Much of my weekend was spent trying to keep up with what’s been happening in Berlin with EFM. Luckily I managed to sequeze in sometime to put together The Hit List as it’s the biggest task I perform every week for you guys, and I hope you enjoy them each and everytime. Let’s get on with it…
The first up is a slick new reel from last month and I’m happy to share it here courtesy of Chris Schmidt Jr., followed by Steven Clarke, Fernando Campos, Hans Marrero, KDynamique’s own MaliKick Bouabid, Narayana Cabral, Mami Speéde and D.L. MacDonald. The last reel brings a montage of some of the best and most awesome fight choreography work you will ever see online, courtesy of Vlad Rimburg (Unlucky Stars, Flow Series: The Hunt).
Up next in promotional bits, there’s just a few things to mention and first up is a poster for a new project underway from filmmaker Jela Oba Okpara who got our attention with his 2014 shortfilm gem, The Last Girl, and last year’s kung fu biblical hybrid, Ascended Masters. This time he’s signaling with a new concept poster for Enhanced, in which actor Nick Den plays a clinical trial subject who turns fugitive after attaining superhuman powers from a performance enhancement supplement. The project is expected to film this summer and is currently one of two projects Okpara is in the middle of, so watch this space for more info.
The second part comes in the form of a trailer for an upcoming shortfilm titled Wrong Way. It’s the latest collaboration from Young Masters own Felix Fukuyoshi Rwwue joined by action actor Alesssndro Lo Cacciato, and there’s no plot info, but the trailer looks as fantastic as always coming from Ruwwe who knows a thing or several about action design.
Now we start the fight gems, and I have to say I LOVE a number of these that are breaking away from the usual hand-to-hand and implenting various types of weapons. Kicking things off is a new experimental rigging sampler from Bryan Sloyer at the Action Factory training center, followed by action actor Greg Marshall’s latest short, Breaking In, with Felix Betancourt front and center, and Adam Lytle with a new longsword test fight featuring Ben Aycrigg and Joshua Lamboy.
The fourth is a quick little short from the EMC Monkeys, back in their element pitting Zorro against a pair of Ninjas…because why not? Following that is a test fight sampler for the production of Ken Dinh’s upcoming feature film, Locksmith, with a great use of signature Donnie Yen elements by way of Sha Po Lang (2005) although it will be interesting to see what happens now that he’s going a different route.
The last is titled Escape, featuring Maggie McDonald and Johnny Gao, and directed by Wolf Stunts’s own David Conk. I must say, Conk has become incredible over the years – he’s been doing this long before I’ve covered him and he never fails to impress while continually keeping his craft as sharp as ever.
Enjoy!
And at long last, we have a fresh new playlist of shortfilms and its list that rightly dominated by the likes of Jabronie Pictures, Lunar Stunts Action Cinema and Rising Tiger Films.
The first project up as of last week is called The Toronto Connection with Jabronie Pictures’s own Fernando Jay Huerto and Sunny Smith convening at the Monkey Vault Gym in Canada while taking out a gang of stuntees in the process.
The second brings Huerto back for his January one-take short, The Deadliest Date, a sequel to his previous, The Finnisher. Here, Huerto competes for the affections of a woman during a live dating game show by going through swarms of thugs. The shortfilm was part of the Four Points Film Project in San Diego and took 11 takes to get right while meeting a certain set of requirements, thus making for a good five minutes of action and laughs to enjoy.
The third comes courtesy of Lunar Stunts Action Cinema for the new action comedy, The Highway, centered on three friends trapped roadside with a busted car when lo and behold, zombies attack. The questions therein lies as follows: What happens when one of them gets infected? And, just how much can a favorite song bring them back once they turn? Get ready for a surprise ending with Irvin Nguyen, Mickey Arce and Victor Marks starring.
Last and far from least is an amazing piece of shortfilm work courtesy of actor and filmmaker Leroy Nguyen for the epic shortfilm finale, Do The Damn Thing: Ultimate. It’s the tenth and final installment of a shortfilm series dating back to 2009, inspired solely by a passion for filmmaking and Hong Kong action comedy, and assembled with a sprawling group of people you may be familiar with if you know the online indie scene.
If you missed the series, catch a link to it here. Otherwise, enjoy it as the last entry to the following playlist below!
Subscribe to the playlists above and feel free to catch last week’s shortfilms if you’ve missed them. But more importantly, if you make movies or have a stunt reel of your own as awesome as any of these and you think they deserve a place in The Hit List, you’re MORE than welcome to send it to us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com!
