Next week, we have reviews planned for the strange and perverse Belgian horror Calvaire and Ken Russell‘s Gothic. Also, as I write, the 366 Weird Movies High Council is meeting to decide whether we should officially certify A Serious Man as one of the Best Weird Movies of all time; we hope to have the results of their deliberations for you next week.

Weirdest search term used to locate the site last week: “Sean Gullette actually drilled his head.”  Talk about your method actors!

The scary-long reader-suggested review queue now looks like this: Santa Sangre;  Monday (assuming I can find an English language version); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Barton Fink; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); 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; Gothic (jumping in line to come out next week!); 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; and Kairo [AKA Pulse].

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):

Shutter Island:  Psychological thriller about tough cops (Leonardo di Caprio and the ubiquitous Mark Ruffalo) who investigate a (possibly supernatural) disappearance in a spooky asylum for the criminally insane. Unlikely to be truly weird (although there are reports of some “small-s” surrealism), but the trailer is intriguing and a new Scorcese genre movie is always notable.  Shutter Island official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

2009 Oscar Nominated Shorts:  Showing in select cities across the US, UK, Mexico and Canada.  Usually something mildly weird (or at least mildly experimental) will make its way into the shorts field, usually in the animated category.  The big draw should be Nick Park’s latest 30 minute installment of the popular Wallace & Gromit series, “A Matter of Loaf and Death.”  The official site is still listing the lineup from last year’s offering.  2009 Oscar Nominated Shorts Official Site.

Happy Tears (2010): Parker Posie and Demi Moore star as two adult women returning home to confront their dad (Rip Torn) and search for his buried treasure, in a film that features “surrealistic” dream sequences (apparently de-emphasized in the trailer).  Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter called it “simply weird” (comparing it unfavorably to director Michael Lichenstein’s previous feature, Teeth, which he found “weird-funny”).  Happy Tears official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Black Dynamite (2009): Not weird, but notably offbeat.  A blaxploitation parody/spoof that authentically mimics the look and feel of the 1970s genre film, even including a visible boom mic. Buy Black Dynamite.

Georges Melies Encore: 26 new, recently unearthed short films (and some fragments) from Melies (A Trip to the Moon, 1902) the French cinema pioneer trickster who was the first to recognize cinema’s natural affinity for the fantastic.  Contains some intriguing titles, like “L’hallucination de l’alchimiste” (translated into English as “An Hallucinated Alchemist,” for some reason). Historical film fanatics will be delighted by this offering. Buy Georges Melies Encore.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Black Dynamite (2009): See review in DVD above. Buy Black Dynamite [Blu-ray].

OUT-OF-PRINT HEADS UP:

The Criterion Collection has lost the rights to more than a dozen StudioCanal films, and the Criterion editions (usually the industry standard for technical quality and extras) will be going out of print.  The most notable losses for our purposes are the entire Orphic trilogy and Jen-Luc Goddard’s Alphaville.  The rights are going to Lionsgate, so the DVDs may be reissued.  You can see the complete list of lost titles in Criterion’s official public announcement of the deal.  Criterion is offering $5 off if you purchase from their website.

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, we’re going to partially plug the gaping hole in our David Lynch coverage with two new reviews: Eric gives us his take on The Short Films of David Lynch, while 366 tackles Lynch’s latest, Inland Empire. Through in coverage of the little experimental film with the big name, Heads of Control: The Gorul Baheu Brain Expedition, and Alfred‘s take on 2009’s “event” movie Avatar, and you have yourself a week!

For the weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, we’ll go with “beethoven seventh vampire black,” simply because it suggests to us that Beethoven had six previous vampires, all of whom were white.

Here’s the updated reader-nominated review queue: Visitor Q (substituted for the currently unavailable in the US Survive Style 5+); The Short Films of David Lynch (next week); Santa Sangre; Inland Empire (next week); Monday (assuming I can find an English language version); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Barton Fink; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); 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; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (jumping in line to come out next week!); Gothic; 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; and 964 Pinocchio.

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):

To Die for Tano [Tano da Morire] (1997): The tagline tells you everything you need to know: it’s an Italian “Mafia ‘Gangsta Rap’ Musical.”  Unlikely as it seems, the clip below indicates that description’s accurate.  The story is reportedly based on true events in that occurred in Palermo. It’s playing Cinema Village in NYC this week before being independently released on DVD in March.  To Die for Tano official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Bronson (2008): Story about a violent British bank robber who is locked up in solitary confinement for 30 years; in prison, he transforms himself into the mythical persona “Charles Bronson.” Loosely based on the true story of one of Britain’s most violent criminals, more than one critic has compared it to A Clockwork Orange (if for no other reason, then for its mixture of ultraviolence and classical music). We’ve been eagerly awaiting this Region 1 DVD release. Buy Bronson .

A Serious Man (2009):  Read our capsule review.   This retelling of the Book of Job as a postmodern absurdist comedy starring a putzy suburban Jewish professor was one of the weirder movies of 2009, though we hesitated to put it on the List until we’d seen it on video.  Now, it looks like the time may have come to make a decision.  Buy A Serious Man

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Bronson (2008): See review in DVD above. Buy Bronson [Blu-ray].

A Serious Man (2009): See review in DVD above. Buy A Serious Man [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.

Hi, boys and girls, it’s time to check in again and take a sneak peak at what’s coming to 366 next week…

First, our long awaited treatment of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is ready to go tomorrow… so be sure to check back in 24 hours!  We’re going to try to get out another major review as well, for Jim Jarmusch‘s Dead Man.  We also plan to finish up our treatment of the Toxic Avenger series with a look at 1999’s Toxic Avenger IV: Citizen Toxie, which we’re praying will remain the final entry in the series…

In terms of weird search terms used to locate the site, lonely men (and probably gals too—hey, it’s the 21st century) looking for freaky porn remain our weirdest demographic.  Our favorite search term was “yogic intellectual porn.”  But we have to give ourselves a pat on the back for ever so briefly scoring as the #1 result on a Bing search for “weird sex movies.”

Our reader-suggested review queue continues to grow at an alarming and gratifying rate.  We want to make one change: research has shown that Survive Style 5+ has never been released in North America in any form, so we’re not going to review it right away.  We’re going to put it on our “pray for a Region 1release” list instead and get to it immediately when it comes around.  In it’s place we’re going to cover an alternate suggestion for a weird Japanese film, Takashi Miike‘s Visitor Q.   Taking that substitution into account, the queue looks like this: Visitor Q; The Short Films of David Lynch; Santa Sangre; Dead Man (next week); Inland Empire; Monday (assuming I can find an English language version); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Barton Fink; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); 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; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (jumping in line to come out next week!); Gothic; 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]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; and The Holy Mountain.  Wowie!