tiff 2017

Antonio Banderas Action Titles, ACTS OF VENGEANCE And BULLET HEAD Among Recent Saban Rights Acquisitions At TIFF

Actor Antonio Banderas has been on a badass streak in the last few years with a string of action movie appearances. The Security and The Expendables 3 co-star is set to appear in two out of three titles for which Saban Films have acquired the rights while shopping around at the Toronto International Film Festival. Acts Of Vengeance is first on the list as one we’ve all come to know in the past year as Boyka: Undisputed 4 producer Isaac Florentine’s revenge thriller, Stoic. Banderas is joined by Karl Urban, Robert Forster and Paz Vega with a script by Matt Venne that sees a f.ast-talking lawyer taking a vow of silence while transforming his body in preparation to avenge the murder of his wife and daughter. The other, Bullet Head, hails from writer and director Paul Solet with a story that explores all the categorical misgivings that eventually find a group of […]

DOORMAN: Kitamura’s New Action Thriller Locks In Katie Holmes And Jean Reno

Lee B. Golden III

It was last November that award-winning director Kitamura Ryuhei was announced to helm home invasion action thriller, Doorman. All’s been quiet since then while it was finally made clear in the last few months regarding his activity with road sniper thriller, Downrange, which is lining up screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival as we speak. I was actually concerned about Doorman as much as film projects tend to come and go, although it now looks as if things are official with word from Variety on the casting of actress Katie Holmes (Batman Begins, Miss Meadows, Logan Lucky) and actor Jean Reno (The Adventurers, Antigang). Holmes will play a homeward bound Marine officer suffering from battlefield trauma whose newfound refuge as a doorman at a historic apartment in New York finds her pitted against deadly mercenaries bent on retrieving precious art hidden in the walls of the building. Smash Media’s […]

TREASURE OF ALI BABA & THE FORTY THIEVES Sets Martin Campbell To Helm ‘Arabian Nights’ Folklore Adaptation

Lee B. Golden III

Just days from TIFF, word now has Casino Royale helmer Martin Campbell on deck to direct adventure pic, Treasure of Ali Baba & The 40 Thieves. Ehud Bleiberg and Danny Dimbort will handle international sales on the project as well as produce with Nicholas Donnermeyer and Campbell cohort Robert K. MacLean. Writer Dave Holstein wrote the script following an earlier screenplay by Bleiberg and co-scribe Mansur Ahmed with source material rooted in the sprawling collection of Arabian Nights tales of Middle Eastern folklore. Marc Bikindou and Tiffany Boyle are executive producing the film which currently stands as the second grouping for Campbell & MacLean along with Dimbort and Bleiberg following Ernest Hemingway novel adaptation, Across The River and Into The Trees. via Deadline: An adventure novelist gets caught up in a global conspiracy and a hunt for a mysterious antiquity after discovering that his father had a map to the […]

Motorcycle Gangland Thriller 1% Goes Full Throttle In The Intense First Teaser

Lee B. Golden III

I find myself digging a certain TV show these days on Netflix. Friends reading this will know which one I’m talking about, but it nevertheless goes without saying that I’m keen on how directors would handle biker crime thriller narratives. Debut director Stephen McCallum seems ready to prove himself and will do so in front of an audience this Friday premiering in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Discovery line-up with the new movie, 1%, for which McCallum spoke to Deadline to discuss more on the new Austrailian crime pic. ….“1% is about brotherhood, loyalty, and betrayal set within the primal underworld of outlaw motorcycle gangs This clip gives you an insight into the visceral world of those outlaws who in medieval times would’ve been Kings and Queens.” He adds, ” This forbidden world was a really exciting canvas for a director. Matt Nable’s script was a hard hitting, character driven […]

FIVE FINGERS OF MARSEILLES Scores A First Trailer For The South African Western Thriller

Lee B. Golden III

South African premiere Western thrills are abound for folks keen on attending this year’s 41st Toronto International Film Festival. Hailing from Be Phat Motel Film Company and Game 7, Michael Matthews is emerging this year for his directorial feature debut Five Fingers Of Marseilles following a decade-long effort and now has an official trailer to show for its efforts from a script by Sean Drummond who produced the film with Matthews, and with Asger Hussain and Yaron Schwartzman. Twenty years ago, the young ‘Five Fingers’ fought for the rural town of Marseilles, against brutal police oppression. Now, after fleeing in disgrace, Tau returns, seeking peace. Finding the town under new threat, he must reluctantly fight to free it. Will the Five Fingers stand again? ‘Five Fingers for Marseilles’ fuses western influences, from classic to spaghetti and revisionist eras, into a contemporary South African drama played in local tongue by four […]

John Woo’s MANHUNT Hails The ‘Return Of The Maestro’ In The New International Teaser Trailer

Lee B. Golden III

It was back in 2010 when acclaimed Asian action auteur, John Woo, received the Golden Lion for Career Achievement in Venice. It was also right around when he had completed the 2008/09 war epic, Red Cliff, nearly fifteen years following a post-Hong Kong crossover career into Hollywood that saw him directing a litany of titles that continue to pale in comparison to Woo’s glory days of heroic bloodshed and bullet ballet crime thrillers like A Better Tomorrow and Hard Boiled. It’s an era that fans have never forgotten. It is also one that stands as the perpetual driving force for Woo’s latest return to form, Manhunt, hailing from Media Asia this week in an ambitious remake effort inspired by Sato Junya’s 1976 film adaptation of Nishimura Juko’s earlier novel, “Hot Pursuit” which has Zhang Hanyu (Operation Mekong) leading the cast opposite Fukuyama Masaharu Fukuyama (Like Father, Like Son), and actresses […]

DOWNRANGE: Target Practice On A Blood-Splattered Road In The First Teaser

Lee B. Golden III

I’m ready to spend more years of my lifetime gushing over the work of director Kitamura Ryuhei… gushing like the blood drawn from the victims of his latest action horror suspense thriller, Downrange. The film came as a surprise to me last month as I expected the filmmaker to be working on another but the news surrounding this one sounds like an equally-exciting time at the movies. Written by Kitamura and writer Joey O’Bryan, the film hails a self-proclaimed new style of storytelling for Kitamura whose work includes titles like Versus, Azumi and LoveDeath, as well as two North American thrillers – Midnight Meat Train and No One Lives; Newcomer Kelly Connaire leads the cast with Stephanie Pearson, Rod Hernandez-Farella, Anthony Kirlew, Alexa Yeames, and Jason Tobias for the story of six college friends whose cross-country trip hits an impasse when a presumed accident reveals itself in terrifying fashion, courtesy of […]