Eye Candy of the Week: Timor Bekmambetov

Thanks to a soon to be well-known director from Kazakhstan, Angelina Jolie will once again be slyly fighting off the bad guys on the big screen with guns blazin’.  But helmer Timour Bekmambetov‘s Wanted, which releases in theaters today, isn’t simply just a “shoot-em-up” pic; it “pretty much slams you to the back of your chair from the outset and scarcely lets up for the duration” (Variety).  The feature is based off of the cult comics of Mark Miller and J.G. Jones, complete with bullets that curve through the air and some pretty fancy, high-tech guns.  Starring alongside Ms. Jolie are James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman.  McAvoy plays the slacker-turned-secret assassin with the help of Jolie and Freeman.  Wanted will surely provide Bekmambetov a solid seat in Hollywood, but this helmer has already established himself as one of the hottest directors in world cinema, making audiences watch in awe for the past four years.

The filmmaker made a lot of noise with the first two pics from yet to be concluded trilogy based off of the popular Russian fantasy book by Sergey Lukyanenko, Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006).  The third of the trilogy, Twilight Watch, is currently in pre-production and due to release next year.  Within these epic pics unfolds the story of a world where the powers of daylight and darkness strive to balance against eachother’s forces.  The pics’ witches, sorcerers, vampires and near-apocalypse moments are complimented by extraordinary visual effects (it took a year to complete the visual effects for Day Watch).

Bekmambetov got his start at the Tashkent Theatrical and Artistic Institute.  He first received recognition as a filmmaker for his popular World History advertisements for the Bank Imperial from 1992 to 1997.  Oddly enough, one of Bekmambetov’s first pics was Arena, a gladiatrix pic made in 2001 as a remake of the 1974 B-movie starring Pam Grier and Margaret Markov.  Prior to famedom, the helmer also directed Escape from Afghanistan in 2002, about a doctor and a photojournalist that get caught up in the war between Russia and Afghanistan.   Good thing he moved on to action and fantasy.

In lieu the approaching release of Wanted across U.S. soil, Bekmambetov tuned in to our YouTube-obsessed culture and secretly released a little viral video of his own into the vessels of the internet last month.  The video, dubbed “Office Worker Goes Absolutely Insane,” was first put up on Break.com as an innovative form of promotion, where it has now received nearly five million hits.  The helmer revealed on her personal blog that he was responsible for the video and the cell-phone version that goes along with it.  While the title pretty much gives it away, check out Bekmambetov’s successful mockery of American culture below.