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 (WIDE RELEASE):

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Comic comic-book adaptation about a teen (Michael Cera, who will probably be playing teenagers until he starts to go bald) who must defeat seven evil ex-boyfriends to win the heart of his beloved.  Certainly a stretch for “weird” but looks quirky, offbeat.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World official site.

FILM FESTIVALS (NEW YORK CITY):

The New York City International Film Festival:  Runs Aug 12-19.  120 films (including shorts) from all over the world are premiering here, which means there should be something weird; the only one we could locate is the Spanish entry Lodo.  The filmmakers offer the following description: “Three levels in Sara’s mind: obsessions from her past, ghosts from the present, push her towards her own inner hell.”  The trailer has a music-video style sheen.  The New York City International Film Festival official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Crumb (1995):  Landmark documentary on R. Crumb, the famously eccentric comic book artist and counterculture icon, an acid-damaged neurotic with disturbing sexual fetishes and questionable racial sensitivities; the surprise of the doc is that R. appears to be the most normal person in his family.  Another quality entry (and surprising choice) from the Criterion Collection. Buy Crumb (The Criterion Collection).

Sea of Dust (2008):  Described as a mindbending gory fairytale done in a retro-Hammer style, starring makeup man Tom Savini and seventy-two year old former sex symbol Ingrid (The Wicker Man) Pitt.  The tagline reads “David Lynch meets the Brides of Dracula.” It won Best Feature at the non-prestigious Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival, but has also scored a ridiculously low 1.8 user rating on IMDB. For reference, Uwe Boll’s nearly universally hated The House of the Dead scored a 2.0; that 1.8 rating and would qualify as one of the IMDB’s 100 lowest rated movies if it had enough votes to qualify.  I confess to being fascinated by the possibilities this one offers. Buy Sea of Dust.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Crumb (1995): See entry in DVD above. Buy Crumb (The Criterion Collection) [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.

Another full and varied slate of reviews arrive next week: we’ll cover the Dutch black comedy The Dress [De Jurk] (1996); the animated cult classic The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993); the new bad movie Birdemic (2008), about a flock of animated gifs that attack unemployable actors; the recently re-released 80s horror The Silent Scream (1980) (starring genre fave Barbara Steele); King of Pluto , the 2004 documentary about oddball artist Mike Wrathell and his obsession with the recently demoted titular planetoid; and David Lynch‘s divisive boondoggle, Dune (1984).

We registered some great weird search terms this week, though we have suspicions they came from the same bizarre poet, looking to see his work reproduced in this very space.  On a normal week, the search term “so weird mother f***er, so weird clicker mucker” would easily top our weird search terms, but this week we select the lyrical “little birds sing out weirdness and life” instead.  Congratulations to the author!

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Trash Humpers (still waiting for the DVD); Danger: Diabolik (later today!); Nightmare Before Christmas (next week); The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple;  Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer;  Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines;  The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet; ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; and The Ninth Configuration.

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.

As is so often the case, there are no new releases of weird interest in theaters this week.

SCREENINGS: LOS ANGELES (AUG 13)

I Can See You/The Viewer (2008): Read I Can See You‘s certified weird entry.  Graham Reznick‘s “psychedelic campfire tale” will be screening at the Los Angeles Downtown Independent, along with the 3-D science fiction short The Viewer, which has been upgraded from the “retro” red/blue glasses to take advantage of current polarized 3-D technology.  I Can See You/The Viewer at Downtown Independent.

NEW ON DVD:

After.Life (2009): Another psychothriller about a dead person who doesn’t know she’s dead (this one tips its hat in the plot synopsis). Christina Ricci wakes up on a slab in funeral parlor director Liam Neeson’s mortuary; she insists she’s alive, he tells her she’s in passage to the afterlife (or the after.life, I guess). Critics were cruel, and Ricci’s nude scenes may be the main draw. Buy After.Life.

Spike (2008): Homemade horror/fairy tale mixing a monster movie with Beauty and the Beast. The few underground critics who saw it in its lightning-flash film festival run gave it mixed reviews, but Calum Waddell did say “anyone seeking something mind-bogglingly bizarre probably won’t be too disappointed by this,” which is enough of an endorsement for us to mention it. Buy Spike.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

After.Life (2009): See entry in DVD above. Buy After.Life [Blu-ray].

James and the Giant Peach (1996): Henry Selick‘s stop-motion followup the The Nightmare Before Christmas was again co-produced by Tim Burton, came from a story by Roald Dahl, and told the tale of a boy traveling to New York City aboard a giant flying and floating peach inhabited by various talking bugs.  It could have been a weird kids classic, but, though it’s worth seeing, some kind of magic is missing. Buy James and the Giant Peach [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.

The July contest is finished: congrats to the winners!

Next week, you can expect reviews of the latest macho fantasy from the creators of Sexy Beast—44 Inch Chest (2009); the 2007 psychological horror Spiral; the childishly surreal Belgian stop-motion animation feature A Town Called Panic (2009); the final entry in Alfred Eaker’s survey of B-westerns, the bizarre, silent Hell’s Hinges (1916); and Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly [AKA Girly], a 1970 entry in the “deadly family of weirdos” subgenre.  We’ll also get the early Tim Burton shorts Vincent and Frankenweenie out of the reader-suggested review (with Nightmare Before Christmas to follow shortly thereafter), along with Danger: Diabolik (1968).

Last week was not the greatest week for weird search terms used to locate the site, but this little bit of insane doggerel—“weird coupling in minute to win it”—caught our eye.

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Trash Humpers (still waiting for the DVD); Danger: Diabolik (next week); Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie (coming soon); The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple;  Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer;  Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines;  The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; and Léolo.

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.

SCREENINGS (NEW YORK CITY, JULY 30 – AUG 5):

“Russellmania!”: The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be screening early Ken Russell films all next week, with the director himself in attendance.  The lineup consists of Women in Love (1969), The Boy Friend (1971), The Devils (1971), The Music Lovers (1971), Savage Messiah (1972), Mahler (1974), Lisztomania (1975), Tommy (1975), and Valentino (1977).  At least one of these movies will make the List in the future (let the speculation begin)!  Lincoln Center information page for Russellmania!

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Beast Pageant (post-production): Surreal underground film about a man who is rescued from mundane modern life by a singing cowboy who bursts from his body one day and takes him on a magical adventure.  The stills and trailer look impressively weird. The Beast Pageant official site.

Untitled Kin Dza-Dza sequel: Before we’ve even had a chance to check out the original 1986 cult Russian sci-fi movie Kin Dza-Dza (described by one of our correspondents as “crazy”), we find that there’s already an animated sequel by the same director in the works.   See The Quiet Earth for more details and concept art. We’ll keep an eye out, but this is years away from being available, if it ever comes to pass.

NEW ON DVD:

Home (2008):  When a busy highway opens next to a rural Swiss homestead, the insular family takes increasingly desperate and bizarre measures to block out the intrusion of the outside world.  Starring Isabelle Huppert, this Swiss entry for the 2009 foreign language Academy Award received fantastic reviews; the London Telegraph called it a “bewitching dream.” Buy Home.

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009): An intriguing idea.  Shades of Waking Life, a team of animators created scenes from the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead in varying styles encompassing “everything from puppet theater to CGI, hand drawn animation to flash, and oil paintings to tattoos.” Buy Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated.

Repo Men (2010): A more serious, action-oriented, Paris Hilton-free, non-musical—in other words, a less weird—treatment of the same idea covered in Repo: The Genetic Opera: a future in which human organs can be bought and are repossessed if their owner fails to meet their payments.  With Jude Law and Forrest Whittaker.  Sank like a stone in theaters, but it has its fans. Buy Repo Men.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000): Asian-American director Ang Lee first brought the wuxia film to the cineplexes with this Tawianese co-production starring Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeough as warriors fighting over a stolen sword.  Beautifully filmed and there’s a gorgeous magical realist scene where combatants tiptoe over treetops, but it’s greatest value was in opening American eyes to the grace and pageantry of the modern far East martial arts film.  This Blu-ray edition has been highly anticipated for years. Buy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon [Blu-ray].

Home (2008): See description in DVD above. Buy Home [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.