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):

Septien (2010): This story of an ex-high school athlete returning to live with his two eccentric brothers played at Sundance in the Midnight Movie category.  Reviews were mixed, but Dennis Harvey of Variety suggested the movie “proves the paths of ‘weird’ and ‘interesting’ do not always intersect.”  Screening at the IFC Center in Manhattan this week, future screenings doubtful.  Also available “on demand” on some cable systems.  Septien official site.

The Sleeping Beauty (2010): Catherine Breillat takes her second stab at adapting a classic fairy tale with modern feminist sensibilities (after the strangely muted, very slightly weird Bluebeard).  Much of the narrative here takes place in Beauty’s dreams as she slumbers and encounters dream ogres and dwarfs, giving rise to hopes of more surrealistic imagery this time out.  This is the middle part of a planned fairy tale trilogy to conclude with Beauty and the Beast.  This French offering is not to be confused with Australian Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (2011), starring Emily Browning (which has yet to be released on these shores).  No official site located.

NEW ON DVD:

Oblivion (1994): A frontier town in the year 3031 is inhabited by aliens in this campy sci-fi/western/comedy hybrid.  With a cast including Julie Newmar (as a feline alien saloon owner named Miss Kitty), Isaac Hayes, and George Takei. Buy Oblivion.

The Sacrifice [Offret] (1986): Andrei Tarkovsky‘s final film (completed from his deathbed) is about a man who attempts to bargain with God for divine intervention to avert World War III.  A remastered 2-disc set from Kino which includes a feature length documentary on the maverick Russian filmmaker as a bonus feature. Buy The Sacrifice.

Trailers From Hell! Volume 2 (featuring The Little Shop of Horrors) (2011):  Read our capsule review. Buy Trailers From Hell! Vol. 2 [Featuring The Little Shop of Horrors].

Wake Wood (2011): Bereaved parents visit a pagan town whose residents promise that, within their borders, you can reunite with the dead —for three days only.  This latest offering from the resurrected Hammer studios has been compared (in theme, at least) to the Certified Weird The Wicker Man. Buy Wake Wood.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Sacrifice [Offret] (1986): See description in DVD above. Buy The Sacrifice [Blu-ray].

Wake Wood (2011): See description in DVD above. Buy Wake Wood [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Tekkonkinkreet (2006): Trippy anime about two street urchins (named “Black” and “White”) with superpowers fighting Yakuza in the magical streets of Treasure Town.  From Michael Arias, the producer of The Animatrix, a rare American who’s broken into the Japanese animation world.  Watch Tekkonkinkreet 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.

Monday is Independence Day here in the US, and what better way to celebrate our dissolution from the British Empire than with a review of the controversial, weird, and never-seen-in-the-US black comedy UK television series “Jam”?  Further on in the week we’ll take a look at Terrence Malick’s remarkable Tree of Life (now in theaters), the latest DVD compilation from “Trailers from Hell,” and He Who Gets Slapped (1924), a silent melodrama starring Lon Chaney as a vengeful clown that is not from Tod Browning.

We can’t say it was the weirdest week on record in terms of odd search terms used to locate this site, but we found a few notable head-scratching queries as always.  “Pull out their own sexual organs” had us wondering if the phrase was chopped off—who pulls out their own sexual organs?—and whether it would make more or less sense if we had the missing info.  The search string “weird movies made by drugs” was strange enough, but when the searcher didn’t find the answer he was looking for, he clarified with a more specific (and more bizarre) search for “weird ma movies made by drugs.”  Our weirdest search term of the week, however, is the simple but appealing “french existential animated dog mask circus.”  Now, that’s a circus we might actually go to!

Here’s the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue (as always, lots more titles after the break): “Jam” (TV show – next week!), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

A look at what’s weird in theaters, on hot-off-the-presses DVDs, and on more distant horizons…

There’s nothing weird debuting in theaters this week… though you may want to check out The Tree of Life if you haven’t already.  Frankly, summer blockbuster season can’t end soon enough for us. Fortunately, it’s a huge week for home video releases, so we don’t mind the drought at the cinemas so much.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Alma (est. 2011-2015):  The creepy short film by former Pixar animator Rodrigo Blaas about a little girl sucked into a bizarre soul-stealing toy store has been greenlighted by Dreamworks, thanks to the intervention of new DW collaborator Guillermo del Toro, who will executive produce while Blaas directs.  Something about this career path—young animator with a cute/macabre style makes award-winning unreleased short, gets shot at making feature—reminds us of the story of a young Tim Burton, except that the studio is behind the artist this time.  Read the story at the LA Times.  The original short can be viewed below.

They Saved Hitler’s Brain (est. 2011):  Ever since it worked for Little Shop of Horrors, everyone is convinced they can take any crazy old B-movie and turn it into a hit musical.  The incredibly stupid and confusing Hitler’s Brain is the next target of this trend (which has already seen movies like Evil Dead and The Toxic Avenger turned into off-Broadway song-and-dance fests).   We can just hear the libretto in our heads: “Heil, heil Hitler, you’re just a head/No house to live in, use this jar instead!”  It’s listed as a 2011 production on the IMDB, but there hasn’t been any official news since the project was announced in 2008.

NEW ON DVD:

The Baby (1973): “Sick” black comedy/horror about a family who keeps their thumb-sucking, mentally-disabled 21-year-old son in a crib and diapers.  The DVD box cover proudly quotes DVD Drive-In as saying, “One of the most bizarre films to come out of Hollywood in the 1970s!”  This title is also currently in our reader-suggested review queue, so you can expect to see a review in the coming weeks. Buy The Baby.

Black Moon (1975):  A girl flees a land where the sexes are literally at war (with guns and tanks) and escapes to a farmhouse where she meets a unicorn, among other strange creatures, in this extremely surreal film.  Big-time weirdness from a cinema master (Louis Malle) brought to us by the Criterion Collection.  Buy Black Moon [The Criterion Collection].

“ReBoot: The Definitive Mainframe Edition”:  Anyone who caught this 1994 computer-animated kiddie show about a society that lives inside a desktop computer on a Saturday morning in 1994 might be forgiven for thinking they hadn’t yet come down from whatever substances they had consumed the night before.  It continues the great Saturday morning cartoon tradition of simultaneously appealing to kids and adults who love a little light weirdness.  Now the entire series is available in this 9 disc box set.  Buy “ReBoot: The Definitive Mainframe Edition”.

Sucker Punch (2011): Read our capsule review.  A young girl invents a fantasy world in this video game style spectacle. Buy Sucker Punch.

Tetsuo: The Bullet Man (2009):  A man begins to transform into a machine, to a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails.  We certify Tetsuo: The Iron Man weird on Wednesday, and the second sequel/remake just happens to have been released to DVD the day before… coincidence?  Yes!  Buy Tetsuo: The Bullet Man.

White Lightnin’ (2009):  Biopic of Jesco White, outlaw, clog-dancer, gas-huffer, and perhaps the wildest of the insane Appalachian clan profiled in the surprise documentary hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia (2009).  Mentioned here because it was filmed in an experimental style with hallucinations and ends with a descent into madness that left some viewers scratching their heads. Buy White Lightnin’.

Zazie dans le metro (1960): Speaking of Louis Malle, weird, and the Criterion Collection, Zazie isn’t as aggressively surreal as Black Moon but it’s also of interest.  It’s a wacky, absurd, whimsical, and totally unreal slapstick satire of Paris. Buy Zazie dans le metro [The Criterion Collection].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Black Moon (1975):  See description in DVD above. Buy Black Moon [Blu-ray].

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001):  Mindbending science-fiction anime about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters on the trail of a bio-terrorist.  Fans of the anime series will doubtlessly be thrilled by this Blu-ray debut, but word is the film stands up well as a standalone piece for those who never watched an episode of the TV show. Buy Cowboy Bebop: The Movie [Blu-ray].

Sucker Punch (2011): See description in DVD above.  Buy Sucker Punch (Blu-ray/DVD Combo).

Zazie dans le metro (1960): See description in DVD above. Buy Zazie dans le metro [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.

Coming up next week: reviews of the Roger Corman quickie The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), the best black comedy about a man-eating plant ever filmed in 48 hours; the seminal surreal cyperpunk pic Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989);  Lon Chaney‘s 1925 The Monster; a 366 Underground report on the experimental Wrists (2011); and possibly even a bonus review hidden in there somewhere.

It was a sick and disturbing week for weird search terms used to locate the site.  People flocked to search engines desperately looking for movies matching the following twisted descriptions: the awful “3 weird robots rape a girl,” the Father’s Day-themed “movie of pubic hair of old man dad,” and, of course, this week’s weirdest search term of the week, “silent film with a dwarf climbing into a vagina black and white.”  As you read this, we’re on the lookout for any movies matching the above descriptions for possible future review and certification.

Here’s the ever-growing reader-suggested review queue (more titles after break): Tetsuo (next week!); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal;  Primer;  A Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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):

General Orders No. 9 (2009): A documentary about—well, after watching the trailer, we’re still not quite sure what it’s about.  It’s an experimental documentary the synopsis describes as “one last trip down the rabbit hole before it gets paved over.”  It appears intended in the spirit of Koyaanisqatsi; the cinematography looks fantastic and the movie poster features a rabbit smoking a corncob pipe.  Premiering (two years after its festival run) at ReRun in Brooklyn, future screening dates unknown.  General Orders No. 9 official site.

SCREENINGS (Kino Club, Brighton, UK, June 26 7:00 PM)

Lint the Movie (2011?):  Documentary about the famous unknown sci-fi writer and cartoonist Jeff Lint, British rival of Phillip K. Dick (as well as Cameo Herzog) and author of such cult opuses as “Clowns & Insects,” “The Stupid Conversation,” and “Catty and the Major,” the last known as “the scariest kid’s cartoon ever aired.”   Directed by Steve Aylett, a sci-fi author who is a bit Dick-ish himself.  I remember when I first discovered Lint; I was gazing at my navel at the time.  More info on Lint the Movie here.

ON THE WEB:

Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer (2010): The synopsis is accurate in describing this as a “screwball cyberpunk comedy” set in Neo-Mega-Ultra-Tokyo and starring a fast-talking gal reporter.  It’s professionally acted, has played a number of big film festivals including Toronto After Dark, and is only seven minutes long.  Check it out.  Watch Frank DanCoolo: Paranormal Drug Dealer.

NEW ON DVD:

Bedways (2010): The plot is that a director wants to shoot an experimental sex film but doesn’t have an idea for a plot.  Unsimulated sex and experimental filmmaking merge in this new wave art porno with the tagline “Berlin is the shelter/Love is impossible/Flesh is the law.” Buy Bedways.

Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011): Forget the title conflict: the real monster battle here is between ex-80s pop stars Tiffany (late of Mega Piranha) and Debbie Gibson (of Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus), who tangle in a heavily-promoted catfight in the mud.  Mega Piranha probably gave us our mega-fix for at least another year, but if you can’t get enough of this brand of cheese, by all means go for it. Buy Mega Python vs. Gatoroid.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Sadko (1953):  This week we dig into the Mosfilm archives (see the rest of our archeological discoveries here) for this Aleksandr Ptushko fairy tale feature in which a Russian “Sinbad” seeks the Bluebird of Happiness.  You may have seen the dubbed version of this film (The Magic Voyage of Sinbad) spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000; here’s a chance to see at as originally intended, with the Rimsky-Korsakov classical score intact. Watch Sadko 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.