SCREENINGS – (Planeta, New York City, Sun., Jan 29):
Gutboy: A Badtime Story (2015): A flayed puppet fights the Man. All-marionette. This film proudly advertises itself as “the weirdest movie in the world,” which has obviously scared away distributors thus far. Check out this rare screening if you’re in the New York area. Gutboy at Planeta Facebook event page and Gutboy official site.
NEW ON DVD:
“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”: The title character investigates the murder of a millionaire and meets lots of strange characters in this comedy mystery series. The BBC America television show is based (far too loosely, according to fans) on the Douglas (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) Adams books. Buy “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”.
The Vessel (2016): On a remote island, a man survives a drowning that should have killed him and creates a monument to the schoolchildren who lost their lives in a tsunami. This enigmatic parable, the writing/directing debut of Julio Quintana, was executive produced by Terrence Malick and has been described as “dreamlike” more than once. Buy The Vessel.
Those of you who are good at math may realize that, with the publication of our 266th Certified Weird review last week, we have exactly one hundred movies left to enshrine on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made.
We’re not going to make too big a deal over this landmark, because at our current rate of one Certified Weird review per week, that still leaves about two years of work left. There is one small announcement I’d like to make, however. Since the beginning of the project I (G. Smalley) have personally approved every single movie that goes on the List. As a small nod to the excellent taste and wide-ranging knowledge of our hard-working contributors, which often exceeds my own, I’ve decided to allow each of them to add one personally significant movie to the List—a movie they believe belongs on any sane list of insane movies, but are afraid I might pass over if left to my own devices. I’ll designate these as “Staff Picks,” and when their turn comes up I’ll link back to this post so you’ll know what the hell I’m talking about. This will also serve as a place you can see everyone’s personalized recommendations, so I’ll be updating this post over the next two years.
Without further ado, here are the Staff Picks, in chronological order of their addition to the List:
Singing and dancing losers in La La Land? A high schooler struggling with his sexuality in the Moonlight? Casey Affleck brooding in Manchester by the Sea? Great acting, great cinematography, sure, but totally predictable. That’s exactly how they became eligible for the Oscars. Academy Award nominees reassure viewers, warm their hearts, and a bring a tear to their eye. Weirdcademy Award nominees frighten viewers, fry their minds, and sometimes bring a tiny taste of vomit to their mouths.
You want to see the strange, the mysterious, the transgressive, the surprising, and the utterly bizarre. And that’s why we’re letting you, the weird movie public, pick this year’s weirdest movie, actor, actress, and scene.
Although the editors of 366 Weird Movies select the nominees from the pool of available movies, the Awards themselves are a naked popularity contest and do not necessarily reflect either the artistic merit or intrinsic weirdness of the films involved. The Weirdcademy Awards are tongue-in-cheek and for fun only. Ballot-stuffing is a frequent occurrence. Please, no wagering.
The Weirdcademy Awards are given to the Weirdest Movie, Actor, Actress and Scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.
Who makes up the Weirdcademy? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. The rules for joining the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness are as follows. To officially join, locate an official online ballot (such as the one below) and hover your mouse pointer over the radial button representing the choice of movie you would like to see win any award in any category. Then, simply depress the left button of your mouse to make your selection. Selections made using the right mouse button will be disregarded, and you will be forced to reapply. If your application for membership is approved, a dot will appear next to your choice. You are not done yet, so continue reading. To be certified as a voting member of the Weirdcademy, at some point subsequent to making your selection, you must navigate your mouse button to the box marked “vote.” Now, again depress your left mouse button to confirm your membership as a voting member of the Weirdcademy.
(Vote as many times as you like, but only once per day, please. We’ll keep voting open until February 26 at 1:00 PM EST, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder).
There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see all the movies in any category before voting.
Be sure to also vote for Weirdest Short Film of the Year. To watch all five nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.
Without further delay, we unveil the nominees for the 2016 Weirdcademy Awards below:
Our weekly 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 at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Doobious Sources (2017): Two stoner freelance reporters are manipulated into perpetrating a local “fake news” story in this cannabis-themed satire. It appears to be playing in Santa Monica, but you’ll probably need to smoke it out on video-on-demand. Doobious Sources official site.
Staying Vertical (2016): A filmmaker meets a shepherdess, who bears him a child and then abandons both. It sounds like a standard dry French arthouse drama, except that Vanity Fair called it “the most shocking movie at Cannes” (partly for it’s “birth of a baby” footage) and numerous reviewers hint at weird psychological twists no one wants to fully reveal. Staying Vertical distributor site.
SCREENINGS – (IFC Center, New York, New York, Jan. 20-Feb. 2):
“Stanley Kubrick Series”: IFC Center screens all the major highlights from Stanley Kubrick‘s oeuvre over a two week period. Certified Weird selection 2001: A Space Odysseyplays Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday; droogs can glue their eyeballs to A Clockwork Orange on Friday, Saturday (including midnight screenings) or Sunday. You can also see The Shining on Friday, Saturday, or Monday, and keep an eye out for Eyes Wide Shut on Thursday. I’ve never regretted seeing any Kubrick film, weird or not. See the full schedule at the IFC Center Stanley Kubrick series page.
FILM FESTIVALS – Sundance Film Festival (Park City, UT, Jan 19-29):
The 2017 movie season officially kicks off with Sundance, where a hundred hopeful independent movies, including a few off-the-wall ones, come to vie for a handful of distribution contracts. In recent years Sundance added the “Midnight” screening section to add some weirdness to the otherwise lame, tame lineup of dramas about privileged white people and their problems (alternating with imported dramas about underprivileged brown people and their problems).
This year, the slate looks extremely tame, even for a festival that’s generally no friend to weirdos. Everyone is so serious and Al Gore-y. A harbinger of life in Trump’s America, perhaps? That said, last year we did overlook one of the weirdest movies that played at Sundance, the “Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse movie” (at the time, we thought it sounded like a dumb frat-boy joke; it wasn’t until early reviews started coming out we realized what we had failed to highlight). If we miss one this time, we’re guessing it will be David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (which looks like it stars Casey Affleck in a sheet). But we’re guessing Sundance’s lone weird entry of 2017—and yeah, we’re confident in this one’s strangeness—is Kuso, which looks like a psychedelic cable access variety show set in the aftermath of an L.A. earthquake. It’s the feature debut of Steven Ellison (whose alter ego is the musician “Flying Lotus”). It debuts tomorrow (Jan. 21) and plays again on the 22nd, 25th and 26th.
FILM FESTIVALS – Slamdance (Park City, UT, Jan 20-26):
Slamdance is Sundance’s punkier, sometimes (usually) weirder little brother, a low-budget alternative to the mid-budget institution. Here’s what may be worth looking out for down the road:
Automatic at Sea – A Swedish girl is trapped on a private island, hallucinating while waiting for the owner’s guests to arrive for a party. Screens Jan. 23 & 25.
Dave Made a Maze – Dave builds a pillow fort in his living room and then gets lost inside its maze of booby trapped corridors; his girlfriend assembles a team to go in and rescue him. Get lost in it Jan. 21st or 23rd.
Weather House – People locked inside a house due to global climate change invent their own rituals and culture to pass the time; looks like a German global warming version of Dogtooth. In the house Jan. 22nd and 26th.
The Field Guide to Evil (est. 201?): A new anthology horror film from the makers of The ABCs of Evil, focusing on folktales from around the world. It could be standard horror fare, but the oft-weird directors committed to the project make us take notice, especially Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio, The Duke of Burgundy), Agnieszka Smoczynska (The Lure), and Calvin Reeder (The Oregonian, The Rambler). The other talent isn’t too shabby either: up and comers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (Goodnight Mommy), Katrin Gebbe, Can Evrenol (Baskin), Ashim Ahluwalia, and Yannis Veslemes. Each will dramatize a horrific folk story from their homeland (except that Strickland will tackle Hungary). We don’t think funding will be an issue with this one, but their looking to raise at least an additional $190,000 in two months. The Field Guide to Evil at Microventures.
NEW ON DVD:
Death Race 2050 (2017): Straight-to-video (and video-on-demand, and Netflix) reboot of the satirical 1975 drive-in original about celebrity drivers running down civilians in the overpopulated future. It does not seem to be significantly different in tone from the campy original, and Roger Corman was confident enough to lend his name. Buy Death Race 2050.
Something Wild (1961): Carrol Baker stars in this then-controversial portrait of a rape victim’s psychological trauma, with a score by Aaron Copeland. Some find it weird; it’s the second film called Something Wild in the Criterion Collection’s catalog (the other being Jonathan Demme‘s 1986 romantic comedy). Buy Something Wild.
We got a huge boost in traffic this week, starting with this mention by JHarris on Metafilter which called us “a substantial tribute to celluloid oddities and unconventionals, loaded with interesting essays and outside links.”
That was pretty sweet, but apparently Rob Beschizza at BoingBoing saw it and thought he could drive even more traffic our way with a blurb titled “Guide to Weird Movies” (citing our Blue Velvet review, which shows that he really did read more than the front page).
Not to be outdone, Randall Colburn at The AV Club advised that site’s readers to “Move beyond ‘bad’ movies with this encyclopedia of weird ones” and perceptively surmised that “Budding cinephiles might find it a refreshing alternative to the classics that permeate every other ‘best of’ list. Honestly, you’ll probably get a more well-rounded education; the movies here run the gamut from high-brow to exploitation, with multiple genres, styles, and decades represented.”
Thanks for the kind words everyone! This traffic spike explains why our already over-busy suggestion box is overrun with even more offerings than usual. We hope that some of the new visitors will stick around; you may notice that we’re starting to make that final push towards the last 100 titles, and we’ll need all the help and support we can get to struggle through to the finish line.
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.
Our weekly 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 at the official site links.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
Ma (2015): Dialogue-free, Southwestern set version of the story of Mary (mother of Jesus). Debuting writer/director Celia Rowlson-Hall describes it as “a journey into the visceral and the surreal…” Screening in major U.S. cities. Ma official site.
We Are the Flesh [Tenemos la Carne] (2016): In a post-apocalyptic world, a brother and sister find shelter with a hermit who is indulging his own depraved fantasies. It’s already in our reader-suggested review queue, with coverage planned for next week. The Mexican arthouse horror opens in Los Angeles this week and New York the following week, with scattered showings across the country throughout the late winter. We Are the Flesh official Facebook page.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003): Read the Certified Weird entry! The good news is that his animated tale of an old woman and her dog seeking the assistance of three retired singers to save her grandson from the mob is finally on Blu-ray; the bad news is Sony Classics gives it a disrespectful bare bones BD-R release. Buy The Triplets of Belleville Blu-ray.
NEW ON VOD:
In Search of the Exile (2016): An abstract experimental film described as “a visionary cinematic experience, a doorway into a dreamworld where reality morphs and transforms before our eyes.” Three of the releases featured in this section this week are from Daniel Fawcett and Clara Pais of the UK’s Underground Film Studio; none of them have otherwise received U.S. releases. In Search of the Exile on Vimeo.
Replica (2005): Before Birdemic, James Nguyen honed his directorial skills with this never-released medical thriller about a man getting a kidney transplant. This curiosity is being offered “unriffed” to the most self-loathing cinema masochists by Rifftrax (you might want to wait for the version with comic commentary, due out in early February). Replica (unriffed) at Rifftrax.
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