In this short Ceiren Bell illustrates how an oppressive government can metaphorically poison the land they govern, devastating the lives present and future generations.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 4/15/2011
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 Double Hour (2009): A lovelorn cop romances an immigrant and things turn (possibly) weird in this psychological thriller from Italy that nabbed best actor, actress and Italian film awards at the Venice Film Festival. It’s described as full of twists, and while reviewers are keeping mum on the plot, it is being favorably compared to some great psychological thrillers like Jacob’s Ladder and Mulholland Drive, alongside more conventional thriller titles like Diabolique. Opening in New York and Philadelphia with a few dates in major US cities to follow. The Double Hour official site (Samuel Goldwyn films home page).
Footprints: Loosely, lightly “Lynchian” movie about a woman who wakes up with no memory outside Mann’s Chinese Theater and wanders down Hollywood Boulevard, meeting odd characters like superhero impersonators and Scientologists. The critics aren’t digging this one. Opening in Manhattan and L.A. Footprints official site.
IN DEVELOPMENT:
The Chronicles of Rick Roll (est. 2011): A man and woman are lost in an Alice-in-Wonderland type world inhabited by “that guy” YouTube celebrities: that guy from the projects who called the attempted rapist “so dumb,” that guy who screamed “Leroy Jenkins!” during a World of Warcraft session, and so on. What’s weird about this project is imagining what it will look like to people in ten years (or in ten months), when today’s disposable “Internet memes” have been long forgotten and the characters look like completely arbitrary eccentrics. Could it be an el-bizarro camp classic to future generations? The Chronicles of Rick Roll official site.
NEW ON DVD:
“H.R. Pufnstuf: Complete Series Collector’s Edition” (1969-1970): Just one look at the “dragon” puppet with the oversized head and clown face (complete with a shock of orange hair) should tell you that “Pufnstuf” was pretty weird kiddie fare, even without knowing that the kid hero’s sidekick was a talking magic flute. A favorite of seventies eight-year-olds and acidheads alike, the TVs series’ complete run is now available on a 3-disc set that comes with a Pufnstuf bobblehead guaranteed to provoke nightmares.
Buy “H.R. Pufnstuf: Complete Series Collector’s Edition”
Ricky (2009): Magical realism about a French couple who have an angel baby. From François Ozon, the director who brought us the enigmatic Swimming Pool (2003), among other intriguing movies we haven’t yet seen. Buy Ricky
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008): Read our capsule review. No one on our staff much liked this gory Gothic sci-fi musical about organ repossession in the future, and we even split on its weirdness; here’s your chance to judge it for yourself. Watch Repo: The Genetic Opera 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.
TOD BROWNING’S THE BLACKBIRD (1926)
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The Blackbird (1926) is a typically deranged underworld melodrama from the Tod Browning/Lon Chaney canon. It has, lamentably, never been made available to the home video market, even though the restored print shown on TCM is in quite good condition and, surprisingly, is missing no footage. The Blackbird is also one of the most visually arresting of Browning’s films, which makes its official unavailability doubly unfortunate.
Browning opens the film authoritatively with close-ups of Limehouse derelicts fading in and out of the foggy London setting. Lon Chaney plays dual roles, of a sort. He is the debilitated cripple Bishop who runs a charitable mission in the squalid Limehouse district. Bishop’s twin brother is Dan Tate, better known as the vile thief The Blackbird. Actually, in this highly improbable (and typical, for Browning) scenario, Bishop and the Blackbird are one and the same. The Blackbird feigns the role of his own twin brother as a front, which means contorting his body as he acts as if he’s in excruciating pain (shades of Chaney, behind the scenes).
The Limehouse district unanimously loves the Bishop and dreads the Blackbird, save for the Blackbird’s ex-wife, Limehouse Polly (Doris Lloyd, the only one of the principals players who did not die young). Polly inexplicably still loves and believes in Dan. In a vignette, Browning does not hesitate to show the ugliness of the Blackbird’s racist side (an extreme rarity for the time), but the Blackbird has a slither of a soft spot himself for French patroness and music hall marionette performer Fifi (Renee Adore).
Dan is competing for Fifi’s attention with his partner in crime, West End Bertie (the amazingly prolific silent actor Owen Moore). At times, Bertie resembles a virile, monocled Bond villain. The suave Moore makes a worthwhile nemesis for the grimy Chaney. Unlike the Blackbird, Bertie is willing to convert from the dark side, for the love of a classy woman. Of course, this turn of events arouses jealousy and leads to intensified competition between the former partners, a frame-up job, and an ironic twist of fate when the two “brothers” will merge into a third, ill-fated persona.
The scenes of Chaney frantically changing identities with constables from Scotland Yard waiting below are deliriously incredible. The constables buy it, and so does an audience open to allowing the capered stream to wash over it.
Browning spins his elastic yarn a bit like Albert Finney’s Ed Bloom in Big Fish (2003). Aided enormously by Chaney’s energetic conviction, and with his penchant for a tenebrous, commanding climate, Browning pulls the ultimate con job on his audience. During its running time we are so drawn into the commanding perversity of Browning’s fable that the inherent haziness of the narrative’s essence rarely obscures his inclusive vision.
- Factory sealed DVD
84. TOTO THE HERO [TOTO LE HÉROS] (1991)
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“I often have that strange and penetrating dream, of an unknown woman whom I love and who loves me. And every time, she’s neither quite the same nor completely different…”–Toto the Hero
DIRECTED BY: Jaco Van Dormael
FEATURING: Michel Bouquet, Jo De Backer, Thomas Godet, Sandrine Blancke, Mireille Perrier, Peter Böhlke, Didier Ferney, Hugo Harold-Harrison
PLOT: Thomas firmly believes that he was switched at birth with his next door neighbor, Alfred: that Alfred’s parents are really his parents, that Alfred’s toys should be his, that his destiny was appropriated by Alfred. He’s also romantically attracted to his sister, and jealous of the attention she shows the neighbor boy; this obsession pursues him to adulthood, when he finds a woman who reminds him of his sister so much that he fears it may actually be her. Now an old man in a nursing home, Thomas plots to kill Alfred and take back the life that was stolen from him.
BACKGROUND:
- Writer/director Jaco Van Dormael was a circus clown before turning to filmmaking.
- Despite critical praise for each of his movies, Van Dormael has only made three features in 20 years: Toto the Hero, The Eighth Day [Le huitième jour] (1996), and Mr. Nobody (2009).
- It took Van Dormael five years to write the dense script (working with three credited collaborators).
- Toto won the Camera D’or (a prize recognizing the best debut feature film) at Cannes in 1991.
- Paramount Pictures apparently owns the distribution rights in the U.S., but has not shown any interest in releasing the film on Region 1 DVD (it was released on VHS). Toto is available on DVD in Region 2.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Toto the Hero relies on its elaborate narrative structure rather than visuals for its effect, but the movie’s iconic image is young Thomas clutching his toy airplane; appropriately, it’s only memorable due to the point in the story where it occurs. (If you must have a weird scene instead of the most memorable one, pick the image of Thomas’ dead father and sister appearing to him on the back of a moving truck, playing a piano and trumpet duet).
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The story structure, which dives in and out of narrative wormholes, emerging at different points in Thomas’ life. There are flashbacks inside of flashbacks, with a liberal sprinkling of fantasy sequences mixed in—some obvious, some more ambiguous. And all the incest stuff—with a beloved sister who seems not to stay dead—doesn’t hurt the movie’s weirdness one bit, either.
Clip from Toto les Heros (in French)
COMMENTS: At some point in all of our lives, we will inevitably fail to land that job or Continue reading 84. TOTO THE HERO [TOTO LE HÉROS] (1991)
CAPSULE: SUBLIME (2007)
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Sublime is currently available for VOD rental.
DIRECTED BY: Tony Krantz
FEATURING: Tom Cavanagh, Kathleen York, Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs
PLOT: The day after his 40th birthday, George Grieves enters Mt. Abaddon Hospital for a routine colonoscopy. Waking after the procedure it rapidly becomes apparent that something has gone seriously wrong. George and his only ally, a nurse called Zoe, attempt to discover the truth in an increasingly nightmarish hospital of horrors.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It really isn’t weird enough. Certainly there are periods of scary oddness, but none that haven’t been depicted before in other, better films. I hesitate to call the plot twist a “twist” as any regular weird film fan will see it coming over the hill a mile away, waving its hands to attract your attention (Zoe the stripper-gram nurse, I’m looking at you love!) It has some serious and troubling points to make about fear, prejudice, white middle class guilt and health care systems in general, but it makes them in a long-winded, repetitive way.
COMMENTS: I practically leapt at the chance to review this film, having heard nothing about it, and being fond of “weird hospital” movies. About half way in I began to regret my decision, and this was the first film that I nearly pulled out of reviewing. This is not because it’s a bad movie—though it is long-winded and really could have used the editor’s hand clipping away twenty minutes or so—but because the uncomfortable issues the movie raises hit close to home.
I’ve grown up in the occasionally stony but generally reliable bosom of the British National Health Service and felt I should perhaps have watched this with my wife who, as an American, has now experienced heath care on both sides of the Atlantic. Procedures occurred in Sublime which seemed odd to me, even taking into account the national differences. I mean, that was an awful lot of laxative! Are American colons so different?
Protagonist George is an upper middle class, able-bodied (at least initially), straight, white male and his attitudes, prejudices and fears were in many respects different from mine. But even if the specifics are different, fear, prejudice and guilt are common to everyone. When Continue reading CAPSULE: SUBLIME (2007)