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.

SCREENING (NEW YORK CITY):

Altiplano (2009): Heavy-looking message movie about corporate types allowing mercury to poison the water supply of pure and virtuous Andes villagers; there are reportedly touches of surrealism (the Village Voice complains that it looks at times like a “Benetton ad by Alejandro Jodorowsky–lite“).  Screening this week at the Village East in Manhattan, with a date to follow in LA in October.  Altiplano official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Untitled Spike Jonze/Arcade Fire collaboration:  While we patiently wait for news on Jonze‘s reported adaptation of the “eternal winter” novel Light Boxes, it seems that the former music video prodigy is working on a short film project with indie rock darlings the Arcade Fire.  Word is it’s a sci-fi b-movie.  More info at slashfilm.

WEB PROJECTS:

Star Wars Uncut:  Star Wars fans and aspiring filmmakers submitted  15-second recreations of scenes from the classic Episode IV: A New Hope, and an editor chose the best (nearly 500 different segments) and stitched them together to recreate the entire movie.  The idea is similar (but more amateur) than Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (review coming later today).  It’s interesting to see the style and actors change every few seconds: talented animators and semi-professional film crews are put on equal footing with the large number of folks who simply re-enacted scenes using their kids or pets.   I confess that I enjoyed seeing Darth Vader with breasts in an early scene.  The project manager promises to release this as soon as he finishes “working through the legal issues.”  Good luck with that.  While we wait, here’s the clumsy link to watch Star Wars Uncut online.

Star Wars: Uncut Trailer from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

NEW ON DVD:

Big Money Rustlas (2010):  A Western from the rappers Insane Clown Posse, who play the entire movie in their trademark clown makeup and enlist reality-TV show level talent like Ron Jeremy, Brigitte Nielsen, Vanilla Ice (!), Todd Bridges, and a post-sex scandal Screech (Dustin Diamond) to their cause.  Avoid if you’re a Juggalo, as if you are it apparently makes sense; all others are encouraged to try it out. Buy Big Money Rustlas.

The Good, the Bad and the Weird (2008):  A South Korean tribute to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns that wowed audiences on the festival circuit.  Though “the weird” refers to a character and not the film’s style, it’s pretty hard for us not to notice a movie with such a title, especially when it gets glowing reviews containing words like “wild” and “ridiculous.”  Buy The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Ichi 1: Origin [AKA 1-Ichi] (2003): Direct-to-Japanese-video prequel of Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, telling how the title character became a sadomasochistic killer (was he teased in high school?).  It comes from one of Miike’s assistant directors.  If this were any good, we suspect it would have been released on these shores years ago, but some may be curious. No idea why this Tokyo Shock edition is being released just one year after Unearthed put out a DVD of the prequel.  Buy Ichi 1: Origin.

The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (2009):  Sequel to the minor cult hit The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001), with most of the same cast returning.  The original was a campy tongue-in-cheek send-up of 50s science fiction films and we expect the sequel to be more of the same. Buy The Lost Skeleton Returns Again.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Good, the Bad and the Weird (2008): See description in DVD above. Buy The Good, the Bad, the Weird [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.

Apologies: we have had significant issues with the site today. The entire site was inaccessible for almost two hours, and currently only the home page is working; every individual post is displaying an error message. We are working behind the scenes to get things up and running again. Please be patient.

7:20 PM EST. The issue seems to be resolved. Note to techies: if you change .htaccess in WordPress, be sure to place the file in the domain, not the root (i.e. in the /yourdomain.com folder, not the / folder).

Upcoming reviews: later today we’ll be posting our opinion of the direct-to-DVD somnambulist horror Parasomnia (2008). Later in the week look for reviews of a slew of recent releases: the public domain animation experiment Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated; ODDSAC, the psychedelic Animal Collective extended music video; a report on the restored version of Metropolis, now touring selected US cities; and the clayamtion drama Mary and Max (2008) (which will also clear an item out of the reader-suggested review queue). And that’s not all; also look for coverage of the overlooked hobo-killing movie Emperor of the North Pole (1973); Alfred Eaker ferrets out another unusual western in the Dalton Trumbo-penned Terror in a Texas Town (1958); and we’ll take a second look at the creepy Bela Lugosi/Boris Karloff teamup, The Black Cat (1934).

Last week the search engines sent us some real weird poetry; unfortunately, this week the traffic was more pedestrian. The weirdest search term used to locate the site this week was “felt me up in the elevator movies.” We know, we know, it’s a pretty ordinary search we’ve all performed dozens of times.

Here’s the updated reader-suggested review queue, in the order that we’ll be covering them: Trash Humpers (still waiting for the DVD); Mary and Max (cutting in line); Being John Malkovich (next week?); The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; The Apple; Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet; ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; The Ninth Configuration; Forbidden Zone; The Cell; The Illustrated Man; and The Man Who Fell to Earth.

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 (WIDE RELEASE):

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Comic comic-book adaptation about a teen (Michael Cera, who will probably be playing teenagers until he starts to go bald) who must defeat seven evil ex-boyfriends to win the heart of his beloved.  Certainly a stretch for “weird” but looks quirky, offbeat.  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World official site.

FILM FESTIVALS (NEW YORK CITY):

The New York City International Film Festival:  Runs Aug 12-19.  120 films (including shorts) from all over the world are premiering here, which means there should be something weird; the only one we could locate is the Spanish entry Lodo.  The filmmakers offer the following description: “Three levels in Sara’s mind: obsessions from her past, ghosts from the present, push her towards her own inner hell.”  The trailer has a music-video style sheen.  The New York City International Film Festival official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Crumb (1995):  Landmark documentary on R. Crumb, the famously eccentric comic book artist and counterculture icon, an acid-damaged neurotic with disturbing sexual fetishes and questionable racial sensitivities; the surprise of the doc is that R. appears to be the most normal person in his family.  Another quality entry (and surprising choice) from the Criterion Collection. Buy Crumb (The Criterion Collection).

Sea of Dust (2008):  Described as a mindbending gory fairytale done in a retro-Hammer style, starring makeup man Tom Savini and seventy-two year old former sex symbol Ingrid (The Wicker Man) Pitt.  The tagline reads “David Lynch meets the Brides of Dracula.” It won Best Feature at the non-prestigious Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival, but has also scored a ridiculously low 1.8 user rating on IMDB. For reference, Uwe Boll’s nearly universally hated The House of the Dead scored a 2.0; that 1.8 rating and would qualify as one of the IMDB’s 100 lowest rated movies if it had enough votes to qualify.  I confess to being fascinated by the possibilities this one offers. Buy Sea of Dust.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Crumb (1995): See entry in DVD above. Buy Crumb (The 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.

Another full and varied slate of reviews arrive next week: we’ll cover the Dutch black comedy The Dress [De Jurk] (1996); the animated cult classic The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993); the new bad movie Birdemic (2008), about a flock of animated gifs that attack unemployable actors; the recently re-released 80s horror The Silent Scream (1980) (starring genre fave Barbara Steele); King of Pluto , the 2004 documentary about oddball artist Mike Wrathell and his obsession with the recently demoted titular planetoid; and David Lynch‘s divisive boondoggle, Dune (1984).

We registered some great weird search terms this week, though we have suspicions they came from the same bizarre poet, looking to see his work reproduced in this very space.  On a normal week, the search term “so weird mother f***er, so weird clicker mucker” would easily top our weird search terms, but this week we select the lyrical “little birds sing out weirdness and life” instead.  Congratulations to the author!

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue stands: Trash Humpers (still waiting for the DVD); Danger: Diabolik (later today!); Nightmare Before Christmas (next week); The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple;  Arizona Dream; Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer;  Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines;  The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Private Parts (1972); Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; Lust in the Dust; Celine and Julie Go Boating; “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life;” The Magic Christian; Black Cat, White Cat; The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T; Abnormal: The Sinema of Nick Zedd; Robot Monster; Nightdreams; 3 Women; Rubin & Ed; Teeth; Vera; Weirdsville; Prospero’s Books; Inferno; Garden State; Persona; and The Real McCoy; Rat Pfink a Boo Boo; Themroc; Candy (1968); Run Lola Run; Pink Flamingos; Buffalo ’66; Northfork; Weekend; The Room; Glen or Glenda?; Night of the Hunter; The Fox Family; Midnight Skater; Angelus; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Twister (1989); Yokai Monsters, Vol. 1: Spook Warfare [AKA Big Monster War]; Haxan; This Filthy Earth; Conspirators of Pleasure; Piano Tuner of Earthquakes; Clean, Shaven; Bubba Ho-Tep; Sheitan; Innocence; “Chingsao the Clown”; Léolo; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Blue Velvet; ID (2005); Master of the Flying Guillotine; Yesterday Was a Lie; and The Ninth Configuration.