THE HIT LIST: December 12, 2016

Well…here’s the skinny if you’re just tuning in. I’m fighting a bad cold and so I’ll be dialing back on the writing a bit until I get back on my feet.

Until then, this may possibly be the final Hit List of the year while I’ve gathered plenty of content to share and for you to enjoy from here on. As always, first up are the stunt reels of the past week with some great selections, starting with David Zuckerman, Robert Steven Brown, Canada’s own Kyle Wong, and stuntwoman C.C. Ice whose latest stunt reel went viral back in August but only came in my purview just as of late last week.

Rounding out the playlist are reels by Alexei Minaev, Meili Carpenter, Ellette Craddock, Nick Kraweic, Lance Herota, and the one and only Eric Jacobus with a kick ass new Tekken movielist for fighting character, Anna Williams. Click here or enjoy below!

There’s only one trailer that matters right now for this week’s installment of The Hit List and it regards a project I’ve covered briefly in recent weeks called Crows, inspired by the hit manga of the same name. Performers Steven Chan and Hayden Lam are behind the project which is expected to release early next year (maybe sooner) while they have been teasing the web with clips from the upcoming shortfilm, including the one you’re about to see in the following playlist which pits Lam, armed with a bat and pure bloodlust against a gang of men out to meet him at his violent ends.

It’s a one-take slice of pure, bone-breaking joy and you can check it out before playing the trailer which explains the narrative and plot details a bit more clearly. Beyond that, this whole thing looks exciting from top to bottom and I’m certain martial arts fans are going to love this when it releases.

Check out both videos here or in the playlist below!

Now it’s off to the fight action to finish things out, and first up is another minute-long chapter from Ronin’s Action before we rekindle our familiarity with actress Miguelina Olivares in filmmaker Andrew Kim’s latest bounty hunter scrap, Dine Out. From there, we head into a supercharged pistol-juggling mix of fisticuffs between Kevin Barile and Narayana Cabral, followed by filmmaker Emmanuel Manzanares with a thrilling new duel between Amy Sturdivant and Thekla Hutyrova in Blind Date.

Ensuing in further calamity is what happens when superhero transformations are sabotaged by lint and choco pies in actor and filmmaker Fernando Jay Huerto’s newest Four Points Film Project entry, Codex Hero Excel, before we head over to Martial Club’s channel to catch up with David Cheung and actress Yolanda Lynes for their latest kung fu comedy short collab, Case Closed, which you can learn a little bit more about the premise of that shortfilm HERE. Following that is what happens when the Brothers Schoenke and the gang over at Bat In The Sun keep the idea chamber flowing with ways to pit superhero against superhero. Thus, meet the ill-fated end for one of our newest combatants in Wolverine Vs. Wonder Woman, with key performances by Jonathan Caroll and Tatiana DeKhytar, and be sure to tune into Bat In The Sun for its alternate ending this week and much more.

Capping off the playlist is a brand new Star Wars fan film wherein I can imagine it’s not easy to find an actor who is able to reproduce the similar persona of a specific and well-known film character of legend. For this, we turn to director Keith Allen and the good, shared fortune of having actor Jamie Costa on hand to take point in the new short, Han Solo: A Smuggler’s Tale, pitting our anti-hero against some of the universe’s most wretched scum an villainy in order to save an old friend. Also starring are Krystine Gerolaga, Doug Jones and Cory Daniels.

Last and far from least and available only on Vimeo is Charlie Dennis’s crowdfunded and just-released exploration into martial arts action and drama with the new shortfilm, Deep Pan Fury. It’s been more than two years since I began covering this project which stars actor Andrew Koji as a troubled ex-street fighter forced to reclench his fists when when the 9th Shade gang kidnaps his grandfather after an earlier scuffle.

Packaged with all of twenty-minutes, this one gets my stamp of approval, telling an even-paced story that focuses equally on the metaphysical story at hand as it does on the surface. It’s well-acted in its drama, and in turn, offers some solid action and fight sequencing friendly to the average moviegoer’s eye, proving thusly that action directors like Jean-Paul Ly and Deep Pan Fury co-star Law Plancel are two of the growing best at what they do in this generation.

Finish the playlist above and watch Deep Pan Fury by clicking here or below. You won’t regret it!

I might be back with the Hit List next week, although as far as I’m concerned, that is it for me until I get better from this sick stint I’m going through right now. I’ll be posting every now and then but hopefully when regular posting resumes on January 9, I’ll be feeling phlegm-free and ready to throw some more amazing content in your faces.

Be sure to sub to the channels and make sure you catch last week’s entries… and more importantly, if you’re out there and creating some of the best movies out there on the web and you want an audience, send us what you made and email us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com.

I’ll be writing a more profound piece about this year before December finishes. Stay tuned!