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.

Once again, there’s nothing of weird interest debuting in theaters this week.  However, Moon (the “intelligent” science fiction movie mentioned in the Weird Horizon for 6/12/09), is coming to town here and is likely to get a capsule review next week.

NEW ON DVD:

Faerie Tale Theatre: Tales from Hans Christian Andersen (1982): Fairy tales are perhaps the oldest form of weird literature, so we always perk up our ears when a fairy tale title is released. This disc collects four episodes from the short-lived but critically acclaimed children’s television show hosted by Shelly Duvall. Included in this set are the episodes “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “The Nightingale”, “The Snow Queen” and “Thumbelina.” The show always attracted major acting talent: Alan Arkin, Art Carney, Mick Jagger, Edward James Olmos, Lee Remick, and Carrie Fisher star on this disc. Buy from Amazon.

For All Mankind (1989): OK, this impressive documentary about the moon landing probably isn’t technically weird, but it is a noteworthy release from the Criterion Collection.  The visuals are said to be spectacular, and images of takeoff and landing on the moon from the astronaut’s perspective certainly aren’t run of the mill; it’s also told in a non-linear, collage-like fashion and features an ambient soundtrack by Brian Eno. Buy from Amazon.

Grey Gardens (2009):  The original Grey Gardens was a 1975 documentary about two eccentric female relations of Jackie Onassis who became recluses and lost touch with the outside world (and with reality) at the decaying titular estate.  This version is a dramatic recreation of that documentary, produced by HBO and starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.   Adapting a documentary into a dramatic film seems pointless, but reviews were actually very good. Buy from Amazon.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)/Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)/House of Flying Daggers (2004): The recent run of Chinese epics tend to be colorful, magical, and fantastical, even when they’re not full-on weird (and even when they’re directed by Chinese-Americans rather than natives). If you’re a fan of the genre, and you probably should be, here’s your chance to snag a triple-featurenotable titles on Blu-ray at a bargain price. Also, Crouching Tiger is currently only available on Blu-ray in this bundle (a fact that has frankly pissed off many fans who already own the other two titles). 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.

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.

Sadly, there’s nothing new of weird interest opening in theaters this week.

NEW ON DVD:

A Day in the Life (2009): I have no idea if this direct-to-DVD release from rapper-director Sticky Fingaz is any good, but it’s a novelty, at least: all the dialogue in this gangsta-action flick is rapped, even lines delivered by elderly white women or the detective played by the fortuitously named Michael Rapaport. Buy from Amazon.

Knowing (2009):  This apocalyptic fable from sometimes weird director Alex (Dark City) Proyas about a a little girl who predicted natural disasters in a mathematical code has some nice visuals and exciting action sequences.  Not weird, but strange “X Files” like visitors provide an uncanny thrill, and it may be worth a rental for sci-fi fans.  Starring Nick Cage. Buy from Amazon.

The Unborn (2009): Horror movie about a woman who may be haunted by the malevolent spirit of her own born twin; reviews were poor overall, but reportedly the nightmare imagery (drawn from Jewish mythology) is memorably bizarre. Buy from Amazon.

NEW (OFFICIALLY LICENSED) ON YOUTUBE:

The Doom Generation (1995): A trio of teen killers drift through a stylized America in this second entry in Gregg (Nowhere) Araki’s  “Teen Apocalypse” trilogy.  With Rose McGowan, James Duval, and numerous pop culture cameos.  This is the R-rated cut, not the unrated cut.   Watch 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.

If you search for “366 Weird Movies” on Google, you may discover this odd tribute: an unauthorized, uncredited, unlinked “remix” of our review of The Toxic Avenger, Part II on an anonymous blog.

This new version contains a few insights that I missed in my initial review.  For example, we learn that the movie is a “moral jocose spoof” with “politically false noxiousness,” one which “should pay fans of absurdist murderousness< a harm” (all true enough statements, I suppose).

Richard Harrington’s Washington Post review, cited in our article, has been similarly reworked to produce even more profound insights.  He finds that the original Toxic Avenger had ” a dope, surreal vim” and ponders the eternal question, “What happens when you disparage a cinema that’s considerate simple derision and disparage out cold the considerate on the unharmed derision?”  Smoke a joint and try to wrap your mind around that one; it’s even better than “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?”

What’s going on here?  Has 366 Weird Movies become grist for some elaborate Internet Dada mill? Looking at the reworked text, it looks like someone has taken the original article and used an automated program like Babblefish to translate the review into a foreign language, and then translated it back into English to mangle the grammar and vocabulary.  They’ve also inserted the nonsense phrase “on the unharmed demeaning” randomly at several points in the text, and helpfully highlighted arbitrary words and inserted links to two unrelated blogs: one from a mom in Australia, and the other to a young Arab journalist in Kuwait. The blog itself contains page after page of similarly stolen and transformed posts from all over the Web, including columns giving relationship advice (“A functional relationship can contrariwise indeed befall when both partners are advantageous with themselves enlighten and then with each other and scoff at a oodles.”)

The blog calls itself “humorous” (the title, not a description), and the posts are Continue reading APPROPRIATION AND MUTILATION: THE WEIRDEST FORM OF FLATTERY? →

Here’s the latest request:

“Impossible request here. When I was 4 or 5, I got up from bed and walked into the living room where my parents were watching a late night movie. It was a horror sci-fi piece of some sort. All I remember is a dog walking towards the camera and when it got near I realized it had a human head. That scene must have made quite an impression because I still remember it today. So… pre-1984 sci-fi/horror, mutant dog with human head. It’s not much of a description, but do you have any clues?”

At first I thought it might be John Carpenter’s THE THING, but the helpful folks at badmovies.org came up with a better idea–the 1978 remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS: