Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) CRITERION COLLECTION

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The Great Dictator (1940), released to DVD and Blu-ray on May 24th, 2011 is the second of Charlie Chaplin‘s features to receive the Criterion treatment, following 2010’s release of Modern Times (1936).  Times was Chaplin’s last silent feature, produced nine years after the advent of sound.  Chaplin stated that when, and if, his famous character the Tramp ever spoke, it would be as a farewell.  He found a reason for the Tramp to break his silence in the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich; this was the birth of The Great Dictator.

Few people wanted Chaplin to make this anti-Hitler satire, and the speech at the end of Dictator was even seen by some as communist propaganda.  It securely put Chaplin on the subversive list.  Within a few years, Chaplin was thrown out of the United States, only to be invited back by the Academy Awards for a honorary Oscar (he never actually won one) in 1971.  Chaplin accepted the honor as a sign of mending.

Chaplin later said that if he had known the actual extent of the horrors perpetrated in Nazi Germany, he could never have made The Great Dictator.  His detractors went so far as to accuse him of merely being angry at Hitler for stealing his mustache.  Of course, Chaplin had been making films against government oppression and the struggle of the little man almost from day one.  Additionally, Chaplin’s half-brother’s father was Jewish, giving him further motive to lampoon the dictator.  Chaplin’s mistake was that he spoke out against Hitler and the Third Reich before the United States entered the war.

Still from The Great Dictator (1940)Whether or not the Jewish Barber is the Tramp has been debated for years.  He is not referred to as the Tramp, but he is certainly a Tramp-like character, and that is really enough.  But, for the first time, Chaplin is uneasy with his iconic character.  After seeing the Tramp in all of his silent eloquence for years, hearing him speak in the opening WWI sequence is  greatly disconcerting.  This opening is awkward, and Chaplin reveals that verbal humor is not his strength.  Jokes about gas and, later, plays off the words “Aryan” and “vegetarian” fall Continue reading THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940) CRITERION COLLECTION →

Miscellanea

READERS CHOICE POLL #2: PICK TWO (MORE) FILMS TO GO ON THE LIST OF THE 366 BEST WEIRD MOVIES OF ALL TIME

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The poll is completed and closed!  The winners, which will be added to the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made, were:

Thanks to all who participated!

Here we go again!  We’ve certified 91 of the eventual 366 films for the List, or about 25% of the total.  We’ve passed over a good number of perfectly weird movies in that time, secure in the knowledge that we could always pass the buck to the readers to make the hard choices on the borderline cases.  Now, once again, it’s your turn to bail us out and help us pick two of the candidates below to officially add to the List.

There are a couple of List Candidates that we haven’t included in this poll because they aren’t out on DVD yet… don’t worry, they’ll get their chance.

We also included the runner-ups in vote total in each category from the last poll, along with the “rescued” picture (which turned out to be Roman Polanski’s surrealist softcore sex comedy What?).

You may vote for two movies: one from “Group A” (movies from 1999 and on) and one from “Group B” (movies made before 1999). The movie receiving the highest number of votes in each group will be Certified for the List. You may vote once per 24 hours, and the poll will remain open for two weeks, until July 27.

Please feel free to explain your vote in the “Comments” section. Maybe you can mobilize others to elevate your choice onto the List.


There’s one more thing…
Continue reading READERS CHOICE POLL #2: PICK TWO (MORE) FILMS TO GO ON THE LIST OF THE 366 BEST WEIRD MOVIES OF ALL TIME →

Miscellanea

REVIEW WRITING CONTEST #4: WIN A COPY OF TRAILERS FROM HELL, VOL. 2

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It’s a simple deal: write the best review, win a DVD!  Specifically, you can win Trailers from Hell, Vol. 2 (review here), a disc that includes a copy of The Little Shop of Horrors (review here).  True, it’s a used copy, but it’s only been watched a couple of times for review purposes.

Review Writing Contest Prize: Trailers from Hell, Vol 2 The rules of the contest are simple:

  1. Write a review of a movie that you think should be on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies, but that hasn’t been covered here yet.  Including the following sections: DIRECTOR, FEATURING (listing the most important actors), PLOT (a one sentence synopsis), WHY IT DESERVES TO MAKE THE LIST (a one sentence to one paragraph description of why you think the movie is weird), COMMENTS (one to two paragraphs describing the movie in more detail). If you have a suggestion for a still to represent the movie and/or a quote from a critic on the film, you can include those, but they are not required.
  2. In rare cases, a well-thought out “second opinion” on a movie that we have already considered, but that you think we got wrong (either by putting it on the List when it shouldn’t have made it, or rejecting a film that should have made it), will be an acceptable subject for a review.  We would still prefer reviews of movies we haven’t yet covered.
  3. Submit your work on our contact form. By submitting your entry on this form, you agree to allow 366weirdmovies.com to publish your work, either whole or in edited form, on this website. Your work may be selected for publication even if you are not chosen as the winner.
  4. The contest is open to anyone whose work has not previously been published on 366weirdmovies.com.
  5. You may not write a review promoting a film which you were involved in the production of, or in which you have a financial interest.
  6. This site strives to remain “PG” rated; do not use profanity in your review.
  7. The contest will remain open for one month, until August 13, 2010, at which time the editor will select the best entry. The winner will be chosen on the basis of writing style, insight, and appropriateness of the movie chosen.  The deadline may be extended, depending on the number of entries received.
  8. In order to be eligible to receive the prize, you must supply a valid email address and a valid mailing address. International addresses are acceptable. If the winning entrant does not supply a valid mailing address, or declines the prize, the DVD will be given to a randomly selected entry with a mailing address in the United States. If no entries are from the United States, then the deadline to complete the contest will be extended.

TIPS: Avoid merely summarizing the plot in your comments. Avoid giving away “spoilers” in your descriptions that might ruin the enjoyment of the film. Obscure titles are fine—in fact, they may be worth bonus points—but try to pick a film that is available on DVD, or is at least likely to be released. If you write on a film no one will be able to view or locate, the movie may be judged as inappropriate.

One final tip: don’t be scared away by thinking you have to write something profoundly insightful. Simply consider it as a chance to describe and recommend a film to that narrow audience of people who are interested in the same kind of weird movies as you are.

Chances of winning depend on the number of entries received.

Have fun! The winner, and even the runners-up, may be invited to become regular contributors to the site!  (Just ask past contest participants Alex Kittle, Andreas Stoehr, Eric Gabbard , Kat Doherty,or Pamela De Graff!)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD LEAVES (2004)

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DIRECTED BY: Hiroyuki Imaishi

FEATURING: (voice), Jason Lee (voice)

PLOT:  A man with a television for a head and a woman with mismatched eyes wake up with amnesia, are imprisoned on what’s left of the moon, lead a revolt, have a baby, and kill lots and lots of people.

Still from Dead Leaves (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  Dead Leaves moves so fast and makes so little sense that it’s almost the equivalent of putting an ultraviolent manga in a high-speed blender and trying to read it while the pieces swirl around.  The plot is nearly incomprehensible, but somehow involves mutant clones and a psychedelic caterpillar.  Weird?  Hell yes.  Recommended?  Well, definitely not to epileptics.  Even for older folks with a healthy neurobiology, the breakneck pacing is as likely to induce a headache as an adrenaline rush.  It’s definitely one-of-a-kind, though, and as an experiment in compressing as much berserk and illogical anime flavor as possible into as short a running time as possible, it’s worth a look, and maybe even an eventual spot on the List.

COMMENTS: Dead Leaves really is something to behold.  It seems to have been conceived, and composed, under the influence of an entirely new drug: amphetashrooms.  The film is essentially one fifty-minute long chase fight/scene, with a very few timeouts to catch your breath.  The female pink-eyed Pandy and TV-headed male Retro wake up, rob a bank, are imprisoned, break out, fire thousands of rounds of ammunition from weapons that conveniently appear when needed, and fight an ever-mutating horde of bad guys; Retro loses his head both literally and figuratively during the journey.  The violence and gore are extreme, but so ridiculous—with characters spontaneously transforming into human arsenals and showers of spent yellow bullet casings flying so thick that they sometimes obscure the carnage—that it becomes almost non-representational.  Animation styles change every few seconds (and sometimes even several times within a second), as the artists involved employ a variety of abstractions, split screens, shaky pans, replicate comic book panels complete Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: DEAD LEAVES (2004) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: LUNACY [SILENI] (2005)

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Lunacy has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies. Comments are closed. Please visit the official Certified Weird entry.

Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Jan Svankmajer

FEATURING: Pavel Liska, Jan Tríska, Anna Geislerová

PLOT: A mentally unbalanced man meets a modern day Marquis de Sade, who convinces him to check himself into a bizarre asylum where the patients roam free.

Still from Lunacy [Sileni] (2005)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Readers may think I’m a lunatic myself for not inducting this tale involving the Marquis de Sade, an asylum run by chicken-farming lunatics, and animated steaks onto the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies on the first ballot.  To tell the truth, Lunacy comes about as close as a movie can to being a first-ballot inductee without making it.  In defense of my decision to leave it off the List for the time being, I point out that Lunacy may actually be Jan Svankajer’s most conventional movie.  If you mentally remove the startling but inessential stop-animation transitions between scenes, then squint hard, it looks like just a regular horror movie; the director insists as much in his prologue to the film.  Given that this is Svankmajer’s most “normal” and accessible movie, if Lunacy makes the List, then all the Czech director’s work should automatically make it.

COMMENTS:  The trailer explains that ” + the Marquis de Sade + Jan Svankmajer = Lunacy.”  It’s self-evident that combining these three uniquely perverse talents should produce something singularly strange; the fun in watching the movie is in seeing how they actually mix.  Poe adds the least to the recipe, providing mere plot.  Adaptations of two different stories by the doom-laden 19th century Romantic make appearances here; one is a digression from the main plotline that’s fun but unnecessary, while the other supplies the basic conceit for the entire second half of the movie.  Because the first half of the film is devoted to a long introduction to the characters, with that excursion into an interesting but unrelated Poe tale, Lunacy‘s story doesn’t flow as well as it might; the plot doesn’t really get started in earnest until the movie hits the halfway mark on its run time.  Other than basic story ideas, there is not much of a “Poe” feel to the rest of the film, except whatever lingering flavor comes from the passive, psychologically tormented protagonist Jean (stringy-haired, Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: LUNACY [SILENI] (2005) →

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