Our weekly look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…
Trailers of new release movies are generally available on the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Altered States of Plaine: Here’s a new disease for you: in Altered States of Plaine, a man suffers from a condition that causes him to periodically teleport to a random geographic location, nude. Extremely low-budget, it’s playing in one Greenwich Village theater this week. Altered States of Plaine official site.
Mr. Jones: A couple of artists retreat to (where else?) a cabin in the woods, where they discover that their neighbor, a reclusive fellow artist known as “Mr. Jones,” is one strange dude. Apparently the movie drifts between being a found footage film and a standard narrative; most reviews were poor, but Felix Vasquez Jr. called it “nonsensical in a pretty good way.” Presumably playing somewhere, it’s also available now on instant video
IN DEVELOPMENT:
CoExistence (201?): After over twenty years of directorial silence, Jackie Kong—yes, that Jackie Kong—is back with a new horror movie, a vampire version of “Romeo and Juliet.” “You’ve all heard of Shakespeare in Love?,” she asks, rhetorically, in her Kickstarter pitch. “Well, get ready for Shakespeare in Blood.” This movie will reunite Blade Runner co-stars Rutger Hauer (in a vampire hunter role?) and Daryl Hannah (as Romeo’s mum). Just to put Kong’s absence from feature filmmaking in perspective, she released her most recent movie, Blood Diner, in 1987. CoExistence‘s “attached” Juliet, actress Bella Thorne, would be born ten years later. CoExistence official site.
NEW ON DVD:
“Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Vol. 3”: The third installment of Olive’s collection features Fleischer Brothers’ cartoons from 1932-1938, with some of the great jazz shorts guest starring Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. You know we love our Boop here at 366. Buy “Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Vol. 3”
Escape from Tomorrow (2013): Read our review(s). Turns out that our fears about Disney’s lawyers never allowing Randy Moore’s anti-Mouse surrealist satire to be released proved unfounded—though maybe you’ll want to grab a copy while you can, anyway. Buy Escape From Tomorrow
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
“Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Vol. 3”: See description in DVD above. Buy “Betty Boop: The Essential Collection, Vol. 3 [Blu-ray]
“Gamera, Vol. 1”: Gamera, the giant, fanged, nuclear-powered flying turtle, was originally conceived of as Daiei studios answer to Tojo’s hit Godzilla. He was too bizarre to be taken seriously as a leading monster, however, and quickly turned into a campy kiddie-matinee idol. You can see his evolution in this four-movie set, which starts with his “serious” self titled movie and ends with Gamera vs. Viras [AKA Destroy All Planets], where the turtle teams up with boy scouts in short pants to fight a squid in a bumblebee spaceship. Buy “Gamera, Vol. 1” [Blu-ray]
“Gamera, Vol. 2”: The Gamera series gets even weirder as he fights a giant ginsu knife in Gamera vs. Guiron, retires in 1972’s Gamera vs. Zigra, then comes back for one last rock ’em sock ’em hurrah in 1980’s Gamera: Super Monster. Neither of Mill Creek’s Gamera sets contain any special features (with four movies stuffed onto one Blu-ray, there was no room). Buy “Gamera, Vol. 2” [Blu-ray]
NEPOTISM CORNER:
Visitors’ “Blueshift EP” (out 5/20/2014): Cameron Jorgensen does more than just watch weird videos and post them every Saturday. He also plays various rhythm instruments in various rock and roll bands. Here he is playing bass in the Salt Lake City band Visitors on their track “Ages.” If you like it (and who wouldn’t?), you can download this track at http://VisitorsOfficial.Bandcamp.com. You can also pre-order the EP at http://visitorstheband.bigcartel.com/.
While they certainly do rock, “Visitors” is a bit generic of a name. Actually, here are six bands named Visitors, none of whom are the group we’re interested in. I suggest we petition the guys to rename the band “Strange Visitors,” “Weird Visitors,” or—dare we hope?—“366 Weird Visitors.”
What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that I have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.
I remember a friend’s son had a Gamera DVD that featured an ‘american redneck’ dubbed version. it was the same plot but all the dialogue was read in a southern redneck accent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgefdWhY4Bo
One of the female aliens in the American dub of Gamera vs. Guiron has a pronounced Southern accent that sounds ridiculous coming out of a Japanese woman. Dubbing (especially bad dubbing) can certainly change the experience of a movie.