THE HIT LIST: November 6, 2017

As for all else, The Hit List has arrived and you are more than welcome to take your time with this seven hour and fifty-minute adventure of indie action creative fervor and stunt excellence. I seriously did not see this coming and I’ll explain why later. ? At any rate, we begin with a brand new list of entertaining stunt reel, first of which comes from Ryan Glass over at wakeuptoryan with a lovely new video featuring stuntwoman and martial artist Caitlin Hutson. (More on Glass later!…)

Rounding out the playlist is a raft of stunt reels courtesy of Wei Jen Lee, Nikki Tomlinson, Jake Bennett, Spencer Davis, Eliza Coleman, Kyla Hymas, Bruno Decary, Michaela McAllister, and a considerable, signature reel by renowned 3run member Chase Armitage.

This week’s promo playlist has five of some of the most noteworthy upcoming projects by far and first up are Beau Fowler and Sonny Louis with Express Delivery which I screened and reviewed back in April. The project itself is the current recipient of multiple film festival awards this year including four more this past week over at LA Film Awards, and with Fowler stirring things up behind the curtain, I highly recommend keeping his company, Ki Films, under your radar for the months ahead.

The second hails from Imagecleaver with director Samuel Smith also taking his fair share of awards with him into the new year for one of two action shorts he’s completed and has been circulating in festivals for more than a year now. Starring actor and martial artist David Cheung, I Am Not The Devil is another project I had the chance to review, as well as engage in with Smith for an interview a few months back. Recent accolades include Best Pilot over at the Asia Web Awards, and over at Atlanta Horror Film Festival for Best Action Short.

Following that is a trailer for Ryan Glass’s upcoming Star Wars fan film, Order 66 from the aforementiomed Ryan Glass and Film Combat Syndicate favorite, Omar Zaki. The project was filmed last year ahead of a trailer which debut back in August and with a new Star Wars feature film coming next month, sci-fi fans might be keen on this one. Glass handled the VFX, animation and cinematography with choreography arranged by Zaki. Also performing are William-Thomas Coneys, Caroline Ivie Kevin Sirivongxay, Jackson Moore and Nathan Caballero.

Fourth up is a project near and dear to me… Well…it was near and dear enough that I was driven to muse over at ScreenAnarchy about filmmaker and stuntman Bryan Sloyer’s performance a la Amy Sturdivant’s 2016 debut helmer, Redemption, centered on Sloyer as an afflicted man who fights to confront his demons with the help of a divine guardian. I stick by every word in that post and every amount of praise offered by anyone who knows how awesome it is, and as it stands, it looks like Sloyer has followed up on it with a sequel titled Colour Me Red, only this one has some dialogue in it this time around to accompany the full-on action and drama. And it looks like Jay Kwon is back donning the white blazer suit once again.

Last and far from least is a project hailed by actor, martial artist and filmmaker Temujin Shirzada over at Golden Horde Productions. Shirzada has a terrific acumen for film production and he showed some in an earlier proof-of-concept trailer for a live-action adaptation of Disney property, Mulan. This week, he’s back with a brand new bag of goodies now in the form of Fatal Blades, starring Leandro Mayor Martinez and Tatjana Tatar in the story of a young mobster on a mission to rescue his captive girlfriend from his vicious rival, played by none other than Shirzada himself. The trailer completes the playlist in stellar fashion with Shirzada and Tatar directing and lensing, respectively.

This is where it gets bananas (I’m partly kidding ?) as we now commence the final leg of this week’s Hit List, ripe with the biggest list of shortfilms we’ve featured in the Hit List by far, I think.

First up is a Vimeo exclusive from Iesha Auyeung over in Canada with a jazzy new practice action piece featuring Mig Buenacruz, David Van Le and Taylor Tai. Following up is a playlist full of goods beginning with Cedric Tellier’s latest kung fu practice fight hailing from his Martial Way YouTube channel, Slava Dugin and Salvador Alogo trading blows over in Finland for filmmaker and fellow favorite, Mikko Lopponen, Erik Klein‘s recent experiment with gym space as he squares off with Eli Bell and TeamOneTake with a newly-released practice fight scene led by Hector Soria.

The next one is probably something you’re not going to take too seriously. It hails from actor, stuntman and filmmaker Anthony Nanakornpanom who has fashioned himself a 70’s style exploitation superspy persona by the name of Bruno Vengenz as he saves the world from evildoers in a series of schlocky, underproduced, over-the-top adventures. His latest entry is titled My Anaconda Don’t Want None: First Blood Part 17, and while there aren’t seventeen actual parts, the Bruno Vengenz series leaves almost nothing to the imagination in terms of how boldly silly and shameless it is, which makes it all the more entertaining. 

Capping it all off are three recent Halloween-themed shortfilms that made their way online in recent days and first up, is David Lavallee Jr. partying it up 80’s style a la Ouija with Amanda Cass, Victoria Parella, Matt Healey, Blais Guzman and Doug Graves in Evil Spirits. Next up is another short from Canada’s own K Dynamique whose Nicholas Champagne wills the neighbors to treat Halloween accordingly with fight choreography by co-star Siamak Samie in Kung Fu Hallow.

Last and far from least is another superb offering from Brazen Action Design following last month’s action short release, Providence. For this, we bring you the latest cocktail of drunken brawler stupor and 4th-wall craziness that ensues when you take a silently annoyed Pennywise, a clumsy Thor, a black Captain America, a pissed off lady with a boom-microphone and the consequential spillage of Rufio’s drink… Check Out Avengers Halloween Bash from Brazen Action Design and Lucky Finn Productions at the tail end of the YouTube playlist embedded just below the Vimeo embed…

…and drink responsibly!

This Hit List is, invariably, our largest by far since launching it in late 2014. In part, I have to thank filmmaker and stuntman Rustic Bodomov for his own contribution to this week’s entries by way of the Fall 2017 Fight Scene Challenge. His submissions video is officially up highlighting 12 entries for the adults’ and kids’ categories and I now leave it to him to break it all down for your pleasure!

The video is also followed by each video entered in courtesy of their creators, a few of which will be encores here at Film Combat Syndicate, including Joshua Zacharias’s The Ravager, and Critical Coffee Break’s Altered Beast.

Enjoy!