2012 is drawing to a close faster than we realize, and it’s time to look for this year’s overlooked weird gems. To that end, next week we’ll be taking a taste of the luscious Chicken with Plums (the live-action romantic fantasy from the makers of Persepolis); investigating Nobody Else But You, the French mystery about a dead cheese model who believed herself to be the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe; and we’ll take a trip In the Realms of the Unreal, the documentary about outsider artist (and definite weirdo) Henry Darger and his fantasy world where little girl warriors battle evil adult slavers. Alfred will actually look ahead to 2013 as he gives us more inside info on the creation of the upcoming Creeporia. Oh, and on Thursday, we’re going to try and fit in some turkey and football as well… just saying.

Weird search terms used to locate the site this week were more quantity than quality, but at least we have lots of candidates to pick from in our weekly quest to isolate the Weirdest Search Term of the Week. We strongly considered making “super despondent japanese nurses sucking part1” our weirdest search term of the week, but we disqualified the query when we discovered there actually is a video by this exact name (obviously it’s a highly adult material, so don’t search for it—you’ll probably just end up back here, anyway). If super despondent Japanese nurse porn is out there, then you have to feel for the guy asking “where’s the snake midget porn”? Speaking of questions that confound even Google, we can think of no possible advice for the person asking “wherees fur mat thing? lounge on it naked facedown?” Our official Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however, is the ambiguous “wordpress putting a table above midgets.” Are they saying that content management system WordPress values tables more than midgets, or that if you try to insert a midget into your WordPress blog, it automatically inserts a table above it?

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue now 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 (LIMITED RELEASE):

Generation P (2011): A Russian poet turned adman takes a cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs; later, he meets the ghost of Che Guevara and a conspiracy involving a cult worshiping the ancient goddess Ishtar.  Definitely a weird one; sounds a little bit like a Thomas Pynchon screenplay (it’s from a Russian cult novel). We just assumed this weird satire about the Americanization of Russia would never appear in theaters in North America, but congrats to New World Distribution for proving us wrong. Opening this week in New York and Los Angeles with more dates to follow. Generation P US Distributor Site.

NEW ON DVD:

Prairie Love (2011): Sundance programmers described this Dakota-set story of a man who sneaks into the place of guy going to meet his prison-bound paramour for the first time as “wonderfully bizarre” and “brazenly idiosyncratic.” Of course, that equates to no theatrical distribution and belated debut on DVD, but at least we’re happy to see it. Buy Prairie Love.

“Trilogy of Life”: The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), Arabian Nights (1974): Before going totally over the edge with Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom, Pier Paolo Pasolini made these three bawdy (then x-rated) fantasy adaptations of classic literary tales. The Canterbury Tales features a very unique look at Hell you won’t want to miss. Buy “Trilogy of Life” (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) (Criterion Collection).

Weekend (1967): A weekend trip to the country turns into a surreal nightmare as a French couple find themselves stuck in an apocalyptic traffic jam. This Jean-Luc Godard has patiently been waiting its turn in our reader-suggested review queue. Buy Weekend (Criterion Collection).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

“The Otto Preminger Collection”: If for some reason you’re embarrassed to be seen buying a copy of the Certified Weird Skidoo (1968), you could always purchase that square acid musical as part of this three movie pack. The co-features are Hurry Sundown (1967), a “steamy” melodrama with racial overtones, and Such Good Friends (1971), a marital infidelity comedy set in a hospital. None of these movies are currently available on Blu-ray separately. Buy “The Otto Preminger Collection” [Blu-ray].

“Trilogy of Life”: The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), Arabian Nights (1974): See description in DVD above. Buy “Trilogy of Life” (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights) (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Watchmen Collector’s Edition (2009): Read our capsule review. Only three years old and already released in multiple editions, this one packages together a Blu-ray of the long-running “Ultimate Cut” together with a copy of Alan Moore’s original graphic novel. Buy Watchmen Collector’s Edition: Ultimate Cut + Graphic Novel [Blu-ray].

Weekend (1967): See description in DVD above. Buy Weekend (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

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 the movies we’ll be examining next week: The Devil’s Carnival, Darren Lynn Bousman‘s latest horror musical; the oddball ventriloquist doc Her Master’s Voice; and Shion Sono‘s Catholic panty-fetish comedy Love Exposure. Moving from Alfred Eaker will give us behind-the-scenes insight into the genesis of a low-budget film project as he discusses the upcoming horror-comedy-soap opera Creeporia.

Some weeks, we struggle to find two or three truly weird search terms to bring to your attention for our “Weirdest Search Term of the Week” contest. Other weeks, we get so many bizarre candidates that we’re turning away searches like “huge rats attack women and pregnant her ( film erotic)” as too normal. If you hadn’t guessed, this is one of the latter types of weeks. We’ll start by mentioning the person looking for the answer to the question, “how many black guys has aline had sex with” (Google suggests they might really want to know how many guys a line has had sex with). The search for “horses anal shaggy” is strange enough that we can’t pass up mentioning it, even though we don’t want to think about what the searcher may have been looking for. In another week the incoherently horny “what is the best time to drink water during eating food from porn naked stars” would be a clear winner for the Weirdest Search Term of the Week, but this week it’s just the runner up to “cartoon weman stomics moving because are full with mansters porn.” Even correcting for spelling, that is a specific (and extremely weird) fetish!

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: Love Exposure (next week!); The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; Liquid Sky (re-review); Society; Final Programme; “Foutaises”; Bloodsucking Freaks; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her 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 DEVELOPMENT:

Wastelander Panda (est 2013): A Panda wanders a post-apocalyptic wasteland in this three-part web-series planned for a 2013 release. The prologue/trailer has already been released and it looks pretty professional. Wastelander Panda official site.

Zombie Lesbian Musical (est. 2013): The title’s a little on the nose, don’t you think? No idea what this is about except that it’s from the producers of Wastelander Panda, it has its own Facebook page with 3600+ likes, and we suspect it’s an official feature length expansion of “Cupcake: A Zombie Lesbian Musical” (if it’s not, look out for a zombie lesbian lawsuit). Zombie Lesbian Musical Facebook page.

NEW ON DVD:

The Day He Arrives [Book chon bang hyang] (2011): A filmmaker goes to Seoul to meet a friend, misses him, gets drunk, goes home with a woman who resembles his old girlfriend… and the next day repeats the same events with slight variations, and again the next day… It appears to be a slightly surreal Korean arthouse variation on Groundhog Day. Buy The Day He Arrives.

“Elvira’s Movie Macabre Mega Movie Marathon”: Twelve terror titles presented by the tit-ular horror hostess. With the exception of the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead, the movies featured here are all pretty bad; sometimes amusingly bad, mostly just plain old bad. From most to least interesting, the movies we’ve reviewed in these pages are The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, The Manster and The Terror. Buy “Elvira’s Movie Macabre Mega Movie Marathon”.

Hospitalité (2010): A visitor with a Caucasian wife imposes himself on a Tokyo family, sowing chaos. Reviewers hint at a subtle strain of surrealism running through this allegory about Japanese xenophobia. Buy Hospitalité.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Fourth Dimension (2012): A triptych of short films with temporal themes described as “weird, ominous, cool, compelling.” One of the three pieces is from Harmony Korine and stars Val Kilmer as a motivational speaker. Watch The Fourth Dimension free 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.

Here’s what’s on tap for next week: we’ll serve up some Halloween leftovers with the recently Blu-rayed The Ring (2002), gaze at the forgotten science fiction classic World on a Wire (1973), G. Smalley will give you a primer on Zorns Lemma (1970) (which I could have sworn was in the reader-suggested queue, but we guess not), and Alfred will continue his survey of Val Lewton‘s “quiet horrors” with The Leopard Man (1943).

It was a terrible week for weird search terms used to locate the site. Are people out there getting more normal? If not for the people with disturbed libidos looking for crazy fetish porn, we’d have nothing to report at all on the weird search term front. Thankfully, we can at least offer dedicated readers of the Weirdest Search Term of the Week Contest a peek at such searches as “zombie porno girl uses a handgun during sex,” “aleyster crowley huge boobs,” and “a woman’s vagina sheet man movie 1990’s.” There’s not much to work with this week, but for our Weirdest Search Term of them all we’ll pick “www.cannibals eat fat young hookers naked” just because of the specificity involved: this guy knows what he wants, and won’t accept results referring to cannibals eating just any old skinny clothed hookers.

Here’s how the sadly-neglected, 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 Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →