Apologies first: last week, I said the Dark Backward review would appear, but real life intervened and we couldn’t get it out.  Expect to see it appear early next week.  Other reviews that are planned, but may or may not appear next week: our long-anticipated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind treatment, John Hand’s low-budget sci-fi followup to Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare, Scars of Youth (2008), and, just for giggles, Beyond Re-Animator.

For our weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, we’ll go with someone’s attempt to track down info on a very obscure film sub-genre: “ElectroMagnetic Field comedy movies.”

The reader-suggested review queue looks like this: Survive Style 5+ (looking for a copy); The Dark Backward (next week–this time, I swear!); The Short Films of David Lynch; Santa Sangre; Dead Man; Inland Empire; Monday (assuming I can find an English language version); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; Barton Fink; What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams); Meatball Machine; Xtro; Basket Case; Suicide Club; O Lucky Man!; Trash Humpers (when/if released); Gozu; Tales of Ordinary Madness; The Wayward Cloud; Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (possibly jumping in line to come out next week); Gothic; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromania (1971, Ed Wood); 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; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall;Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; and Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]. Wow!

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):

Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated (2009):  An intriguing, though badly underpromoted, idea.  Shades of Waking Life, a team of animators animated scenes from the public domain classic Night of the Living Dead in varying styles encompassing “everything from puppet theater to CGI, hand drawn animation to flash, and oil paintings to tattoos.”  It will surely come out on DVD someday, but for now it seems to be popping up in sporadic screenings (though the only one I’ve heard of was in Alaska).  Night of the Living Dead: Reanimated official site. [UPDATE: per project organizer Mike Schneider (see comment), readers are encouraged to contact their “local independent theater or favorite tv/ web horror host to contact screening@notldr.com” to arrange a screening of the movie. This is a not-for-profit project, which helps explain why they are trying to promote it solely through word of mouth.]

Saint John of Las Vegas: This quirky road trip story about a retired blackjack player turned insurance fraud investigator returning to Las Vegas has some surreal interludes, but even the presence of Steve Buscemi and Sarah Silverman hasn’t stopped critics from savagely beating it and leaving the remains for dead in the desert (a stunningly bad 5% on Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer).  Saint John of Las Vegas official site.

FILM FESTIVALS:

Sundance (Park City, Utah, Jan 21-31):  Sundance snuck up on us this year!  No wonder: the indie fest is not really a friend to innovation and experimentalism so much as it is to environmentalism, leftist politics in general, and insomnia-curing documentaries.  Nonetheless, there are some weird and potentially weird films screening this year:

• Armless – comedy about a married suburban man he finally gathers the courage to live out his lifelong dream: having his arms amputated
• Cane Toads: The Conquest – a sequel to Mark Lewis’ 1998 cult documentary about the “invasion” of cane toads in Australia—this go-round, in 3-D!
• Enter the Void – fresh from an unsuccessful run at Cannes and primed for an unsuccessful run at Sundance, this story of an immigrant Tokyo drug dealer/addict who survives a hail of gunfire as a hallucinating ghost is described by director Gaspar (Irréversible) Noé as a “psychedelic melodrama.”
• Memories of Overdevelopment [Memorias del desarrollo] – Collage-style story of a Cuban exile in the United States. The overwritten press release claims it is, among other things, “a surreal foray into memory and the unconscious.”
• ODDSAC – A 53-minute “visual album” matching experimental visuals to the equally experimental music of Animal Collective. Visuals and audio are both definitely trippy.
• Pepperminta – Swiss story of a literally colorful young woman who throws swaths of psychedelic dye and groovy fantasy over the mundane world outside her door. Sundance includes a multimedia installation revealingly titled Lobe of Lung: The Saliva Ooze Away to the Underground that allows the viewer to “lounge inside the film”.
• The Temptation of St. Tony [Püha Tõnu kiusamine] – Black and white, surrealist Estonian film about a mid-level manager who begins to question the value of virtue; the scenario seems to be inspired equally by the story of St. Anthony and Dante’s “Inferno.”  For our purposes, the most promising entry at Sundance, and the film we’ll be keeping an eye on.
• Vegetarian – Korean film about a young woman who has dreams that cause her to become disgusted by meat.  Hard to get a fix on what it’s going to be like.
• The Violent Kind – a movie about drug-dealing outlaw bikers and their encounter with the supernatural and weird colors in the sky.  Self-described “gleeful, insane exploitation”; Twitch called it “the pinnacle of the WTF?! genre.” Another one to watch for.

NEW ON DVD:

Goodbye Gemini (1970): A very obscure British psychothriller about a pair of fraternal twins (with the usual eerie bond) who are introduced into the swinging subculture of mod 1960’s London. Buy Goodbye Gemini.

Little Ashes (2009): Read our capsule review.  Dry and gossipy biopic about the rumored love affair between Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García. Buy Little Ashes.

Paris, Texas (1984): Not necessarily weird, but Wim Wender’s starkly beautiful movie about a man found wandering in the desert who starts to reconnect with the life he left behind has an odd and dreamlike tone that becomes hypnotic at times.  Highly recommended; a great add by the Criterion Collection. Buy Paris, Texas (Criterion Collection).

Ponytypool (2008): Read our capsule review. High-concept, low-budget “zombie” movie where a virus is spread through language. Buy Pontypool.

Troma’s War (Tromasterpiece Edition) (1988): Several Tromaville citizens crash land on a Caribbean island and are soon caught up in a third world war.  If you’ve seen one Troma movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all.  No idea how this “Tromasterpiece” edition differs from the previous release. Buy Troma’s War (Tromasterpiece Edition).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Paris, Texas (1984): See description under DVD above. Buy Paris, Texas [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.

Some low-budget, under-the-radar reviews are coming next week: look for pre-release coverage of James Felix McKenney‘s Christian scare film parody, Satan Hates You (2009), and John Hand’s micro-budget artsploitation horror Frankenstein’s Bloody Nightmare (2006).  For something more mainstream, we’ll throw in a review of the bizarre, reader-suggested black comedy The Dark Backward (1991).  (How many sites can claim a movie about a stand-up comic growing a third arm out of his back is the most mainstream film they’ll be reviewing that week?)

The weirdest search term used to locate the site this week was an easy choice:  “Disney movie that a tiny boy jumps into a pile of dog poop.”  We think someone may have gotten their memories of Toy Story and Pink Flamingos mixed up, but if such a movie does exist, we’d like to know about it.

The reader-suggested review queue continues to grow at an alarming pace.  Here it is: Survive Style 5+ (looking for a copy), The Dark Backward (next week), The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, Xtro, Basket Case, Suicide Club, O Lucky Man!, Trash Humpers (when/if released), Gozu, Tales of Ordinary Madness, The Wayward Cloud, Kwaidan, Six-String Samurai, Andy Warhol’s Trash, Altered States, Memento, Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gothic, The Attic Expeditions, After Last Season, Getting Any?, Performance, Being John Malkovich, The Apple, Southland Tales, Arizona Dream, Spider (2002), Songs From The Second Floor, Singapore Sling, Alice [Neco z Alenky], Necromania (1971, Ed Wood), 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, Danger: Diabolik, Faust, Sublime, and Battle Royale.

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 Paranoids [Los Paranoicos]: Argentinian dramedy about a paranoid screenwriter who takes offense when a childhood friend adapts his life into a television show.  Looks quirky/oddball, not necessarily weird.  Not only that, but reviews have been generally negative.  The Paranoids official site.

SCREENINGS (NEW YORK CITY, THE FILM FORUM, THROUGH FEBRUARY 2)

A Room and a Half (2009): This documentary portrait of exiled Jewish Russian poet Josephy Brodsky, who became America’s Poet Laureate and won a Nobel Prize for Literature, is a collage of real-life interviews, dramatic recreations, animation, and stylized staged footage recreating the Soviet constructivist style.  70-year old animator/director Andrey Khrzhanovsky made some surreal shorts in the USSR (i.e. The Glass Harmonica, 1968) that ran into censorship problems.   Reviews are glowing and universally positive; hopefully that will be enough to get this intriguing movie a distribution deal of some sort.  A Room and a Half at the Film Forum.

NEW ON DVD:

Chantal Akerman in the Seventies: A compilation of the title director’s early experimental works from the Criterion Collection’s “Eclipse” series. I’m unfamiliar with this director, but Criterion claims she came out of the New York experimental film scene and is recommended for “adventurous” viewers.   Her most famous work, featured here, is her feature debut Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1976), which included explicit (for the time, at least) scenes of lesbian lovemaking.   3 discs.  Buy Chantal Akerman in the Seventies.

The Invention of Lying (2009):  High-concept romantic comedy set in an alternate reality where no one can tell a lie, until one man spontaneously evolves this ability.  From the creator and star of the Britcom “The Office.”  Unlikely to cross over the weird border, but definitely different, well-reviewed, and worthy of a gamble. Buy The Invention of Lying.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Invention of Lying: See description in DVD above. Buy The Invention of Lying [Blu-ray].

Magnolia (1999): Paul Thomas Anderson’s third feature was a masterful ensemble drama, containing perhaps Tom Cruise’s only truly good performance, with an unexpectedly weird ending that threw audiences for a loop.  A near masterpiece, definitely worth watching at least once and probably deserving multiple viewings. Buy Magnolia.

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.

OK, 2009 is over, but we’re still catching up on some of the worthy weird flicks we missed, so check us out next week for reviews of Terry Gilliam‘s Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (still in theaters) and Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. We’ll also thrown on a review of William (Exorcist) Friedkin’s paranoia piece, Bug (2006).

As far as the weirdest search term used to locate the site this week: we got the usual rash of weird fetish requests (1ooporno pregnant horse”) , but these are getting  a little boring.  When your bombarded with bestiality search terms, they no longer seem that weird.  We like offbeat phrasing, so we’ll select “what’s good with weird movies.”  Our answer: buttered popcorn, slathered in haggis.

We actually made some progress on the reader-suggested review queue last week, knocking out two good ones with Greaser’s Palace and Waking Life.   The remaining list looks like this: Survive Style 5+ (just discovered that this isn’t available on Region 1, which may delay our getting to it), The Dark Backward, The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, Xtro, Basket Case, Suicide Club, O Lucky Man!, Trash Humpers (when/if released), Gozu, Tales of Ordinary Madness, The Wayward Cloud, Kwaidan, Six-String Samurai, Andy Warhol’s Trash, Altered States, Memento, Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gothic, The Attic Expeditions, After Last Season, Getting Any?, Performance, Being John Malkovich, The Apple, Southland Tales, Arizona Dream, Spider (2002), Songs From The Second Floor, Singapore Sling, Alice [Neco z Alenky], Necromania (1971, Ed Wood), Hour of the Wolf, MirrorMask, Possession, Suspiria, Mary and Max, Wild Zero, 4, Nothing (2003), The Peanut Butter Solution, and Ninja Scroll.