Monthly Archives: April 2012

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Next week we’re planning on reviews of ‘s new post-apocalyptic walking thriller Hellacious Acres; sticking with the post-apocalyptic theme, we’ll cover the seminal sci-fi short La Jetée (1962);and from there we’ll time travel back to Roman times to check out the costuming orgy of Fellini Satyricon (1969). Also, Alfred has been publicly threatening to start a series about 1930s Hollywood choreographer Busby Berkeley… consider yourself warned.

We saw a disturbing trend with weird search terms this week. It started with a search for info on a “movie sex addict lead grandma in hospital alzheimer’s,” and grew even weirder and more unsettling with someone’s quest for “grannies wearing diaphanous panties videos.” Leaving those mental images behind, we also wanted to mention a pair of runner-ups in our search for our Weirdest Search Term of the Week: the very strange “movie female robot naked eliminate acid” and the subtly odd “angry ex searching for a blond wig.” We turn once again towards the disturbingly fetishistic, however, for our weirdest search term of the week: “sea critters in her vagina sex stories.” To us the weirdest part of such searches is always the use of the plural: the searcher assumes there’s an entire erotic literary genre devoted to stories about sea critters in vaginas. The even weirder part is they’re probably right…

Here’s the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader suggested review queue for your perusal:  Fellini Satyricon (next week!); “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; Freaked; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra] (turns Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/13/2012

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A 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):

Detention:  A postmodern, self-aware slasher sci-fi comedy that also parodies 1980s teen movies. Depending on how the idea is handled, this could totally rule, or end up totally gay.

NEW ON DVD:

Hidden (2011): Addictions turned into literal monsters run amok at an experimental clinic. We’re listing this as a possible “so-bad-it’s-weird” candidate. One of the few available reviews is titled “David Cronenberg called, he wants his story back!” Amazon reviewers complain the movie is incomprehensible and the screenwriters are “Alan and Alana Smithy,” so we’re cautiously hopeful. Buy Hidden.

Sleeping Beauty (2011):  From Australia comes this modern folktale that sounds like it has more to do with The House of Sleeping Beauties than with the classic fairy tale.  We like writer/director Julia Leigh’s quote: “I’m interested in Wonder Cinema…” On the other hand, we don’t like some reviewers’ quotes, like David Rooney’s “Soporific in every sense.” Buy Sleeping Beauty.

A Trip to the Moon (1902): A major restoration of the 13 minute A Trip to the Moon, ‘ seminal film fantastique and possibly cinema’s first blockbuster, which restores the original hand-tinted color from a single surviving print discovered in Spain. Featuring a new soundtrack by the electronic band AIR. The package contains a much longer documentary on Trip to round out the running time. This is a DVD/Blu-ray combo set, but if you’re specifically interested in the Blu version, please read the additional notes under “New on Blu-ray” below for details on a minor defect. NOTE: Since composing this entry the set was recalled while Flicker Alley corrects the defect. We leave the link up in case you want to pre-oder (we’ll remind you again next week!) Pre-order A Trip to the Moon (Restored).

The Witches of Oz (2011): A grown up Dorothy Gale discovers that the tales of the wonderful world of Oz she spins into children’s books don’t come from her imagination, but are repressed memories of a real place, and that the Wicked Witch is now coming to New York City to claim a magical artifact in her possession. This aired as a 150 minute miniseries in the UK, then a 110 minute cut very briefly ran in US theaters as a US theatrical release (this release is the complete version). Christopher Lloyd plays the Wizard, and reviews were generally negative. Buy The Witches of Oz.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

A Trip to the Moon (1902): See description in DVD above. Per Flicker Alley, there is an issue with the Blu-ray disc: one of the alternate audio tracks was supposed to feature an orchestral arrangement along with narration written by , but the narration is missing. The feature works properly on the DVD. New Blu-rays are being remastered and will be replaced in future sets, but if you order and receive one of the defective Blus you can request a free replacement from Flicker Alley’s site. Replacement discs will be available April 19.  Pre-order A Trip to the Moon Restored [Blu-ray].

The Witches of Oz (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy The Witches of Oz [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

RoboGeisha (2009): Read the reader review. It’s Japanese  about Robo-Geishas: what more do you need to know? Watch RoboGeisha free on YouTube.

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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema, List Candidates

DUCK SOUP (1933)

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“Movies gave them a mass audience, and they were the instrument that translated what was once essentially a Jewish style of humor into the dominant note of American comedy. Although they were not taken as seriously, they were as surrealist as Dali, as shocking as Stravinsky, as verbally outrageous as Gertrude Stein, as alienated as Kafka. Because they worked the genres of slapstick and screwball, they did not get the same kind of attention, but their effect on the popular mind was probably more influential.”–Roger Ebert on the Marx Brothers

The Marx Brothers were, understandably, the darlings of the surrealists; and that should be a red flag to contemporary audience members belonging to the religious cult of Hyperrealism.

I say that up front because I have watched this film in the company of such alien types as the Hyperrealists. Their melodramatic, aggressive reactions were the same as I saw in a showing of the films of  Busby Berkeley (be forewarned: a series on Berkeley is coming). Naturally, I saw it as my aesthetic duty to cut those sophistic assailants down to size.

The Marx Brothers, perhaps, are the quintessential comedy team with an edge. exhibits a comparable level of surrealism, but as a predominantly solo act, he’s a mono whisper compared to the quadrophonic Brothers. 1930s audiences showed themselves to be a somewhat more imaginative lot (not by much) than us in that they not only accepted the Brothers level of unhinged zaniness, but they even made stars out of them.

Still from Duck Soup (1933)Note that “but not by much,” because Duck Soup (1933) was the Marx Brothers most revolutionary film, a surrealist-politico masterpiece, and it totally bombed at the box office. This resulted in the Brothers being released from their Paramount contract.  MGM and Irving Thalberg were quick to snap them up, but Thalberg, a self-confessed fan, knew he had to polish their act in order to increase their accessibility.

The MGM films that followed Soup Continue reading DUCK SOUP (1933) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

109. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL [AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN] (1970)

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“To put it mildly, Even Dwarfs Started Small is a bit bizarre… Because Herzog’s film makes little direct reference to social-historical conditions outside of the sealed-of institution in which it takes place, questions remain as to what the film ‘means.’ It seems as though something is being allegorized, but little in the film helps decode it… [Dwarfs is] indeed allegorical in the way that Kafka’s works are allegorical: it reflects the world back to us not as it actually is, but in a distorted form, as though seen through a glass darkly. The intention may be to force us to recognize our world by re-presenting it to us in this strange and alienating incarnation.”–Brad Pager in The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth

RecommendedWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer,

PLOT: As the film begins we infer that a group of people in some sort of institution, possibly a mental asylum, have revolted, and an “instructor” has barricaded himself in a manor house while holding one of them prisoner. As the instructor tries to reason with the rebels and waits for the arrival of the police, the insurgents vandalize the property in increasingly bizarre ways: lighting flower pots on fire, fixing a stolen car so that it circles endlessly around a track and throwing crockery at it, and crucifying a monkey. All parts are played by dwarfs, although the buildings and props are scaled normally.

Still from Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

BACKGROUND:

  • Herzog financed Even Dwarfs Started Small, his second feature, with funds he received when he won the German National Film Award for his first feature film, Signs of Life. Dwarfs was then banned by the German censors on its release.
  • The film was shot on Lanzarote, a volcanic island in the Canary Islands.
  • Herzog partially attributes the dark influences of the film to the fact that before making it he had been imprisoned in a third world prison while shooting footage for another movie in Cameroon in the paranoid weeks after a coup attempt. While incarcerated he contracted a blood parasite and ran a high fever.
  • The production was plagued with problems: one of the dwarfs was struck by the driverless car (he was unscathed), then the same actor caught on fire (he had minor injuries). With the morale among the non-professional troupe low, Herzog promised the actors that if they completed the film, he would jump into a cactus patch and allow them to film it. The actors stuck with it and Herzog fulfilled his end of the bargain.
  • A scene of piglets nursing at what appears to be the corpse of their mother is disturbing and proved highly controversial. The sow’s eyes are shut and it lies almost perfectly still, but its legs clearly jerk during the feeding—though perhaps this is just a post-mortem reflex.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Hombre, the tiniest dwarf with the most demonic laugh, nearly chuckling himself to death as he watches a camel struggling to rise to its feet. Watch the scene and share an inexplicable nightmare with millions of other human beings.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Even the title of Even Dwarfs Started Small starts weird. What follows is a grotesque parade of cannibalistic chickens, insects dressed as a bride and groom, a crucified monkey, a defecating camel, and dwarfs running amok destroying everything in sight. Presented in bleak black and white in a heartlessly cold documentary style, it’s the gloomiest depiction of the triumph of the irrational ever filmed.


Re-release trailer for Even Dwarfs Started Small

COMMENTS: A provocateur knows he is doing something right when he gets criticized from Continue reading 109. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL [AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN] (1970) →