THE HIT LIST - August 17, 2015

Well, Monday night has arrived and I pretty much consider myself well-rested seeing as how I ended up back in blogger-mode on Sunday night. Some days you burn out, and on others you just start clicking...it's funny, really.

Anyway, with our return to the start of a new week, the Hit List is back just as well, lending nods to a meaty handful of stunt professionals every week in attribution to their hard work shown in reels and shortfilms alike. Alas, the new stunt reel playlist for the week is now up and running with reels by Donovan Sheehan, Boris Martinez, Marco Pancrazi, an awesome action reel by Raze co-star Allene Quincy, Jacob Sebastian Malm's latest reel featuring his Turandot stunt team from the summer in an illuminous new fire showreel, and actor David Sakurai in a new Vimeo-exclusive action reel of his own assembled from several of his recent action projects, including Dark Samurai and Echoes Of A Ronin!

David Sakurai Way of the Sword from サクライ on Vimeo.

Now onto more web content with some more specials, and if you were watching the last reel carefully, you may have recognized Andy Le who can also be seen among his principle team members at Martial Club in a new video up and running by Just Kidding Films where they learn all the ins and outs of Tricking. And if you know Just Kidding Films, you know your face is going to hurt plenty by the end. Enjoy in all it's delightful laughs!

I seldom spot fan videos, although when I do, quite a handful of them present just the right amount of flair attributed to the respective works they acknowledge. It's a case in no way dissimilar in actress and stuntwoman PeiPei Alena Yuan's latest love letter to martial arts action star Donnie Yen by way of the opening B-Boy sequence in Yuen Woo Ping's 1995 Hong Kong action comedy, Mismatched Couples. Yuan also happens to be a dancer, and her credentials notwithstanding (i.e. Step Up 3D, Battle B-Boy), her talent speaks for itself. Watch and leasrn!

Now let's get into some more action-oriented material with a nifty handful of trailers - one including some updated and rather crazy cool poster art as of late.

Aside from making other videos, Rising Tiger Films's latest, Black Scar Blues, has clearly been a more concentrated effort at something larger in scale. The film is directed by Leroy Nguyen who stars along with Edmund Shum and Queen Sayat, and focuses on two drug traffickers whose bond of friendship is slowly eroded through a series of events when personal ambition, lust and greed get in the way.

Nguyen will be presenting the film later this year at the Urban Action Showcase and Expo in New York City for the last of its year-long festival run boasting a slew of laurels and accolades well-earned, including as recently as the past two weekends in California at An Anti-Hero Production Genre Film Festival and The L.A. Neo Noir Film And Script Festival. Hopefully by then, the short will be released on YouTube unless it acquires a decent on-demand or purchase platform beforehand. In the meantime, it's got a fresh new trailer now running online with an updated poster, and once more, it has a quote. By me! And you're welcome.

We also have a new behind-the-scenes featurette with Nguyen explaining the four year-long process in working up to the high creative plateau presented for the film's final fight. Having seen it for myself, I have to say it really does deliver the desired effect.

Other trailers just beneath include the second promo for Dance Nocturnal creative Jyo Carolino's new action short, I Am Spartan, Tokyo-based action actor Chuck Johnson's upcoming surreal action comedy short, Fists Of Absinthe, and 3 Strands Of Rope Productions's Assassin/Darkside, sequelizing actor Calvert David Miles's 2014 awarded short, Assassin: Origins.

New short action vids are also circulating the web this week, and kicking this next leg off on the Hit List is League Of Legends themed short, Udyr's School Of Kung Fu, initially released back in May from Art School Dropouts and Fighting Panda Productions. Actor and fight choreographer Joey Min leads this one and its one adding to his resume of years of awesome action shorts and films, which makes it all the more awesome and honoring that he's now a part time contributor to Film Combat Syndicate to provide his perspective of action on film from time to time.

Check it out below as well as other new action projects this week, including Narayana Cabral's Spy Vs. Spy with Angela Bend and Danielle Stahl, the long-awaited release, Grave Error featuring Darren Holmquist and the one and only Eric Jacobus, and...well, probably the sickest Mortal Kombat fan short you'll ever see online..ever. And if you know RackaRacka, you know this ain't gonna no PG-13 shit. So consider yourself forewarned!

Finally, a few new action shorts have also been unveiled this week in slightly longer duration. Azi Rahman's cerebral action thriller, Drake is now online starring Cengiz Dervis in the role of a man trapped in his own mind amid spiritual battle with inner-demonic forces. The action is largely fueled by the music for a more dramatic affect so don't expect any foley effects as the stuntwork is solely visual.

And last but not least, gladly continuing the vision of R-rated superhero fanfare with brutal and gory action sequences is the latest sequel offering from Workhorse Pictures, Storms Of Carnage: The Black Panther Unleashed Part 2. Actor and director D.A. Jackson reprises his role once more opposite K. Jackson in a story of espionage, betrayal and the moral paradox that arises when battling evil, ultimately pitting the Black Panther against opponents on both sides of the spectrum, humans and mutants alike.

Fans familiar with the source material may either love or hate this one depending on the viewer as these things normally tend to be slightly more controversial than intended (see Adi Shankar's Power/Rangers). For what it's worth though, this one has quite the admirable traits for something truly worth the enjoyment as it's full of special effects, explosive action and dramatic intensity to accomodate the epic final fight between our embattled couple.

Twenty minutes and counting, folks. Press play and enjoy!

There is at least another short that I haven't gotten around to yet as it's forty minutes long and dated only by about few years, but I will share that one next week. For now though, if you have time to kill then last week's Hit List may be worth your remaining minutes at the moment. Above all else however, do subscribe to the channels above, and if you or someone you know makes awesome, QUALITY action and stunt reels, films and shorts like these, send them to us at filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com!

THE HIT LIST - July 27, 2015

This past week was pretty busy for me, so content has been slower than usual. But, that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping up with with what's happening in independent material and other matters of visual feats of sports and athleticism of which you will see plenty.

Time to get things rolling, and as always with a new playlist of stunt and training reels with performances by Aaron Gassor in full Sith mode, stunt players Moussa Sako, Luciano Arnieri, Deangelo Harding, Laura Beamer, Hayley Wright, Jesse Haus, Jennifer Li, Chistopher Leps, Mallory Thompson, Jwaundace Candace, Jared Losano, Sina Ali, the latest action director reel by Mark Mottram featuring scenes from the 2014 thriller, The November Man, and a new director reel by lensman and action director Godefroy Ryckewaert.

For the next leg, while I don't always feature freerunning in these, gems featuring any aspect of stunt performance are welcome with solid video production to boot. Damien Walters himself has since applied this in a new video of his own in a new video where he pretty much freeruns while engulfed in flames. It's not the first time I've seen this particular stunt, but it's also seldom done since the last time I'd seen a traceur on fire was about two years ago, which is pretty amazing.

Walters kicked off the new year in great fashion as well with the release of Matthew Vaughan's Kingsman: The Secret Service in which he performed stunts and helped train in the fight action as well, and he also put together an impressive short video ahead of the film's release. This is a guy that really knows his stuff, so I wouldn't fall asleep on him.

Other videos to accompany this segment include a new globetrotting reel featured on Team Farang's new channel in which parkour wunderkinds Luci Romberg, Anan Anwar and Jason Paul went leaps and bounds around Los Angeles, Bangkok and Japan.. thus the perks of being a traceur; you literally get to run around the world. Not. Even. Kidding - And speaking of, you will also find Romberg's latest video in the form of a submission sampler among a playlist of several now online for this year's Red Bull: Art Of Motion completion in the lush outskirts of Oia, Greece. I didn't include them all in this playlist because there are so many, but these are the ones that stood out to me while fishing through them.

Submissions ended today as well, so click here to say hello to the fanpage and learn more about the event!

While we are on the subject of athletic competition, martial arts trickerd from across the country are being invited out to East Windsor in Connecticut for Battle Of Fury 2015. Tricking gatherings are full of electricity with badass performances by young and inspired martial arts purveyors and experts from nearly all walks of life, which is worthy of noting as much as the phenomenon has taken shape in recent years, so help keep the spirit alive and if you're interested, headover to the link to get your tickets today and check out the promo for the event below!

Well into the new year, little is known about the future endeavors of Just Kidding Films duo Bart Kwan and Joe Jo outside of their usual feats of comedic spectacle. However, whatever their later aspirations may be, it clearly involves martial arts, and they've undergone quite a bit of training for some time now with martial artist, actor and action trainer, Force Storm Entertainment's own Noah Fleder. This week, Kwan and Jo are offering up another journal entry enviting subscribers of their network into a day of weapons training at South Coast Martial Arts.

Keep in mind, martial arts training is some serious stuff, especially with weapons...although clearly that doesn't take away from any of the hilarity you're about to see. They really do put the 'stick' in "slapstick". Watch please.

Alas, we've come to the last leg of this week's Hit List and the fight stuff is a bit light this time around, but still worth lending an audience to. First up is a trailer for the August 3 premiere for the new webseries, Warigami, a vengeful tale of martial arts and fantasy where paper is the deadliest weapon of choice.

The proceeding two videos thereafter include a new group test fight by Gay Alexandre with Thomas Lorber leading the badassery, and the newest fight short from the growing crew over at Wolf Stunts titled, The Bag.

The next video comes from director Andy Hourahine with the new shortfilm, Karate Girl: Brawl. Produced by Blair Johannes, the project sequelizes last year's Karate Girl: Streetfight with martial artist Julia Hourahine back once more and leading a story that takes our martial arts heroine's journey into further contemplation. The project here takes on a more spiritual shape here, and with your help, her path can go even further, so subscribe to the project's fanpage and lend your support, accordingly.

And lastly, and all the better for it, is a filmmaker who I've rambled about for nearly as long as I've run this blog. Stuntman and oft-filmmaker Emmanuel Manzanres has returned to charm the hell out of the online action fanbase once more with a spectacular new group offering in the new short, Monster. FMA purveyor and action actor Bryan Sloyer plays our captive forced to fight from the bloodthirsty clutches of four goons led by Jerry Quill in a scrumptious onslaught of hand-bound fistcuffs and full-fledged, no-holds-barred bat-cracking, headbashing, flesh-wounding facial reconstruction of only the brutal kind. This jewel of a video is literally so good it hurts, and bares all the markings of what it truly means to create quality content.

Someone get these people on a TV show please. Who must I bake cookies for in order for this to happen?

*sigh*.. Watch below, in awe.

A few more honorable mentions go out this week to independent filmmaer Vlad Rimburg's latest fan reel attributed to legendary action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, as well as actress and filmmaker Toy Lei for her Best Actress and Best Action Film victory among the winners this year's 11th installation of the 72-Hour Shootout competion hosted by the Asian American Film Lab in NYC for her new short, Boxer. The short is currently not available to the web yet, but the stills are still available in case you missed them...

...As for all else, feel free to view last week's Hit List roster in case you need catching up, and if you have QUALITY content that could use an audience, send it over to filmcombatsyndicate@gmail.com