What is Movie News After Dark? It’s the ketchup on your ice cream. Good evening and welcome back! We’ll begin with a piece from film critic and feline advocate Scott Weinberg who’s compiled a list of the best foreign action films to hit our shores in the last few years. Prompted by a recent screening of festival darling The Raid, which should be assaulting American eyeballs in the next month or two, Weinberg runs down plenty of ass-kicking titles to feed your Netflix queue. Head on over to Movies.com for the full piece.

Do you like insane spaghetti Westerns? Of course you do, your eyeballs work. But I can personally guarantee that you have not seen anything until you seen an insane spaghetti Western…in 3D! During last year’s Fantastic Fest, our ocular cavities were lovingly assaulted by the tidal wave of extra-dimensional madness of 1981′s Comin’ at Ya! The film, which was made at the dawn of, and credited with contributing to, the resurgence of studio-released 3D films, is a nasty, gritty revenge story that works in a number of hilarious gimmicks designed to force-feed imagines from the screen into your consciousness. The film made such an impression that it was picked up for distribution by the young, but formidable, Drafthouse Films. Yes, as in The Alamo Drafthouse. Drafthouse Films has already helped spread the good news of Christopher Morris’ Four Lions and their recent acquisition Bullhead is nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Now they’ve given this little indie absurdity a fancy digital restoration for its Texas theatrical launch.

According to a press release that left blood all over my inbox, Lee Hardcastle – a filmmaker twice featured in our illustrious Short Film of the Day feature – has won the chance to see his work next to 25 of the best horror filmmakers working today in the anthology picture The ABCs of Death. Drafthouse Films and Timpson Films held a contest that saw 170 entries narrowed down to 13 by the voting public. Those top 13 were then shown to the directors involved in the production, and they voted Hardcastle as the winner. T is For Toilet features a young boy who is learning to use the toilet all by himself, and the horrific monster that we all know lives inside all of our johns has different plans for him and his family. It should be shown to all potty training young ones, alongside this magical gem. Runners up, T is for Talk by Peter Haynes; T is for Turbo by Francois Simard, Anouk Whissel and Yoann-Karl Whissel; T is for Table by Shane Free; and T is for Termite by Steve Daniels will all be invited to be included in the DVD/Blu-ray release of the film. In the mean time, check out T is for Toilet for yourself:

When Luke Mullen said that Bullhead was “damn near a masterpiece,” he wasn’t exaggerating. It’s a stirring, heart-vicing film that explores the rotten depths of manhood in the no-frills world of the Belgium mafia that controls illegal bovine growth hormones. His full review is absolutely worth the read, but the short of it is that the movie is pure, grisly and fantastic. In fact, it’s already been chosen as Belgium’s entry for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, which is even more stunning because it’s the first film from Michael Roskam, and the country’s favorite go-to Awards contenders (the Dardenne Brothers) have a new film out this year (that won’t be going to the big dance). A newcomer has overthrown titans, and according to Badass Digest, Drafthouse Films has picked up the film for distribution. On top of that, they picked up fellow Fantastic Fest film Clown – the sex comedy from Denmark that sees men taking a young child on their “Tour de Pussy.” Adam Charles said that it displayed the awfulness of (some) male specimens with “one of the most pointed, extreme, and filthy senses of humor imaginable.” From Oscar nominees to raunchy foreign sex comedies, Drafthouse has picked up some great movies here, and hopefully they’ll be in theaters near you fairly soon. And no one will be texting or talking when you go.

While 3D is all the rage now, and thankfully its death knell may be sounding, it can be easy to forget that 3D is not a new Hollywood trick to get butts into seats. There have been 3 distinct periods of prevalent 3D films in cinemas, one in the 50s, one in the 80s, and the one in which we currently find ourselves. And one of the films that helped kick of the 3D revival in the 80s was a spaghetti western called, rather appropriately, Comin’ At Ya 3D. It should be stated upfront that Comin’ At Ya 3D is first and foremost about the 3D gimmick. I won’t go so far as to say it’s not a film, but it’s definitely a case of style over substance and the story always takes a back seat to the in your face 3D effects. That’s not to say that the 3D doesn’t at times enhance the story being told, but it’s clear that the 3D is the big selling point here. No one was expecting Oscars for acting on this one. That said, Comin’ At Ya 3D is a lot of fun. If there’s something that could conceivably be thrown at the screen given the confines of a period Western, you can pretty much bet that it’s going to be thrown at the screen. It definitely takes a kitchen sink approach.

Why Watch? An unseen villain, a simple request, and a gruesome outcome. For the next week or so, we’ll be shining a spotlight on some of the short films from the ABCs of Death competition going on right now to find the 26th director for the upcoming horror anthology. Each entry starts with the letter T and has to pick a T-word to use in a deadly way. The results include movies like this one from director Peter Haynes who decided to kill people with talking. Is it wanton gore or a keen insight into our relationship to media? The answer is probably somewhere between the two, but this gorgeously shot piece inspires fear directly because of its lack of information, it’s impressionistic character development (which is there, but not by much), and the horrifying act committed in its closing seconds. It’s the exclamation mark that comes after the red stuff spills liberally. What does it cost? Just 4 minute of your time. Check out T is For Talk for yourself:

At SXSW this year, Brian Salisbury was forced to use phrases like “utterly nonsensical,” “hybrid of ebonics and techno club lingo,” and “chump-ass posers” because other words just wouldn’t do to review The FP. The feverish, sweaty film seems to be a mess of genre goodness. Where other films may be love letters to the 1980s, The FP is calling up the era to see if it wants to fuck. According to a press release, the film has now officially escaped the festival grind as Drafthouse Films has made The FP its next acquisition. The movie features two rival gangs that vie for the supremacy over the turf of Fraizer Park by busting out mad matches of a dance-fighting game called “Beat-Beat Revalation.” Of course, as Salisbury points out, everyone seems to be wearing Snake Plissken’s eye patch, so enjoy that added visual bonus rolling around in your imagination right now. What sounds like a cult-as-hell movie joins Four Lions and The ABCs of Death in the Drafthouse family. That’s a family game night we’d love to be invited to.

By now you’ve already heard about The ABCs of Death – the anthology project being put together by Drafthouse Films, Timpson Films and Magnet. 26 directors, 26 letters of the alphabet, and 26 tales of horror and gore. The complete list of directors includes: Kaare Andrews, Angela Bettis, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, Jason Eisener, Bruno Forzani and Helene, Adrian Garcia Bogliao, Xavier Gens, Noburo Iguchi, Thomas Malling, Yoshihiro Nishimura, J.T. Petty, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Simon Rumley, Marcel Sarmiento, Chris Smith, Srdjan Spasojevic, Timo Tjahjanto, Andrew Traucki, Nacho Vigalondo, Jake West, Ti West, Ben Wheatley, Adam Wingard, Anders Wulffmorgenthaler, and Yudai Yamaguchi. You no doubt counted that list and saw 26 filmmakers. You also noticed that two of them are a filmmaking pair, which means they still need one more to complete the series. That’s where you come in. This is your chance to have your name next to the guy that made A Serbian Film on a film’s credit sequence. Drafthouse Films is hosting an open short film competition to choose the last director where contestants will choose their own word (starting with the Letter T (my money’s on “Trebuchet”)) and craft a short based on it. Entries will be whittled down to a final 10 by a public voting system, and the winner will be chosen by the directors listed above. There’s no entry fee, and it’s open from now until October 1st at midnight PST. Grab your camera. Get started.

Drafthouse Films, the recently formed film production arm of Tim League’s kick-ass Alamo Drafthouse theaters, has just announced their involvement in a fantastically creative but dramatically risky new film. The ABCs Of Death is an anthology film slated to begin production next month that will feature short contributions from twenty-six different directors. All but one of them will be working professionals with the final slot “chosen as part of a worldwide competition to find a new filmmaking talent.” Some of the talented directors already attached include Jason Eisener (Hobo With A Shotgun), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), Nacho Vigalando (Timecrimes), Jake West (Doghouse), Ti West (House Of the Devil), and Ben Wheatley (Kill List). Animal attacks. Beheadings. Cannibals. Etc. Twenty-six individual chapters that showcase death in all its strange and brutal beauty. Twenty-six directors will participate from all corners of the world: Australia, United Kingdom, USA, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Nigeria, Denmark, Germany, Samoa, Finland, Mexico, Argentina, Spain and France. Established filmmakers and emerging new stars will make up the diverse roster of creative talent that will showcase these tales of termination, beginning alphabetically with the letter A and eradicating all life right through the letter Z. Each director is assigned a letter and every letter represents a word that acts as a springboard to tell a short story about death. A linking device will open, connect and close. This unique anthology will be a celebration of death in all its forms, from the shocking and exotic to the humorously

Attack the Block needs subtitles for an American release. That’s the divisive concept that has caused me to lose hours of time to Twitter this morning. Everyone with an emotional stake in the matter — from the purists who say that a movie should be released unaltered to those who love the movie so dearly that they’d accept (almost) any solution that would get it out there in front of American audiences — has an opinion about the matter. And the truth is that Attack the Block doesn’t need subtitles. But distributors think it might. Traditional distributors. Which is part of the reason why this film deserves a home at Drafthouse Films. That and as Brian Salisbury explained in his review, the film is excellent. So excellent that it’s rallied passion behind its cause — people who saw it premiere in Austin at SXSW this week want one thing: for the rest of you to be able to see it.

Terrorism can be hilarious. This is a statement that I didn’t ever think I would make. Who, in their right minds, thinks that it’s possible for terrorism — especially the kind that involves extremists similar to those who executed the big one in New York about nine years ago — to be central to a very funny story. But it’s true. In Chris Morris’ Four Lions, terrorism — or perhaps more appropriately, the bumbling terrorists who are trying to do the terrorism — is very, very, very funny.

Tim League is a busy man. Every morning he wakes up at 4am, eats 9 dozen raw eggs, boxes a kangaroo and then delivers a sickening amount of entertainment to the Austinites who are fortunate enough (or in the case of Reject Brian Salisbury, moved there specifically) to have the Alamo Drafthouse in their backyard. The man is also back as CEO of the company with an eye to expanding the amount of theaters under their belt, and he’s just announced today the launching of Drafthouse Films – a new distribution arm that has already picked up Four Lions as its first film to hurl unto the masses. I spoke with League briefly on his way out to Toronto. One thing is for sure – the drive and fandom of the Drafthouse is going to be filtered directly into what films they pick up. It’s time to get excited, and League is about to get even busier.