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):

The Living Wake:  This whimsical story about a self-proclaimed genius traveling about with his biographer in a bicycle/rickshaw on his final day of life before attending his own wake appears perched somewhere halfway between quirky and absurdist.  Reviews have been on the bad side of mixed, but it looks like it should score points for originality, if nothing else.  Opening in New York this week, with Los Angeles and Seattle to follow.  The Living Wake official site.

Metropolis [The Complete Metropolis] (1927): It is with extreme embarrassment that we confess we missed the chance last week to announce the US premier of the restored version of Metropolis, which incorporates 25 minutes of recently discovered footage into Fritz Lang’s expressionist science fiction masterpiece. Fortunately, it’s still playing the Film Forum in New York City for one more week. The current schedule shows that the masterpiece will tour the US through the summer, starting next week, including multiple stops in southern California along with dates in Cleveland; San Francisco; Denver; Minneapolis; Brookline, MA; Detroit; Shreveport, LA; upstate New York (Rochester, Ithaca and Schenectady); Philadelphia; St. Louis; San Antonio; Montreal; Columbus, OH; Kansas City; Tampa; Ann Arbor, MI; Milwaukee; and hopefully more. A new Metropolis is without a doubt the major cinematic event (weird or otherwise) of 2010.  They’re pulling the old short-sighted “embedding disabled by request” trick at YouTube, so view the trailer at The Complete Metropolis official website.

FILM FESTIVALS: CANNES

Cannes is upon us again, before many of last year’s most interesting weird entries (e.g. Dogtooth) have made it to this shore. It will be running from May 12 to May 23, and none other than fallen star Tim Burton is head of the jury. A refresher on Cannes terminology: “In Competition” means that the film is eligible to win one of the major awards like the Palme D’or, while “Un Certain Regard” means the film is too interesting to qualify for a major award.  Films shown “Out of Competition” are either too interesting to be shown in “Un Certain Regard,” or just plain crappy (e.g. Robin Hood).  Here are the movies we’ll be keeping an eye on this year (in what frankly looks like a very bland year):

• Filme Socialisme:  Tell the truth: you didn’t realize Jean-Luc Goddard was still alive, either.  His latest film is enigmatically described as “a symphony in three movements,” titled “Things Such As,” “Quo Vadis Europe,” and “Humanities.”  The press kit is certainly weird, even if nothing else is.  Un Certain Regard.
• Kaboom: Gregg Araki is growing up: the 53 year old has graduated from making movies about high schoolers to making movies about college students.  This one involves a hunky bisexual protagonist,  hallucinogenic cookies, and a murdered dream girl, and is also described as “a sci-fi story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students.”  Out of Competition.
• Tender Son – The Frankenstein Project [Szelíd teremtés – A Frankenstein-terv]: A loose adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, with the part of the monster played by a son returning home from a mental institution.  Hungarian, In Competition.

NEW ON DVD:

Malice in Wonderland (2009):  Another twist on the Alice in Wonderland legend, this time deliberately dark and surrealistic.  This one is currently sitting in our reader-suggested review queue, and that’s a good sign! Buy Malice in Wonderland.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Rock n’ Roll High School (1979):  OK, this campy/spoofy tale of teen punk rebellion produced by Roger Corman and featuring the Ramones isn’t all that weird, but it is cult-y and psychotronic-y, and there’s a good chance it will interest those who also love weird movies. Buy Rock ‘N’ Roll High School [Blu-ray].

Samurai Princess (2009): Another Japanese exercise in absurd gory excess from the distributors of Meatball Machine and Tokyo Gore Police. Two words will tell you whether you’re interested in this: breast grenades. Buy Samurai Princess [Blu-ray]. We missed the announcement back in November 2009, but this is also available on DVD.

NEW ON VIDEO ON DEMAND:

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009): We noticed this very weird sounding movie, an absurdist comedy about janitors undergoing male pregnancy, way back in April 2009 and were wondering if it would ever see the light of day. Well, it’s finally shown up on Amazon Video on Demand, and we’re hopeful a DVD release will follow. Watch The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle on Video on Demand.

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.

First off, apologies for the advertising creeping onto the site.  It’s only going to get worse in the coming weeks and months, as we try to reach the level where the site can pay for its own hosting fees, but I will always try to keep it as unobtrusive and relevant as possible.

Next week, you can expect to see reviews of Takashi Miike‘s Gozu, and a reader review of Big Man Japan.  We’re hoping (no promises yet) to add a review of Suicide Club for an (almost) all “weird Japan” week—that is, until Thursday, when Alfred brings us another in his ongoing survey of the offbeat world of B-Westerns.

As for the weirdest search term used to locate the site this week, we had the usual string of fetish porn requests, including (among the printable and least disturbing ones) “penis weird movies” (a legitimate quest to find Taxidermia?)  We’ll go in a more PG related direction, however, and select “Dracula eye trick”: was the searcher looking for info on how they lit Bela Lugosi’s eyes, or advice on how to hypnotize potential victims just by looking at them?

The reader suggested review queue looks like this: Suicide Club (hopefully next week);  Gozu (next week); Trash Humpers (DVD release is imminent, but this will probably be pushed back while we wait for it); Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); 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; Danger: Diabolik; 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; 964 Pinocchio; 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; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); Possession; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; Malice in Wonderland; 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; and “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000).

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):

Trash Humpers (2010): Harmony Korine’s latest follows a gang of elderly Peeping Toms around in low-grade video as they engage in trash humping and other activities.  Reviews have been on the poor side of divided, but then the critics (including us) didn’t “get” Gummo, either.  Opens in NYC next week, with scattered showings across major U.S. cities through the summer.  We’re probably going to have to wait for DVD.  Trash Humpers official site.

SCREENINGS (ANTHOLOGY ARCHIVES, NYC)

DDR/DDR (2010): Descriptions of this collage-style documentary on the vanished East and West Germany sound like first drafts of a masters’ thesis, full of terms like “propositional” and phrases like “a self-reflexive inquiry into non-fiction film.”  It’s a “dreamlike” “ciné-constellation,” but jargon aside, the idea of a free-association visual essay mixing up historical surveillance footage with interviews with a group of German “‘Redskin’ Indian hobbyists” has real potential to weird-up the reality-bound documentary genre.  DDR/DDR official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Nine (2009):  Read our capsule review.  Adapting Federico Fellini’s relationship problems into a musical is a “small-w” weird concept, but with Oscar aspirations, the movie succeeds in being as conventional as it can. Buy Nine.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

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

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE

Fantasy Mission Force (1982): This is a great, crazed, weird kung-fu comedy about a gang of misfits (including a young Jackie Chan) who brave a haunted house and fight Amazons, among other obstacles, in their quest to rescue Abraham Lincoln from the Soviets. That description barely scratches the surface of the lunacy of this movie, which also mixes in musical numbers and violent, epic gun battles. The legitimacy of this release is questionable, but as long as YouTube is OK with it, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. This may disappear soon. Watch Fantasy Mission Force free on YouTube.

Hamlet (2007): A surrealistic rendition of the Shakespeare tale focusing on the supernatural elements with minimalist sets. Very few people have seen this, including us. Watch Hamlet 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.

Next week, look for reviews of the 80s cult item Liquid Sky (1982), the already notorious grossout horror The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), and György Pálfi’s surrealist sensation Taxidermia (2006).

It was a good week for weird search terms.  We have to admit some pride in seeing that a search for “PICTURES OF 1935 MAKEUP DRESSER WITH MIRROR THAT BENT IN” brings up our Cowards Bend the Knee review as the number 1 hit on Google!  Our plan to siphon traffic by tapping into the incredibly specific antiques research market is working like a charm!  In more distressing news, we noticed a hit in our referrer logs from http://satan/: a site (with no earthly domain) that clearly does not exist—in this universe, at least.  Are some of our hits coming from the eternally damned in the afterlife?  We’ll take them. Despite all this, our favorite weird search term of the week was “weird pics of midget madness.”

Here’s the updated reader-suggested review queue: Suicide Club (haven’t forgotten it!); The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (cutting in line);Taxidermia (cutting in line); Trash Humpers (DVD release is imminent, but this will probably be pushed back while we wait for it); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); 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; Danger: Diabolik; 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; 964 Pinocchio; 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; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); Possession; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; Malice in Wonderland; 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; and Sweet Movie.

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):

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The inventive dream sequences of the original made it a slasher series of marginal weird interest. The uninspiring reviews of the reboot make it sound like it’s of marginal human interest. A Nightmare on Elm Street official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009): This intended cult horror film about a mad doctor who creates a human centipede by linking victims together mouth to anus (!) is already in our reader-suggested review queue, but is only now getting a limited release here in the U.S.  Debuting in NYC this week, and going on a 12 city tour the following week.  It’s also appearing contemporaneously on IFC’s “On Demand” service (available on many US cable systems), which may be how we end up seeing it.  The Human Centipede (First Sequence) official site.

IN POST-PRODUCTION:

Inception:  Buzz is continuing to build around director Christopher (Memento, The Dark Knight)  Nolan’s latest project, reported to be a mind-bending psychological thriller with the tag line, “your mind is the scene of the crime.”  This will be the second psychological thriller of the year for star Leonardo di Caprio, who has been quoted as saying Inception “didn’t make sense to any of us when we were doing it.”  Sounds great, though it could just be marketing.   Release date is set for July 26.   Inception official site.

NEW ON DVD:

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009): Read our capsule review.  This tale of magic mirrors, carnival drifters and Faustian bargains may be ever-so-slightly underwhelming, but only because Terry Gilliam has set the bar so high.   It might have worked better had Heath Ledger survived to do re-shoots, but it’s a Gilliam movie and it’s still worth seeing. Buy The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

Life Blood [AKA Murder World] (2009): The plot appears to involve God, a gay female, who turns two lipstick lesbian lovers into vampires and sends them out to wreak vengeance on the straight world. That’s the plot as I understand it from skimming the synopsis while drunk, and if it’s actually something more conventional I don’t want to know about it.  Buy Life Blood.

Mega Piranha (2010): This laughable, cheap and ridiculous Asylum production about mutant flying piranhas got noticed in the camp community thanks to a Syfy channel screening.  Our own Eric Young even reviewed it on his personal site.  Now, it’s on DVD, where it belongs.  The only question, is why isn’t this home-video version the unrated director’s cut with nudity and piranhic gore?  Buy Megapiranha.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Dune (1984): The flop sci-fi epic about giant sandworms and messianic prophecies is perhaps David Lynch‘s most divisive work; it turned out too weird for a blockbuster, but it has it’s defenders. A nice weird addition to the Blu-ray ranks. Buy Dune [Blu-ray].

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009): See review in DVD above. Buy The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE

Breakfast of Aliens (1993):  We’re just going to quote the plot synopsis here: “A lovable loser, Walter Clydepepper (Vic Dunlop) eats an alien from outer space in his cereal and becomes a deadly stand up comic.”  Looks cheap and campy, like it might have been made specifically for the old “Up All Night!” TV show.  Watch Breakfast of Aliens 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.