Now this is a shot to the senses! A western that plays like something out of a video game, a trippy future film, and a kung fu shoot-em-up that brings the normal brilliance from Vlad Rimburg and features the talent of Eric Lim, Dennis Ruel, Natalie Padilla, Gui Dasilva, Jimmy Chhiu, Mike Moh, Brendon Hour, and Brian Le. Director Stephen Reedy just launches this short film right at you, and it’s a lot of fun, playing like the steroid-fueled brother of Scott Pilgrim, The Good The Bad and The Weird and Millionaires Express.The fights are awesome, but I’ll say it right now, it’s NSFW, so proceed carefully! Check out the video below!
Whew! I only spent 3 days in Monrovia, California for the Action On Film Festival, but I had memories to last a lifetime and met so many wonderful people! The festival is held at the Krikorian theater, and let me tell you, its a beautiful theater! The days were hot ( not nearly as hot as Texas was!) but it was just gorgeous outside:
AOF is in its 11th year, and there are a LOT of films shown, and its a testament to festival creator Del and Theresa Weston that so many filmmakers attend the show! Del is a personality, one so big how could he NOT create a thing like AOF? Such a good guy! He welcomed me with open arms literally the moment I arrived!
I literally got off the plane early Friday morning, and after a small jaunt to Venice Beach ( hey, it was my first time in Los Angeles) I went to the festival and the whirlwind began! I finally met Kely McClung (Blood Ties) a longtime facebook friend, and now a friend for real, plus his makeup artist Nadia, who will be working with Kely on a short film called Loop. Kely was at the festival as his feature film Altered was showing (it was really good!) I also met a lot of wonderful actors, actresses, directors and producers!
Left to Right: Kely McClung, Michael S Moore, Actress Jodie Lee, Makeup Artist Nadia Berchtold, and actor Robert Factor.
Saturday Night saw a lot of action, culminating in the screening of UnLucky Stars! My review can be found here, and it was just as much fun watching it a second time around! Unlucky Stars now has distribution, so hopefully you’ll all be able to see it soon! I was finally able to meet the cast and crew, and I was stoked! These are guys I’ve been pounding the drums for nearly since Kiai-Kick’s inception, and here they were! A great group of guys:
Left to right: Vladislav Rimburg, Sari Sabella, Michael S Moore, Emmanuel Manzanares, Dennis Ruel, and Gui DaSilva
If you’re new to the website and don’t know their work, here are a few things to watch:
DAMN RIGHT. I also met Bryan Sloyer, who is becoming quite the filmmaker himself!
So the screening went well, and afterward who should we see in attendance? None other than RICHARD NORTON! (Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars, Mad Max: Fury Road, China O’Brien and so many more!) Such a gentleman and very humble, but the man is a legend of martial arts cinema!
Richard Norton is so cool he gets his own toplight!
There were some truly great short films, like Battle of Wills by David Noh (awesome story and ending!), Wrath of God, and The Real Miyagi, about Karate Master Fumio Demura, was tremendously good. I can’t recommend that documentary enough.
I had to leave Sunday night, but my experiences were once in a lifetime. Or was it? Now that Cornered has shown, I have already started work on my next/first feature film. What is it? Well…
Talk about a tide-me-over until Episode 7! With some of my favorite stuntpeople, LBP Stunts Chicago’s Brendon Hour and Mickey Facchinello, and with Tony Chu, Gui Dasilva, Noah Fleder, Jimmy Chhiu, and Yoshi Sudarso, with fight choreography and directing by the great Vlad Rimburg, playing in the world of Star Wars!
So should you watch?
HELL YES YOU SHOULD!
For me this like Christmas in springtime. Never ask me how many times I’ve watched this. It’s waayyy too embarrassing. And now, JJ Abrams, now youknow. So get it together for Episode 8! In fact, you have your stunt people and choreographers right here…
Know what? I love Star Wars. I also love martial arts. I also love the work done in various shorts by the likes of Vlad Rimburg, Gui Dasilva, Brendon Hour, and Mickey Faccinello, Tony Chu, Jimmy Chhiu, Noah Fleder, and Yoshi Sudarso.
And now they all come together in the Star Wars short film The Betrayal. In many ways, Star Wars is, at its core, a martial arts film set in space. I could take a dozen Shaw Bros. films and reappropriate them as martial arts films easily ( I hope JJ Abrams remembers this) and so far what they show in the teaser here is just getting my adrenaline pumping to see the final product. So watch below, and remember:
Starring: Marshal Hilton, Amy Johnston, Reuben Langdon, Aaron Toney, Michelle Lee, Gui DaSilva, Jimmy Chhiu, Christopher Rivas
Fight Choreography by Brendon Huor
Directed by Haile Lee & Christopher C. Cowan
First, the episode itself:
So after quite a while of waiting, we finally have the first episode of Clandestine, featuring members of the Thousand Pounds stunt team, a group this site has followed for a while. I was excited to hear about Clandestine, a martial arts web series that was Kickstarted, and rife with great talent across the board. So how did Episode 1 turn out?
I am intrigued, but wished there was more martial arts (but I would say that about anything not named The Raid). In the first episode we are introduced to the world of Clandestine, and we follow the leader of the Lion Clan, Elliot Dural, as he is called to a meeting with the other heads of the rival clans who have kept peace for quite a while. He attends the meeting with William, who I assume is his son(?). Of course at the meeting things don’t go according to plan, and the group is ambushed, and it appears that any further talks of peace are destroyed…
The production values are quite good here, particularly with the costumes and special effects. The acting is decent but just a tad stilted. The camerawork is quite good, but if you follow Thousand Pounds, that’s just par for the course. The story moved along at a good pace for a first episode, and there is some fighting at the end, but I felt a few characters would have been better served with a little more screen time, if only to build sympathy for them when they get killed (dang, couldn’t we get a little more screen time for Michelle Lee?). The little fighting there is does whet the appetite for what’s next, so it did its job! The best job this episode did was to make me want to see episode 2! Well done, ladies and gents, well done.
Episode One of Clandestine is great, and can only get better once Amy Johnston shows up next episode!
Wow. Simply a great short by Vladislav Rimburg featuring cinematographer and fighter Tony Chu, a tremendously talented dude. Vlad made this as a thank you to Tony for helping to start the Indie martial arts community. I have to thank Vlad and all of them for opening my eyes wide to this community that I’ve chosen to become a part of. You’ll find so many great folks on screen here: Mickey Facchinello, Amy Johnston, Mark Mushashi, Gui Dasilva and so many more. Just watch this piece of greatness and enjoy. A lot of hard work went into this!
