Happy holidays! Here at 366 World Industries, we’ll be giving the trained monkeys who screen weird movies and perform light copy-editing Christmas Day off. We’ll still be posting something, though, so that doesn’t mean you can take Christmas Day off from reading 366 Weird Movies. We recommend you take the day to catch up on some posts you might have missed. As for the rest of the week, our review of Bathory, the revisionist Slovakian miniseries about the bloodthirsty 17th Hungarian countess who allegedly killed hundreds of virgin girls for her own sexual pleasure, should put you in the holiday spirit. We’ll also marvel at the conspiratorial interpretations of Stanley Kubrick‘s The Shining discussed in the 2012 documentary Room 237, and cover Charlie Chaplin‘s technological alienation classic Modern Times. meanwhile, we’ll be gearing up for end-of-the-year top 10 lists you love so much, or at least that you’ve come to expect.

We’re not sure what’s up this season—maybe people are spending their time making awkward drunken passes at co-workers during office Christmas parties instead of typing insane searches into Google—but the drought of weird search terms continues, making it difficult for us to select a Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We did see a search for “movie scene wearing white toilet rifle,” which made us wonder what a white toilet rifle is (OK, OK, so the searcher’s probably thinking of Full Metal Jacket—we’re stretching this week). If that one’s not weird enough for you (and we suspect it isn’t), how about “oh 366 brasil radiator”? No? Well, fortunately we do have one legitimately weird search term we can offer up this week: “hitler’s pickles.” These little green treats may be sour and tasty, yet they remain the world’s most despised sandwich accessory.

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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 on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (WIDE RELEASE):

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D:A woman is enticed to enter a strange circus tent and finds herself traveling through multiple carnivalesque dimensions, each of which just happens to be based on a separate Cirque du Soleil production. This “movie” is little more than a sampler/ad for CdS’s semi-surreal live shows, but it is cheaper than dropping a C-note to get into one of their Vegas showrooms. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Gandu (2010): The life of a young man who lives with his mother—a kept woman—becomes increasingly hallucinatory as he experiments with drugs, pornography and rap music in an attempt to find meaning in life. A rare slice of surrealism from the Indian subcontinent, decidedly un-Bollywood (the boxcover proudly proclaims, “Banned in India”). This is the first DVD release from a distributor with an interesting name—Artsploitation Films. Buy Gandu.

Sokurov: Early Masterworks (Whispering Pages/Stone/Save and Protect): Three literary avant-garde movies made by Russian Aleksandr Sokurov (Russian Ark) in the early 90s: Whispering Pages is based on “Crime and Punishment,” Stone involves the ghost of Chekov, and Save and Protect is an adaptation of Madame Bovary. According to the product description all of the movies are on DVD, but there is a bonus Whispering Pages Blu-ray disc. This surprising Cinema Guild set also contains 6 short Sokurov films. Buy “Sokurov: Early Masterworks” [Blu-ray and DVD].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Sokurov: Early Masterworks (Whispering Pages): See description in DVD above. Buy “Sokurov: Early Masterworks” [Blu-ray and DVD],

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.

Happy holidays, weirdophiles! Next week we’ll be stuffing your review-reading stocking with various cinematic presents, along with lumps of film coal (you can decide which is which). We’ll start off with the genre-bending Italian thriller (?) The Double Hour (2009); take a look at Gus van Sant’s oddly conceived teen death romance Restless (2011); and revisit Hush Puppy in the bathtub in Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012). Alfred will provide us with alterno Xmas choices from deep in the archives of cinema to top off the pre-holiday week.

People must be taking a break from typing insane queries into search engines to go out shopping; how else to explain the dearth of truly strange search terms in this week’s “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” contest? Odd entries were so light that we even considered relatively normal searches like “every 2000 movies about teens partying with a midget” as contenders. Also on our radar were “bizarre flicks stock advisory” (“in today’s market, Eraserhead rose 6 points on news that David Lynch has officially retired from filmmaking”) and “gummo eats gumbo” (why search for a Marx brother who never appeared on film eating a spicy Louisiana stew?) For our weirdest search term of the week, however, we’ll go with “film- two friends in prison-one friend escaped by toilet-librarian-tree-sea.” What’s a toilet-librarian-tree-sea, and how can you use one to escape from prison?

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (official Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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 on the official site links.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Consuming Spirits (2012): Experimental animation with a story involving three rust belt newspapermen with weird names: Gentian Violet 42, Victor Blue 38, and Earl Gray 64. Playing this week at Film Forum in New York—writer/director/animator Christopher Sullivan will be there in person this Friday and Saturday. No official site: here is the link to the Film Forum screening.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

The Frame (est. 2014): Jamin Winans, director of the Certified Weird Ink, has recently announced a new feature film project. The Frame team is being tight-lipped about the plot and the production, but I have been personally assured by an anonymous source that we can expect to see some “serious weird” in the finished product. We’ll keep an eye on it. The Frame Facebook page.

NEW ON DVD:

“Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi” (2002): Two kids find themselves thrown into various dimensions (parodies of video games or TV shows) in this anime TV series. We don’t normally pay that much attention to anime, because it plays by its own set of rules that make the word “weird” obsolete, but YouTube clips of this one suggest it may be up some of our readers’ alleys. Buy “Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi” Complete Collection.

Miami Connection (1987): A rock band fights drug-dealing ninjas in Miami. This newly resurrected 80s camp has been championed by the Alamo Drafthouse and Everything is Terrible! as “so-bad-it’s-good,” but is it “so-bad-it’s-weird”? Buy Miami Connection.

“The Qatsi Trilogy”: Koyaanisqatsi (1982)/ Powaqqatsi (1988)/ Naqoyqatsi (2002): Koyaanisqatsi (the Hopi Indian term means “life out of balance”) was a highly innovative, wordless documentary with an influential Philip Glass score and an environmental theme. Director Godfrey Reggio followed up the surprise cult hit with two similar sequels; the Criterion Collection has assembled the trio together in one set with the usual abundance of supplemental material. Buy “The Qatsi Trilogy” (Criterion Collection).

The Toxic Avenger – Japanese Cut (1984): Read our capsule review. Okay, we’re not Toxie’s biggest boosters, but fans may be interested in seeing the 11 extra minutes of footage in this never-before-released Japanese cut of the proudly obnoxious cult hit. Buy The Toxic Avenger – Japanese Cut.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Miami Connection (1987): See description in DVD above. If you really need to see Miami Connection in hi-def, here’s your chance. Buy Miami Connection [Blu-ray].

“The Qatsi Trilogy”: Koyaanisqatsi (1982)/ Powaqqatsi (1988)/ Naqoyqatsi (2002): See description in DVD above. Buy “The Qatsi Trilogy” (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

“The Ultimate Buster Keaton Collection”: This 14-disc (!) set contains all of Kino’s Keaton Kollection. You can buy it for Sherlock Jr. and throw out the rest of the discs. Buy “The Ultimate Buster Keaton Collection”.

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.

Here’s what we’ll be hitting you with next week: the strange drama The Day He Arrives (2011), sort of a boozy Korean version of Last Year in Marienbad by way of Groundhog Day; the violent and nearly surreal 1967 Spaghetti Western Django Kill! (If You Live, Shoot), just released on Blu-ray to capitalize on Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Django Unchained (curiously, neither movie has anything to do with the Django character from the long-running Italian series); Alfred will return to his series on the quiet horrors of Val Lewton to wrap up some loose ends; and we’ll throw in a surprise review of a very weird 2012 movie to be named later.

If you’re obsessive about the site, then you’ll have noticed something new: the Spambot of the Day!, a little feature where we honor the weirdest random comments made by the legions of automated software bots who submit literally thousands of worthless disguised advertisements to blogs around the world. We can’t promise we’ll highlight one of these every day, but from now on whenever we catch them saying something as ridiculous as this, we’ll be sure to approve their comment (after stripping out any advertising links, of course) for your amusement.

Of course, any discussion of bizarre random comments provides us with the perfect segue to launch into the current edition of our Weirdest Search Term of the Week contest. First, we note the search for “toplessmartians,” not because we think its so very weird, but just because it gives us the opportunity to brag about the fact that Google ranks us #1 for this highly coveted search term (sadly, we’re only #4 for “topless martians” spelled as two words, but what can you do?) From the “stump the experts” category comes the search for “flying naked babies and a fat man drinking rainbow wine…. name that disney movie.” After cataloging weird search terms for years, we’ve learned that the human libido is a very stupid thing that can get turned on by almost anything, but even so, this “sick” request was a first for us: “porn pictures of boat wakes.” Still, in the minds of our judges nothing this week topped “effective meditation for transvestites.” Why do transvestites need different meditation techniques than everyone else? (Does it have something to do with the underwear?) And, are there lots of ineffective meditation techniques for transvestites being peddled out there, requiring the searcher to specifically look for ones that work? It’s unanswered questions like these that make “effective meditation for transvestites” our Weirdest Search Term of the Week.

Here’s the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue: Django, Kill! (next week!); The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →