In two words: incredible eye-candy. This is just one way to describe Gary Shore’s fantastic movie trailer of The Cup of Tears.

Receiving awestruck attention from the online community, Shore’s concept of the movie is slowly drawing raves for its visually rich trailer. Combining samurai action with science-fiction graphics and manga influence, the trailer shows the stylized filmmaking reminiscent of movies like Zack Snyder’s 300, Frank Miller’s The Spirit, the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer as well as Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City.

The initial offering of the Irish production outfit One Punch Films, The Cup of Tears is supposedly “a modern fairytale” about “a scorned geisha who creates a magical cup made of tears that cause any man who drinks from it to fall under a stasis of permanent sleep.” The story goes that one night the cup is stolen and sets off a chain of events that threatens civil war amongst the clans. Taro, a gifted samurai, sets out to find the cup and one who can break the spell.

However, though the trailer has whetted the appetite of movie lovers on the Internet, expect a long wait for the finished product. According to Shores, the trailer is a standalone effort that took him almost two years to complete. He likewise said he would want to do the actual feature film itself but is still looking for backing.

A director, special effects man and illustrator, Shore graduated from the National Film School in 2006 and has worked in a number of commercial and non-commercial projects. In that same year, he had also won the Royal Television Society Award for Best Student Drama for his graduation film, a short sci-fi horror movie called The Draft. He was likewise nominated for the Young Director Award for the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.

The trailer, done with matte painting, compositing and 3d with the help of Windmilllane Post-Production in Dublin, was shot in Slovenia. Aside from drawing comparisons to Snyder’s 300 and its super-imposition chroma key technique or Miller/Rodriguez’s use of a green screen and digital backlot for of Sin City, Shores’ trailer has drawn comparison to Japan’s Kaz Kiriya with his work on movies like Casshern and Goemon.

Source: Gary Shore, Twitch Film, Beyond Hollywood, Quiet Earth, First Showing