sex trafficking ring is to follow her instructions and kill his brother in-law. After winning Best Action Thriller at the Hollywood International Moving Pictures Film Festival and Los Angeles Independent Film Festival Awards in addition to Best Producer(s) and Best First Time Filmmaker, its next stop will be the Shortz! Film Festival in Chico, CA on July 16th.
Last and far from least is a trailer for Shelagh Rowan-Legg’s second shortfilm, Flow, following a crowdfunding campaign for a dystopian action comedy set in a post-Brexit UK amid an epic battle wherein two female soldiers, Taylor and Smith, are tenaciously fighting a war of their own. Flow stars Jamie Birkett and Lucy Clements and is set to screen on July 29 at Fantasia Festival in accordance with the premiere of Lowell Dean’s action horror sequel, Another Wolfcop.
Of course, there’s also the matter of a newly released photo from the past week if you’re a fan of online action hero, actor and martial artist Eric Jacobus. Blindsided 2 is well underway from director and noted Hollywood stunt professional Clayton Barber with his star currently seen squaring off with fellow actor and martial artist David William No who produced the first short as he does the new installment.
There’s more action to come, but it’s time for a bit of a music break and I tip my hat to stunt coordinator Cory DeMeyers for pointing into the direction of Bad Royale’s latest music video premiere with Silver, All I Can Do. Actor Deangelo Harding leads the way as the hero of his own video game-themed tale as he fights to reunite with his date, actress Bree Essrig, against a horde of bouncers, a wrestler, a kickass tailor, and actor Jarrett Sleeper armed with delicious lemonbars and some deadly moves of his own. Enjoy!
Time to get into the action this week and the first comes courtesy of Vimeo with a late entry from stunt performer Lee Gifford. You’ll find his latest reel in the initial playlist while his own shortfilm contribution here leads the way for this segment of the Hit List with Waheed AlQawasmi’s 2016 action comedy short, Delta Goldfish.
Beneath that is this week’s playlist ripe with a batch of test fight action pieces and shortfilm projects including one that just released today. Dardrex Production‘s own Martin Chan and Leonard Zhang get things started along with the latest test fight collab with Arman Ansari and Douglas Dapaah-Agyemang over in Finland, and YouTube comedic personality, Tiburcio teaching Darren Holmquist and Rustic B. a thing or two in Black Belt vs. Mexican Belt.
We then head off to Marcus Shakesheff and Ashley Beck as they settle their own score at Leavesden Studios in a Star Wars-inspired lightsaber battle to the death before panning over to Wilder Herms 2017 My Rode Reel entry, The Block with Mark Poletti and Julie Zhan. Following that are performers Tatiana DeKhytar and Nicole Mae clashing fisticuffs and cold steel for Dragon Phoenix Entertainment in Weapon Fighter while Matt Philliben and Joe Kras take their pound-for-pound haze to the next level with Bushido Dream.
Continuing the action is filmmaker Danny Leysner whose most recent get-together in Amsterdam with high-caliber action talent and choreographer Joey Ansah saw the Spring release of Leynser’s revenge thriller debut, Cible, starring Geoffrey Thompson as a man afflicted with a near-fatal brain injury that nulls pain, bolstering his vengeful bloodlust against his former crimeboss who murdered the woman he loved. We featured this project back in May, but we’re more than proud to host it again as part of Hit List history and further hope that Danny and Joey will continue to bring even more magic in the months to come.
Last and far from least is a project that turns us once again to actor and martial artist Fabien Garcia (Die Fighting, Drained World, Dragon Ball Z: Light Of Hope) who plays antagonist and fight choreographer to director Anthony Pietromonaco’s newly released and smartly choreographed Star Wars fan film, Dark Legacy, starring Erin Wu as an imprisoned Sith apprentice in training. The shortfilm was exclusively released in the Creators column at Vice.com but we’ve included it as a meaty and supercharged, exciting finale to this week’s Hit List.
The players below are yours forh the taking. You know what to do!…
Delta Goldfish | Action Stunt Film from WAFILMS on Vimeo.
Feel free to check out last week’s entries and endulge to your heart’s content, and sub to the channels for your show of support! Also, if you or someone you know has a project or a reel that deserves an audience or a signal boost of some kind, email us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com and run it by us so we can have a stab at it.
Last week’s Hit List is a fully loaded one in case you’re new to this site, so feel free to endulge, as well as subscribe to the channels for own enjoyment. As always, if you or someone you know works in the stunt or screenfighting profession, has a fanatstic new reel or film project worthy of support or presentation online, talk to us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com and we’ll be happy to weigh in!
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.
Joining Shakesheff are actor, stuntman and producer David Newtown, as well as Lawrence Patrick, Claire Carreno, Simon Pengelly, Lewis Cook and actor, tricker and martial arts performer Aaron Gassor, with Shakesheff also serving as fight choreographer. Watch the trailer below and preorder your copy of the film where available!
The Martial Club team has been busy for some months now having trained with Leo Au Young, martial arts instructor and a friendly face among those as fight coordinator for several Ip Man films on top of having studied under Ip Man’s son, Ip Chun. That said, while the Donnie Yen-starring franchise itself takes a few historical liberties, there’s no question that the films pay homage to a great man in at least one form or another which is imaginably challenging to do. Ip Man Returns echoes that effort graciously in its own way for fans of kung fu and martial arts, which undeniably serves as a hit in my book.
Evan Reed (Marcus Shakesheff – Batman Arkham Asylum, Sherlock Holmes: a Game of Shadows) is a former MI6 agent, now a mercenary for hire to the highest bidder hired by cabinet minister David Markham to retrieve documents linking him with illegal weapons contracts. But Markham loses his nerve and takes drastic measures to ensure his hands are kept clean. With Markham’s top assassin (David Newton – The Dark Knight Rises, Captain America) hot on his trail, Reed is forced to pitch battle against a small but deadly army to rescue the woman he loves…
With any luck, Kamikaze will put Wales on the map and bring bigger films to the area, as well as greater prospects for Shakesheff and Beat’Em Up Films. Wales clearly has an audience that loves action movies and wants in on the fun. So let’s help make it happen!
The South Wales Argus has reported that Hollywood action actor and veteran stuntman Marcus Shakesheff is helping to deliver Gwent county’s first ever blockbuster action adventure thriller. The film is called Kamikaze, based on a story and screenplay by Shakesheff and writer Catherine Maher.
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