A couple of announcements: today is your last day to view the experimental short film 9 (not related to the Shane Acker animated feature).  Tomorrow we will remove it, but it will be replaced with another 366 Exclusive short film.

In other news, thanks to Cameron, we now have our own 366 Weird Movies YouTube page, although it’s still in development.  You won’t find much there that you wouldn’t find here, but that could change in the future.

Expect to see reviews of Larry Cohen’s wacky genre mix God Told Me To [AKA Demon] (1976) next week, along with a review of Harry Kümel’s nearly forgotten Malpertuis, and a surprise or two.

For the weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, we’ll go with “Who wrote the diary? Why did Robin decided to write a diary?”  But an honorable mention goes to “Using the following steps write an hour by hour diary of a festival,” since two people apparently used this exact same term to find the site, probably for the same homework assignment.

We know we’ve been derelict in logging in reader reviews, and promise to be better about it—starting next week.  The ever-growing reader-suggested review queue looks like this: Cowards Bend the Knee (substituted for the unavailable Angel’s Egg), Greasers Palace (substituted for Institute Benjamenta), Pan’s Labyrinth, Ex Drummer, Waking Life, Survive Style 5+, The Dark Backward, The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, 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, and Basket Case.

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.

Another very weak week for the weird, with nothing odd in theaters (unless you live in NYC), and no bizarre DVD releases (although there is a very welcome addition to the Blu-ray ranks).

SCREENINGS (NEW YORK CITY, ANGELIKAS FILM CENTER)

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 extreme violence and classical music).  Already on DVD in the UK, but it does not appear to be available in Region 1 yet.  Bronson official site.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Audition (1999) (Collector’s Edition): Perhaps Japanese shockmeister Takeshi Miike’s greatest achievement, this tale of a lonely businessman who gets more than he asked for when he looks for love by staging auditions for a fake movie has a climax that’s both shatteringly surreal and blood-curdlingly gory and extreme.  This 2-disc Blu-ray release contains full commentary by Miike (the DVD release only had commentary during the key sequence) explaining the film along with screenwriter Daisuke Tengan, and more than 90 minutes of new interviews with cast and crew on Disc 2. Buy from Amazon.

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.

Because Rouge Cinema reviewed and linked the 366 Exclusive short film “9” (no relation to the Tim Burton/Shane Acker feature), we have decided to leave it up for another week, until October 12.  Made for the 48 Hour Film Festival, “9” is an experimental, sepia-toned avant-garde film exploring generational abuse in a mythical Western setting.  Click here to watch it.

We plan to premier a new exclusive short film in “9”‘s place after October 12.

366weirdmovies here, coming to you live from sunny Orlando, Florida.  Weird movies wait for no man, vacation or not.

Coming up next week, expect to see some combination of the following: reviews of the mystical Czech horror/drama The Cremator, Ed Wood’s accidentally magnificent Glen or Glenda?, Harry Kümel’s nearly forgotten weirdfest Malpertuis, The Wizard of Oz, and the overlooked 1985 children’s adventure Young Sherlock Holmes.  Also in the works is a long article on legendary (and very weird) Russian director Rustam Khamdamov, whose surrealistic masterpieces remain untranslated and virtually unknown in the West.

It was a slow week for weird search terms used to find this site; the best we can find is “free weird mutant sex movies.”

A while back reader “Rob Steele/Mofo Rising” suggested that we review the Quay Brothers’ out-of-print Institute Benjamenta.  We were thrilled to  recently discover that this film is going to be re-released on DVD and Blu-ray in a newly restored version sponsored by the British Film Institute in March, 2010 (you heard it here first!).  For that reason, we’re going to push back our review of Benjamenta to next year, and substitute Mofo’s alternate suggestion, Greaser’s Palace, in its place.  That makes the reader suggested review queue (which we confess is getting backed up) looks like this: Cowards Bend the Knee (substituted for the unavailable Angel’s Egg), Greaser’s Palace (substituted for Institute Benjamenta), Pan’s Labyrinth, Ex Drummer, Waking Life, Survive Style 5+, The Dark Backward, The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, and Xtro.