Monthly Archives: April 2014

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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First off…

Next week, Alex Kittle will explore The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (Cattet & Forzani’s neo- followup to Amer), while new contributor explains what the deal is with The Bothersome Man (2006). Bothersome is in our reader-suggested review queue, and G. Smalley will take a look at another film from that clan, an unassuming little flick you may have heard of called Pink Flamingos (1972). Thursday you can take a breather from that weirdness as Alfred Eaker faces The Gunfighter, another  oater from the 1950s.

And, believe it or not (and you have no reason not to), the publication of the 2013 Yearbook is right around the corner… we may interrupt regularly scheduled programming for an announcement.

We didn’t see the usual host of weird search terms this week. We blame spring fever: folks who’ve been cooped up all winter must be leaving behind their perverse, pasty keyboard exploits for some (yech!) fresh air and sunshine. Still, we’ll highlight what we can in our never-ending quest to bring you the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We’ll start with “movie about a girl who cant get wet shes an alien”—see, we told you we were having a hard time coming up with weird search terms! Just a little bit weirder was the search for “obscure hirsute movies,” which is only strange because the searcher assumes there are commonplace hirsute movies, and wants no part of them. For our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, we’ll have to bite the bullet and go with “80s 90s movie with old guy mustache dwarf eats chicken.” Next week, you guys need to come inside and start looking up bizarre stuff on the Internet. The novelty of the outdoors wears off quickly.

Here’s how the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue currently stands: The Bothersome Man (next week!); Pink Flamingos (next week!); Celine and Julie Go Boating; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Nightdreams; Rubin & Ed; The Real McCoy; Themroc; Candy (1968); Northfork; Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/18/2014

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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.

FILM FESTIVALS – Tribeca Film Festival (New York City, April 16-27):

Besides an April 26 special screening of Certified Weird classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which concludes with a scientific panel discussing the possibility of the film’s memory-erasure technology becoming a future reality) and a suite of shorts collectively titled “Totally Twisted” (programmers describe the set as “Fun. Creepy. Weird.”), there’s only one film playing at Tribeca this year which looks to have some potential bizarre impact:

  • Der Samurai – A small German town believes itis being menaced by a wolf, but onepoliceman discovers the killer is actually a samurai (in lipstick). Screens Apr. 19, 22 & 24.

Tribeca Film Festival official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Lobster (est. 2104): Dogtooth auteur ‘ first English language movie involves a “Hotel” where singles are forced to find a mate in 45 days or be transformed into an animal of their choosing. The latest news is that John C. Reilly joined an ensemble cast that already included and along with Lanthimos regulars and . Read the latest news at Variety.

NEW ON DVD:

The End of Time (2012): An experimental documentary on the nature of time. Looks to be in the same cinematography-centric vein as Koyaanisqatsi and its progeny. Buy The End of Time.

Wrong Cops (2013): ‘s third feature is an absurdist comedy about cops-gone-wrong entitled, oddly enough, Wrong Cops. The cast includes , Marilyn Manson, and former “Twin Peaks” spouses and Ray Wise. Buy Wrong Cops.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Alice [Neco z Alenky] (1988): Read the certified weird entry! ‘s stop-motion surrealist version of “Alice in Wonderland” is a crucial addition to the Blu-ray ranks, even though the First Run Features disc arrives sans extras. Buy Alice [Blu-ray].

Touch of Evil (1958):  Orson Welles’ overheated noir about a Mexican lawman (Charlton Heston!) who uncovers border town corruption, embodied in the massive, commanding personality of bad cop Hank Quinlan (Welles).  Maybe it’s not completely weird, but if you’ve never seen it you’ll likely be amazed at the ornate camerawork, frighteningly quirky characters, Code-challenging evocations of drugs and rape, and general ahead-of-its-time style. This Blu-ray contains the same content as the 2-disc “50th Anniversary” DVD, including three separate cuts of the film and four (!) commentaries. Buy Touch of Evil [Blu-ray].

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

WILL PENNY (1968)

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From 1956 on, actor  kept an actor’s journal, which he published in two volumes, in 1976 and 1996. These are some of the most fascinating and valuable behind-the-scene writings published on the subject of studio filmmaking. In addition to these writings, Heston was also an exceptional and underrated visual artist. Often, when actors turn to painting, the result is less than memorable, and can even be downright painful. One thinks of Henry Fonda’s vapid watercolors or the recent, execrable “world leader” portraits by George Bush as painful examples. Heston’s visual art was an extension of his journals. His pen and ink drawings of makeup artists, stuntmen, cameramen, and technicians celebrated the unsung blue-collar workers. I was fortunate enough to attend a small showing of Heston’s extensive work and it remains of the most compellingly unique exhibits I have attended to date.

The story of the making of Will Penny (1968) is a standout entry in Heston’s “The Actor’s Life: Journals.” Heston was handed an incomplete script. Under normal conditions, the actor would have refused to read an unfinished screenplay, but Heston was so taken with the fragment that he immediately expressed interest in taking on the role of the aging, illiterate cowboy Will Penny. Heston was then informed that the writer, Tom Gries, was insistent on directing. When Heston inquired on Gries’ directing experience, he found it consisted of “a couple of television programs.” Heston put up a mild protest, but quickly changed his mind upon learning that Gries’ demand was unconditional. While it is fortunate that Heston compromised in what turned out to be one of his best and most underrated roles, his skepticism about Gries’ lack of experience had some validity.

The central performances and an intelligent, sensitive script are the strengths of Will Penny; however, Gries’ television-like visual direction and an embarrassingly melodramatic performance from  are noticeable flaws. As excellent as Heston’s work is here, Joan Hackett is even better. She imbues her part with an unglamorous freshness (Heston amusingly related that several actresses turned down the role upon reading the description of Catherine as plain). Heston later counted Hackett as the best of his leading ladies, and for good reason.

Will Penny is not a Wyatt Earp type. He does not bravely face down the enemy to clean up a corrupt town. Rather, he is a fifty-year-old cowhand who works with cattle. It’s all he knows. He doesn’t even know how to write his name. When he gets into a fight with a younger co-worker, Penny uses a frying pan “because I use my hands to work.” When a trail job ends, Penny finds himself traveling with a young Lee Majors and Anthony Zerbe in hopes of finding work. Majors is a bit of a nonentity here, but Zerbe gives a very good performance as a recently transplanted, thickly accented European immigrant who awkwardly shoots himself and then milks every ounce of sympathy he can.

Still from Will Penny (1968)Zerbe and Majors try to steal an elk from demented preacher Quint (Pleasance) and his sons (one of who is played by  in one of his worst and most cartoonish performances). Penny is inadvertently drawn into the conflict, which will have eventual and horrific consequences.The three men temporarily part company when Penny lands a seasonal job as a line rider. Penny finds his shack occupied by squatters in the person of Catherine (Hackett) and her young son (Jon Francis).

The romance between Penny and Catherine is authentic. They do not wind up in each others’ arms within thirty seconds. It is the building of the relationship between the two that gives Will Penny its substance. Even the inevitable conflict between Penny and Quint is in service of the understated chemistry between Heston and Hackett.

While Gries’ does not have the cinematic visual flair of the best directors, his strength lies in characterization and elegant writing. This was Gries’ first feature film. His subsequent films were mere assignments, lacking the personal vision of Will Penny.

Canonically Weird (The List)

168. MR. NOBODY (2009)

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“Oh, my God, and when you got up in the morning, there was the sun in the same position you saw it the day before—beginning to rise from the graveyard back of the street, as though its nightly custodians were the fleshless dead—seen through the town’s invariable smoke haze, it was a ruddy biscuit, round and red, when it just might as well have been square or shaped like a worm—anything might have been anything else and had just as much meaning to it…”–Tennessee Williams, The Malediction

Must See

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Toby Regbo, Sarah Polley, Natasha Little, , , Diane Kruger, Linh Dan Pham

PLOT: In 2092, after all disease has been conquered through cellular regeneration technology, 119-year old Nemo Nobody is the last mortal man left in the world. He recounts his life story to a psychiatrist and a reporter, but his memories are wildly inconsistent and incompatible, and at times fantastic and impossible. In his confused recollections he is married to three different women, with multiple outcomes depending on choices that he makes in the course of his life; but which is his real story?

Still from Mr. Nobody (2009)

BACKGROUND:

  • The genesis of this story came from Jaco Van Dormael’s 1982 short film “È pericoloso sporgersi,” about a boy who must make an “impossible” choice between living with his mother or with his father.
  • According to Van Dormael the script took seven years to write, working about five and a half hours a day, every day.
  • Van Dormael published the Mr. Nobodoy screenplay (in French) in 2006, one year before production began and three years before the film was completed.
  • Despite being made in 2009, the movie was not released in the U.S. until 2013, and then only in an attempt to capitalize on the Oscar buzz surrounding Jared Leto’s performance in Dallas Buyers Club.
  • Leto temporarily retired from acting after Mr. Nobody, spending the next four years focusing on his band Thirty Seconds to Mars.
  • Mr. Nobody’s first name, Nemo, means “nobody” in Latin.
  • The movie is full of visual tricks and illusions, some of which are so subtle that they’re easy to miss. For example, watch for a scene where Nemo enters a bathroom then focuses on his own image in a mirror. When he turns around and the camera follows him back out of the room, we now see the perspective as if we had passed through the mirror; the reflection seamlessly swaps places with the real world.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Mr. Nobody‘s essential image is of branching, criss-crossing railroad tracks; if you want something with a little more surreal zip, however, check out the scenes of a fleet of helicopters delivering slices of ocean, slowly lowering them into place on the horizon.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Essentially an experimental narrative film disguised as a big-budget science fiction extravaganza, Mr. Nobody, an epic fantasia in which the protagonist lives a dozen different lives and a dozen different realities, was doomed to be a cult film from its inception. Even with a healthy dose of romantic sentimentality and whimsy a la , it is far too rare and peculiar a dish for mainstream tastes. The opening is confusing, the moral ambiguous, and reality won’t sit still; it’s got unicorns, godlike children, helicopters delivering the ocean, a future world where everyone has their own genetic pig and psychiatrists are known by their facial tattoos, and a malformed sub-reality where everyone wears argyle sweaters. It’s unique, unforgettable, and utterly marvelous.


Original trailer for Mr Nobody

COMMENTS: One of the enigmatic Nemo Nobody’s many possible past identities is a TV science lecturer who explains such esoteric concepts as Continue reading 168. MR. NOBODY (2009) →