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Quick links/Discussed in this episode:
PHYSICAL MEDIA:
Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet (1978): Detective Nick Carter’s investigation of a missing dog leads him to suspect a carnivorous plant. From Deaf Crocodile, this is the middle movie in an official satirical trilogy from Czech Oldrich Lipský that begins with Lemonade Joe (1964) and ends with The Mysterious Castle in the Carpathians (1981). Buy Adela Has Not Had Supper Yet directly from Deaf Crocodile.
Linoleum (2022): Read Gregory J. Smalley’s review. The Jim Gaffigan-led psychological thriller about a kid’s show science host and the spacecraft that crash lands in his back yard comes to Blu-ray this week. Buy Linoleum.
Marat/Sade [The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade] (1967): Read Shane Wilson’s review. The film adaptation of the avant-garde 1960s play about, well, a play directed by de Sade starring asylum inmates, in a new DVD (no Blu-ray) release from Sandpiper Pictures. Buy Marat/Sade.
Repo Man (1984): Read the Canonically Weird entry. Alex Cox‘s punk sci-fi classic gets a 4K UHD upgrade from the Criterion collection. Buy Repo Man.
FILM FESTIVALS:
Sydney Underground Film Festival (Sydney, Australia, Sept. 12-15)
A minor festival (though of course, not for Australians) that has a rather amazing lineup this year, beginning with the promising festival opener, Female Trouble. Also on tap are a couple of low-budget movies we’ve reviewed from other festivals—the sentient kombucha starter fantasy Darla in Space and Joel Potrykus‘ middle-aged update to Buzzard, Vulcanizadora. Aussies can also check out The Hyperboreans, the latest wildness from the team behind The Wolf House, and the Australian debut of Quentin Dupieux‘s Salvador Dali biopic Daaaaaali! The one new-to-us title was Bruce la Bruce’s explicit and typically transgressive take on Teorema, The Visitor. Enjoy, mate!
Sydney Underground Film Festival homepage
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) (Toronto, Canada, Sept. 5-Sept. 15)
TIFF is always one of the year’s major festivals and is sometimes seen as the kickoff for awards season. Although their programmers have no particular love for films with weirder predilections, with over a hundred movies on offer, it’s inevitable that some strangeness sneaks in. This year, Francis Ford Coppola‘s divisive America-as-ancient-Rome fantasy Megalopolis, which buzzed at Cannes, remains a major talking point as it makes its North American debut ahead of a late September release. Other Cannes debuts premiering in North America include David Cronenberg‘s mortuary The Shrouds and Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Johnson’s satire Rumours. Here are some of the other potentially weird films we noticed on the undercard:
- Daniela Forever – A depressed man recreates his lost lover through lucid dreaming
- Do I Know You from Somewhere? – A couple’s life together starts subtly changing, until they’re (literally) not the same people they started as
- Lázaro at Night – Three actors in a love triangle find reality breaking apart when they compete for roles in the same film
- Mr. K – Crispin Glover finds himself checked into a hotel he can never leave in this Kafkaesque tale
- On Becoming a Guinea Fowl – Zambian story of a funeral programmers describe as a “surrealist drama”
- Pedro Páramo – Adaptation of a classical magical realist novel about a dusty Mexican town where the living may be the dead, this is the directing debut of award-winning cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto
- Perfumed with Mint – Mint plants begin growing out of human bodies, attracting shadowy ghosts, and the growth can only be suppressed by smoking hashish
- So Surreal: Behind the Masks – a documentary about how Surrealist artists—Max Ernst in particular—were inspired by Native American masks sold on the colonialist artifact market
- Universal Language – Here’s a major one we missed on the podcast discussion: the return of Matthew Rankin, who brings us a Canadian-set comedy where the cast inexplicably speaks Persian, inspired by the style of Roy Andersson
- You Are Not Alone – A lonely man may have found love, except that he’s already spoken for—by an alien
Toronto International Film Festival homepage
Venice International Film Festival (Venice, Italy, Aug. 28-Sept. 7)
We’ve gotten out of the habit of checking out the lineup at Venice after years sans weirdness, but this year they surprised us with a brace of worthily weird offerings (thanks to reader Devon for the tip on the Quays!)
- Baby Invasion – Harmony Korine‘s experiment about killers using baby face avatars who may or may not be characters in a video game disgusted many but still earned a surprising 8.5 minute standing ovation
- Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass – Another project that snuck up on us: the Quay Brothers have completed their own stop-motion adaptation of Bruno Schultz’s short story collection (previously made into a canonically weird film by Wojciech Has). Early stills look like they still have that dusty magic, and this will obviously be anxiously anticipated when it obtains a wider release.
Venice International Film Festival homepage
WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:
We have no guests currently scheduled for next week’s Pod 366, although that could change, but at any rate Greg and Giles will be back to talk about the week’s weird news and releases.
Also, it seems likely we’ll have further updates on our big book, “The 366 Weird Movies Guide.” Stay tuned! Onward and weirdward!