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.

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):

Zombieland:  There are many readers of this site who would flock to any zom-com offering, but the good news is that this particular post-zombie-apocalypse comedy, starring Woody Harrelson as a professional killer of the undead, is getting good advance notice, and may even be slightly weird: Andrew Wright of The Stranger is calling it “an absolute, occasionally surreal hoot.”  Zombieland official site.

IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):

A Serious Man: The latest Coen brothers film, a star-free philosophical dramedy about growing up Jewish in the American Midwest in the 1960s, is not making theater owners salivate at the prospect of ticket sales, but fans can safely expect to see the brothers’ trademark quirkiness on display.  A Serious Man official site.

SCREENINGS: NEW YORK CITY (MUSEUM OF MODERN ART)

Where Is Where? (2009): Experimental narrative film from Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila centers around the murder of a French boy by his two Arab playmates during the Algerian war and a poet’s attempts to understand the act years later; featuring split-screens and Death as a character.  Where Is Where? at the Museum of Modern Art.

NEW ON DVD:

The Wizard of Oz: 70th Anniversary Edition (1939):  Even with flying monkeys, taking apple trees and green-faced cossacks, The Wizard of Oz might not qualify as “weird”; but there’s no doubt that the story is the touchstone of indigenous American fantasy.  This 2-disc edition is from a crystal clear 2005 restoration and features outtakes and deleted scenes, numerous interviews with the surviving cast members and featurettes, and a numerous other extras—disc 1 can even do duty as a Wizard of Oz karaoke machine. Buy from Amazon.  Also available is an “Ultimate” edition that contains a digital copy of the movie and four 8 x 10 inch posters of the main characters. Buy Ultimate Edition.

NE W ON BLU-RAY:

The Wizard of Oz: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition:  A scaled down Blu-ray release is probably set for the future, but first comes this extravagant 4 disc limited-edition set with 16 hours (!) of bonus content, along with a 52 page booklet, a 7oth anniversary watch (with “genuine crystals”), and reproductions of original marketing materials. 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.

We have a lot of articles pending this week—and we’re not sure, even at this late date, in exactly what order the pieces will be published.  We can promise next week that you’ll see our long-pending reader-suggested review of the notorious underground necrophilia shockfest Nekromantik and Alfred’s review of Heart of the Beholder (a documentary on the battle between a mom-and-pop video store and the St. Louis chapter of Citizens for Decency over Martin Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ).

We haven’t published any examples of “the weirdest search terms used to locate the site” lately, but some doozies have come over the server log. “Catfighting stewardesses” gets the “we’re incredibly proud to be ranked #2 on Google for this search term” award.  In the “was that supposed to be an insult?” file, we find “your a weird movie.”  As always, the most competitive category is  the “why the heck did you click on our link when you’re looking for twisted fetish porn?” department.  You’d be amazed at the variety of unprintable sexual practices people spend their free hours scanning the Net for examples of, but the winner this week has a certain twisted poetry to it:  “pointy and puffy movies filled with sperm.”

The updated reader-suggested review queue looks like this: Nekromantik (coming this week), Cowards Bend the Knee (substituted for the unavailable Angel’s Egg), 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.