Next week, we’ll feature reviews of the wordless, mystical experiment Le Quattro Volte (2010), Ingmar Bergman’s medieval death poem The Seventh Seal (1957), and Alfred will cover a couple more avant-garde Mozart stagings with The Dream of Scipione and Ascanio in Alba. To fill things out, we’ll also post an essay in praise of the pretentious movie (the publication date is purely coincidental and has nothing to do with the movies chosen for review this week).
Looking for our weekly catalog of weird search terms for the week? Look no further. A couple of old friends came back this week: somebody out there is still looking for something “like necrophilia but weirder,” and of course, we still have the lonely searcher seeking that “wierd lumpy movie short.” We’ll focus on a trio of newcomers to select our Weirdest Search Term of the Week, however. Second runner up goes to the philosophical question “is it okay to love an object?” (We think if its strictly Platonic, then yes; if you’re talking carnally, it depends on how hot the object is). We were impressed enough by the simple search for “absurdism in perfume” to make it our first runner up. But the Weirdest Search term of the Week, by a unanimous vote, was “hapy valentine guillotine sex,” which took last week’s honorable mention search for “guillotine women art” and upped the weirdness ante to championship levels. Congratulations to all who competed, and for the losers, weirder luck next week!
NEPOTISM CORNER: Yes, there are people out there making YouTube videos with the stated aim of being featured on 366 Weird Movies. Unfortunately, they are related by blood to the owners and operators of this website, and therefore it would be unfair to spotlight them without full disclosure. Still, how can you look at the following footage and not be thrilled at the prospect of the upcoming generation of burgeoning absurdists?
Remember, with proper guidance you too can twist and pervert inspire your sons and daughters, nieces and nephews to make their own short films about egg-laying beatniks!
Here’s the massive reader suggested review queue, for those of you who follow such things: The Seventh Seal (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
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 (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Mill and The Cross: Artist/director Lech Majewski brings Pieter Brueghel’s sprawling canvas “The Way to Calvary”—which set the Crucifixion in the painter’s own 16th century Flanders—to life, using CGI to overlap real actors with the artwork. Maybe it’s not all that weird, but it’s certainly not normal. Rutger Hauer stars as Brueghel and becomes the first actor ever to portray a Flemish painter and a hobo with a shotgun in the same year. Opening this week at the Film Forum in NYC with scattered screenings through the fall. The Mill and the Cross official site.
The Weird World of Blowfly: Documentary focusing on Clarence Reid, better known as his alter-ego Blowfly, the proto-rapper and x-rated auteur of 1970s party albums packed with brilliantly brain-dead song parodies like “Spermy Night In Georgia” and “My Baby Keeps Farting In My Face.” Hey, it’s got “weird” right there in the title! Opening this week in New York, with L.A. and other major cities to follow. The Weird World of Blowfly official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
Gallino: We mentioned this upcoming project last week (you can see the teaser trailer in this post), but we were unaware at the time that the project is still seeking funding. Like many independent features, Gallino is reaching out to fans for fundraising via indiegogo. Listen to their plea here. If you have deep pockets, you can even be an extra and a guest producer!
NEW ON DVD:
Hesher (2010): A sociopathic arsonist and anarchist takes up residence in a family’s garage after the mother dies in a car accident; is he real, or just a symbol of discord? Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, Devin Brcohu, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie and Natalie Portman (who also produced). Buy Hesher.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: “Manos” The Hands of Fate: Read our review of “Manos”. We love MST3K, and we “love” (well, “admire”… well, “are fascinated by”?) Manos, and they turn out to be two great tastes that go great together: episode 424 consistently ranks among the top 3 episodes in fan polls, and has now been released on DVD three different times (as a single disc, packaged with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians as half of Rhino’s “Essentials” set, and this 2 disc extravaganza). This set includes the uncut version of the film together with the riffed version, the mini-documentary “Hotel Torgo,” bonus shorts (including both parts of “Hired!” and an original comedy short by Larry “Lost Skeleton of Cadavra” Blamire), and cast reflections on the episode, making it an essential disc for “Manos” and MST3K fans alike. Buy Mystery Science Theater 3000: “Manos” the Hands of Fate.
Le Quattro Volte (2010): The four stage journey of a shepherd’s soul through the afterlife, told according to one of geeky Greek cult leader Pythagoras’ lesser-known theorems. It’s interesting that Lorber is releasing this under its Italian title and not as The Four Times; they must realize they’re not going to trick Redbox renters into picking up a movie about a dying Italian shepherd who slowly turns into a rock. Buy Le Quattro Volte.
Trainspotting (1996): Danny Boyle’s cult hit about terminally bored Scottish heroin addicts isn’t defiantly weird, but contains some unforgettable hallucination sequences (feel like trip into the toilet, anyone?) This re-issue adds a wealth of supplementary material unavailable on the previous bare-bones release. Buy Trainspotting.
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
3 Women (1977): Robert Altman‘s dreamlike, surreal vision of three women—Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, and Janice Rule—in an identity crisis gets an upgrade to Blu-ray. From the Criterion Collection, and including a commentary track by the director. Buy 3 Women (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].
The 10th Victim (1965): Celebrity assassin Ursula Andress tries to notch her tenth kill for a future televised version of A Most Dangerous Game; her assignment is to ice suave killer Marcello Mastrioanni. This campy Italian satire anticipated reality TV, beating movies like The Running Man and Deathrow Gameshow to the punch by two decades; you may notice a scene later parodied in Austin Powers. Buy The 10th Victim [Blu-ray].
The Frighteners (1996): Peter Jackson released this horror-comedy about ghosthunter Michael J. Fox inducing a near-death experience so that he could battle spirits in their own realm after his critically successful fantasy-drama Heavenly Creatures. This one was a flop at the time, but it has drawn a small cult following over the years, though its membership is nowhere near the level of that for Jackson’s transgressive underground hits Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Dead-Alive. Buy The Frighteners [Blu-ray].
The Sky Crawlers [Sukai kurora] (2008): Latest visually impressive sci-fi anime from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, about children who are trained from birth as pilots to fight in an endless dogfight. Watch The Sky Crawlers 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.
Hello fellow weirdos! Next week we’re going to focus on recent releases here at 366 Weird Movies. We’ll take a mega-look at Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, starring Debbie Gibson’s rear end and Tiffany’s cleavage; we’ll snore our way through the experimental 2010 German sex film Bedways; and we’ll run down a pair of recent movie documentaries—Nightmares in Red, White and Blue and American Grindhouse—-as part of Pussy Goes Grr’s juxtaposition blogathon. Of course, Alfred will be bring you another avant-garde staging of a Mozart opera from the “M22” series: Claus Guth’s reconstruction of the maestro’s unfinished Zaide.
If you’re reading this post, chances are you’re anxious to discover what our Weirdest Search Term of the Week was. First off, once again, the recurring term “wierd lumpy movie short” rates nothing more an honorable mention—but keep trying, searcher. Moving on, while we’ve been expecting the “366” concept to take off with lots of imitators (“366 Bad Movies,” “366 Scary Movies,” etc.), we were not expecting this to be the first copycat site: “366 angels sex.” We’re constantly seeing searches involving movies we don’t recognize, but would love to see; this week’s winner in that strange subcategory is “short film surreal cannibal perfume karen kills shoots trash.” The other search subtype that shows up every week, without fail, is the lonely guy who has invented a bizarre personal fetish and assumes the Web is packed with like minded deviants. This week’s weirdo is looking for “sexy japanese get colonosopy videos.” And we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention this pair of bizarro searches: “hitler in a pickle” and “guillotine women art.” But our top Weird Search Term of the Week, without a doubt, describes a technique that we’d love to learn, if only it existed: the “frankenstein hypno-handshake.”
Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands (many, many more titles after the break, as always): Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Seventh Seal; Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
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.
It’s feast or famine in the weird movie world; last week a feast, this week, the opposite. The only good part about the drought onscreen and on DVD is it gives us a chance to talk about TIFF and some upcoming projects.
FILM FESTIVALS: TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (Toronto, Canada, Sep. 8-18)
The Toronto International festival (official website) has become one of the world’s biggest cinema celebrations. Coming at the end of the yearly festival season, it’s a place to debut a few important movies that were finished too late for Cannes; it’s also a place to showcase Oscar contenders. Here’s some films of note screening there:
Alps: The story involves people who fill in as doubles for departed loved ones to help with the grieving (or denial) process. Director Giorgos Lanthimos is on record calling it “darker and funnier” than his last film, the Certified Weird Dogtooth. Sep. 13 & 14.
Behold the Lamb: Irish black comedy about an unlikely pair taking a “long, strange and highly illegal road trip” en route to the “weirdest score of their lives.” Sep. 11, 12 & 16.
Carré blanc: A young man works for a nameless corporation putting fellow employees through bizarre performance tests in this surreal dystopian fantasy. The press release suggests a blend of Kafka and Tarkovsky. Sep 12, 14 & 16.
Damsels in Distress: Comedy/satire about a clique of women at a chic East Coast university who make it a point to “improve” the lives of their fellow students, sometimes through musical numbers. From Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, Bareclona), whose previous work was defiantly unweird; the press release describes this one as “distinctly offbeat, even manic,” “often-surreal,” and “delightfully weird.” Sep. 13 & 14.
A Dangerous Method: Historical drama about the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. We only mention it because it’s the latest from David Cronenberg. Sep 10 & 12.
Doppelgänger Paul: Absurdist comedy about a delusional man who comes to believe a random stranger is his exact double; another plot strand involves possible plagiarism of his 20,000 page opus, A Book About How Much I Hate Myself. Sep. 12, 14 & 17.
Fable of the Fish: A homeless woman becomes a celebrity when she gives birth to a fish. Magical realism from the Philippines. Sep. 10, 11 & 18.
Generation P: 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. Sep. 14, 15, & 16.
Invasion: A rediscovered Argentinian movie from 1969 about an alternate reality Buenos Aires preparing against an invasion by unknown forces. Jorge Luis Borges co-wrote the script. Sep. 12 & 15.
Keyhole: You heard it here first (possibly): a new Guy Maddin film. This one stars Jason Patric as Ulysses, a gangster on the run, journeying through his labyrinthine house trying to find his wife (Isabella Rossellini). Sep. 9 & 11.
Melancholia: Lars von Trier‘s latest is apocalyptic sci-fi; a planet (called Melancholia) is set to collide with Earth on a woman’s wedding day. Kirsten Dunst walked away from the Cannes with Best Actress honors; Charlotte Gainsbourg, Keifer Sutherland, Charlotte Rampling and John Hurt round out the fine cast. Sep 10 & 17.
Monster’s Club: An anarchist hermit who lives in a cabin and sends mail bombs to CEOs is visited by a mythical monster. Inspired by the writings of the Unabomber (seriously!) Sep. 10, 11 & 18.
The Skin I Live In: Pedro Almodovar (who has never gone fully weird, but is always off-center) delivers a mad scientist revenge movie with significant superficial similarities to Eyes Without a Face. Sep. 11 & 17.
Sleeping Beauty – From Australia comes this modern folktale that sounds like it has more to do with The House of Sleeping Beauties than with the classic fairy tale. We like writer/director Julia Leigh’s quote: “I’m interested in Wonder Cinema…” Sep. 14 & 18.
Take Shelter – Michael Shannon plays a crazy guy (daring casting, that) whose dreams of impending tempests storms are so lifelike that he’s convinced to build a storm shelter in real life. Sep. 15 & 16.
Twilight Portrait: Not too much info on this Russian debut, but the premise is that a woman is transformed into “a bizarre twilight version of herself” after a brutal sexual assault by a cop. Sep. 9, 10 & 16.
Twixt: Puffy Val Kilmer stars as a horror novelist who dreams about a ghost girl and gets drawn into real-life case involving a small town serial-killer. From Francis Ford Coppola. Sep. 11, 12 & 18.
UFO in her Eyes: Chinese authorities try to turn their backwater town into a tourist magnet after a possibly crazy woman reports having seen a UFO. It’s described as “surrealist and ironic.” Sep. 11, 12 & 17.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
Gallino (est 2012?): Carlos Atanes has released a trailer for his upcoming project Gallino, which he promises will be even weirder than his previous film Maximum Shame (an absurdist S&M musical). Here’s all we know so far: it’s subtitled “the chicken system” and described as “a pornophilosophical film.” Gallino official site.
The Rum Diary (2011): Bruce Robinson‘s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel about the boozy adventures of hard-drinking expatriate journalists in Puerto Rico in the 1960s will be appearing in theaters in mid-October. We’re not expecting it to be anywhere near as hallucinatory as Fear and Loathing, but there is a wealth of talent involved and Johnny Depp looks like he will be doing his spot-on Thompson impression all over again. No official site yet.
NEW ON DVD:
Carmel (2009): Highly personal, autobiographical impressionistic film by Israeli director Amos Gitai. Apparently a fragmented and incoherent series of scenes dealing with Israeli history, it’s no crowd-pleaser, but Gitai was able to recruit Jean Moreau to help out with the narration. Buy Carmel.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes (1988): The killer tomatoes return, disguised as humans; features the song “”Big Breasted Girls Go to the Beach and Take Their Tops Off” and a young George Clooney. You know it’s a light week for weird movie releases when we’re mentioning a Killer Tomatoes flick to fill up space. Buy Return of the Killer Tomatoes.
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Kabluey (2007): A slacker takes a job as a blue-clad corporate mascot to help his sister-in-law take care of his rowdy nephews when his brother is sent to fight in Iraq. We wouldn’t have paid much attention to this black comedy if John Anderson of Newsday hadn’t complained that “an excess of pure weirdness won’t lead to an excess of laughs.” If you were trying to keep us away from Kabluey with that comment, John, you failed miserably. Watch Kabluey 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 coming up next week: everyone loves top 10 lists (right?), so on Monday we’ll check out the weird films underground director Pat (Heads of Control: The Gorul Baheu Brain Expedition) Tremblay considers essential. We’ll also remove a couple of titles from that rapidly-growing reader-suggested review queue (see below) with coverage of Todd Rohal‘s super-duper-ultra-quirky debut, The Guatemalan Handshake (2006), as well as Andrei Tarkovsky‘s arthouse sci-fi mindbender Solyaris (1972). And, continuing his “M22” series, Alfred will cover another avant-garde staging of a Mozart opera with Martin Kusej’s rendition of Don Giovanni, Wolfgang Amadeus’ darkest work.
If none of the weird search terms we encountered this week were astoundingly strange, at least they were a varied bunch. We started out the week feeling sorry for the subject of this Internet inquiry: “sex free chris gustafson.” We hope things turn around for Mr. Gustafson. Speaking of sex, lust is a subject which inevitably inspires weird search terms, and this week is no exception. Usually, people who are looking for porn aren’t as prim and proper as the polite pervert who ventured onto the Web looking for “the best suggestion of intercourse sites.” That’s not quite as bizarre, however, as the fetishist seeking “very dirty and stingy women free porno pics.” (Is a dirty stingy woman one who buys generic condoms in bulk at the dollar store?) We’re unsure whether to be disturbed or amused by someone looking for a “surreal jr nudist,” but we do know that we’re confounded by the search for “adult hitler brain” (did the searcher want to be sure he didn’t pull up irrelevant results for child Hitler brain?) And how could we not mention the puzzling query for a list of “weird movies which cannot be acted in bollywood”? Still, we didn’t find any of these terms quite as weird as this week’s winner, “how to drive a antichris.” We have to wonder: is the searcher really looking for info on how to drive an anti-Chrysler?
Speaking of the ridiculously-long reader-suggested review queue (which we did in the first paragraph), here’s how it’s looking: The Guatemalan Handshake (next week!); Solyaris (1972) (next week!); Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Seventh Seal; Primer; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE→
Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!
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