Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPLELINE

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Next week look for reviews of the curious based-in-fact 2009 mystery Winter of Frozen Dreams, Alejandro Jodoworsky‘s psychedelic slasher film Santa Sangre, and Robert Altman’s cult comedy  Brewster McCloud, about a boy who dreams of building a pair of wings and taking a flight inside the Houston Astrodome.

As far as weird search terms used to locate the site last week, the perverts were out in force, searching for stuff like “weird sex in humans videos,” “taboo insect porn strange,” “sexy orgiastic party,” and even “sally jesse rafael obsese.”  (By the way, we have nothing against perverts: they’re a valued part of our audience!)  Our favorite of the bunch was “weird sex movies of the 20th and 21st century,” because of its weird qualifiers: why craft your search term to specifically exclude 19th century weird sex movies?

Here’s the reader-suggested review queue as it stands today: Santa Sangre (next week); The Abominable Dr. Phibes; 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; Gothic (jumping in line to come out next week!); 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; 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; 964 Pinocchio; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; Frownland; The Seventh Seal; Taxidermia; Primer; and Maniac (1934).

Free Online Weird Movies, Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 3/5/2010

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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):

Alice in Wonderland: Tim Burton reimagines Lewis Carrol’s classic, in sequel form.  Is it personal this time?  Burton and Carrol seemed the perfect marriage, and we were excited about this one until we saw the trailers, which make it look like the director has turned the nonsense narrative into just another fantasy quest to kill the evil queen.  Don’t worry, we’re still going to cover it.  Alice in Wonderland official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Alice (2009): Yet another reimagining of “Alice in Wonderland,” released just in time to capitalize on the Burton movie mania. This version features a butt-kicking adult Alice spirited away to a dystopian Wonderland because the Red Queen wants her magic ring. A 240 minute miniseries that originally aired on SyFy channel.  The same director also made a postmodern Wizard of Oz variation, Tin Man, in the miniseries format.  Buy Alice.

Bitch Slap (2009): Three tough women behave badly while fighting over a fortune in diamonds in this “postmodern parody” of busty bad babe flicks like Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The trailer indicates there are numerous fantasy sequences, and the press release promises a parallel series of Memento-like flashbacks that reveal the backstory. Critics say they’d like to perform the title act on the producers. Buy Bitch Slap.

Castle in the Sky (two-disc special edition) (1986): To coincide with the release of Ponyo, Disney is releasing several older Hayao Miyazaki features in new dubbed versions. This one involves a boy and a girl searching for a floating castle while being opposed by pirates. Warning: we’re not 100% sure, but from the descriptions it sounds like the second disc in each set contains exactly the same content: featurettes about Miyazaki and Ghibli studios that aren’t specific to the movie being featured. Buy Castle in the Sky: Special Edition – 2 Disc DVD.

Cold Souls (2009): Read our review. This comedy about the illicit trade in human souls was one of the weirder movies of 2009, but our staff split on whether it was weird/good enough to make the List. Buy Cold Souls.

Gentlemen Broncos (2009): From Jared Hess (writer/director of Napoleon Dynamite) comes this gross-out satire about a nerdy amateur fantasy writer whose story is stolen by an established author and turned into an awful movie by a small-town director. Critics hated it (“Gentlemen Broncos doesn’t just visit Planet Quirk, it crash lands upon it.”–Peter Howell). Still, scenes from the film-within-the film, with it’s gay cyclops and flying robotic deer, look at least mildly weird, and it seems anything that almost everyone in the mainstream hates must have something going for it. On the other hand, Armond White liked it, which may justifiably scare you off. Buy Gentlemen Broncos.

Kiki’s Delivery Service (two-disc special edition) (1989): Popular Miyazaki anime about a young witch starting a courier service in the human world. Re-released to coincide with Ponyo. Buy Kiki’s Delivery Service: Special Edition – 2-Disc DVD.

My Neighbor Tortoro (two-disc special edition) (1988): Yet another two-disc Disney special edition of an early Hayao Miyazaki anime, this one involving a girl befriending a forest spirit in Japan in the 1950s. This dubbed version features the voices of the Fanning sisters. Buy My Neighbor Totoro (Two-Disc Special Edition).

Ponyo (Disney dubbed version, 2009): Read our review. A bit weird, but we’re convinced Miyazaki can deliver weirder.  Stylistically, it’s very much aimed at little girls with ages in the single digits. Contains a bonus disc of special features. Buy Ponyo (Two-Disc Edition).

Where the Wild Things Are (2009):  Read our review.  Spike Jonze’s adaptation/realization of the classic children’s book is a treat for adults.  We’d love to see the director’s cut (hint). Buy Where the Wild Things Are.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Alice (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy Alice [Blu-ray].

Gentlemen Broncos (2009): See description in DVD above. Buy Gentlemen Broncos [Blu-ray].

The Neverending Story (1984): This childhood fantasy about a boy who enters a fairytale story and has to save a kingdom from Nothingness is a major nostalgia piece for many. It may not be very weird, but it may have influenced some of us towards imaginative cinema in our youths. Buy The Neverending Story [Blu-ray].

Ponyo (Disney dubbed version, 2009): See description in DVD above. Rather than putting all the extras onto a single Blu-ray, they’re selling it as a two-disc set and including a DVD as well. I guess the idea is that Blu-ray folks won’t feel cheated by getting one less disc than DVD people? Buy Ponyo (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo).

Where the Wild Things Are (2009): See description in DVD above. The Blu-ray contains some additional features not on the DVD, including a 23 minute short adaptation of another Maurice Sendak children’s story, “Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More to Life.” Buy Where the Wild Things Are [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Eternal [AKA Trance] (1998):  Michael Almereyda‘s followup to the vampire movie Nadja features druids, mummies and witches in an arty B-movie brew. No idea how long Lionsgate will keep this up for free, so check it out soon if you’re interested.  Watch The Eternal 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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

COURAGEOUS AVENGER (1935)

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Time to dust off this collection of B-Westerns from Sinister Cinema’s Sinister Six-Gun Collection.  The packaging is ultra-cool, starting off with those priceless trailers:

Trailer # 1: “Ride at Full Gallop into a Thundering Texas Romance to the rescue of a girl haunted by killers!  Johnny Mack Brown as the fist-flashing GENTLEMAN FROM TEXAS” blazes across the screen as Johnny shoots and punches his way across bar tables.  Add in beer bottles over the head, a pretty dame named Claudia Drake and the TrailsMen singing “Texas Jubilee” on banjos.   It’s a “Violent Drama of Valorous Love and Texan Vengeance” from Monogram Pictures.

Trailer # 2 screams “It’s the Real McCoy” (as in Tim McCoy) “heading this way to tame the town that defied the law!”  More fisticuffs, six-guns blazing, horses, good guys in white hats, and fallen bad guys in black hats (who never bleed) are all promised.  “The Outlaw Deputy Tim McCoy made bad men check their guns while he checked up on romance!  Cow-Town became a mad-house of Thundering Action when the nerviest outlaw East of the Rockies turns OUTLAW DEPUTY!”  A Puritan Picture.

Trailer #3: ” Come Along Boys and Girls on a Thrilling Trip to MYSTERY MOUNTAIN where KEN MAYNARD the screen’s most popular Cowboy Actor and his famous horse TARZAN will ENTHRALL you!  will THRILL you!  will STARTLE you!  in their 1st SUPER SERIAL!  ACTION!  ROMANCE!  All the THRILLS of THE OLD WEST!  Don’t miss seeing Ken Maynard and his horse Tarzan in MASCOT’S MIGHTY EPIC  SERIAL MYSTERY MOUNTAIN! WATCH FOR IT!”  This one has all the elements of the previous two, but throws in locomotives and a star horse.

Time for the feature now, a SUPREME PICTURES CORPORATION starring JOHNNY MACK BROWN in COURAGEOUS AVENGER.  After heisting a bullion shipment some despicable thugs are hiding in the desert, kidnapping local drifters for slave labor for their mine!  Soon, hero agent Johnny enters, decked in ten-gallon white, white suit, white tie, beaming an All-American Football hero smile and dimpled square jaw (naturally, a few yeas later, that square jaw was a bit hard to see under an extra chin, which was still one less than the two extra ones that fellow cow-hero and middle-aged Ken Maynard acquired).  Johnny finds himself commissioned to round up bad guys who killed their latest gold heist victim with three silver bullets.  Shucks, Johnny was just getting ready to go on vacation too.  Duty calls especially when Johnny finds the victim was his girl’s brother and “we were chums too!”  Johnny embarks on the mystery and a quest for justice, western-style.

To complicate matters, the ring of bad guys is lead by none other than his girl’s evil step-dad.  It doesn’t take long for the obligatory desert fight between Johnny and the bad guy, rollicking between the rocks in ass-hugging tight jeans.  After some ass-kicking, Johnny infiltrates the ring, frees the slaves (a dose of grand guignol in that scene) , stops the next heist,  and after a couple of thrilling stunts, rounds up the baddies and literally rides off in the sunset with girl Helen Ericson (who is mere decor).

Courageous Avenger is a 16 mm print and so is as good as it can be (especially since it was probably shot for about $50.00).  There’s no soundtrack music to liven things (fairly common for 30’s B-Westerns), the sound itself seems to come and go, nor is it any great shakes, even for a period B-Western.  But, it is a helluva lot of fun in grand Sinister Cinema packaging and you can’t really go wrong with Brown (although he looked even better with Beth Marion at his side).

The B-Westerns never received much respect in their day, and certainly don’t now, but pass the big bucket of buttered  popcorn and give me this over Avatar any day. More to come.  Dedicated to Dad.

Canonically Weird (The List)

51. BARTON FINK (1991)

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“And the king, Nebuchadnezzar, answered and said to the Chaldeans, I recall not my dream; if ye will not make known to me my dream, and its interpretation, ye shall be cut in pieces, and of your tents shall be made a dunghill.”–Daniel 2:5, the passage Barton reads when he opens his Gideon’s Bible (Note that the Coen’s actually depict it as verse 30, alter the wording slightly, and misspell “Nebuchadnezzar”).

“Writing is easy:  All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.”– Gene Fowler

Must See

DIRECTED BY: Joel Coen

FEATURING: , , , Judy Davis, John Mahoney, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi

PLOT: Barton Fink is a playwright whose first Broadway show, a play about the common man, is a smash success; his agent convinces him to sell while his stock is high and go to Hollywood to quickly make enough money to fund the rest of his writing career.  He arrives in Los Angeles, checks into the eerie art deco Hotel Earle, and is assigned to write a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery by the Capitol pictures studio head himself.  Suffering from writer’s block, Barton spends his days talking to the insurance salesman who lives in the room next door and seeking writing advice from alcoholic novelist W.P. Mayhew, until deadline day looms and very strange events begin to take center stage.

Still from Barton Fink (1991)

BACKGROUND:

  • At the time, it was widely reported that the Coen brothers wrote the script for Barton Fink while suffering from a mean case of writer’s block trying to complete the screenplay to their third feature film, Miller’s Crossing.  The Coens themselves have since said that this description is an exaggeration, saying merely that their writing progress on the script had slowed and they felt they needed to get some distance from Miller’s Crossing by working on something else for a while.
  • Barton Fink was the first and only film to win the Palme D’or, Best Director and Best Actor awards at the Cannes film festival; after this unprecedented success, Cannes initiated a rule that no film could win more than two awards.  Back home in the United States, Barton Fink was not even nominated for a Best Picture, Director or Actor Oscar. It did nab a Best Supporting Actor nom for Lerner.
  • The character of Barton Fink was inspired by real life playwright Clifford Odets.  W.P. Mayhew was based in part on William Faulkner.  Jack Lipnick shares many characteristics, including a common birthplace, with 1940s MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer.
  • Following a definite theme for the year, Judy Davis also played an author’s muse and lover in another surrealistic 1991 movie about a tortured writer, Naked Lunch.
  • According to the Coens, the final scene with the pelican diving into the ocean was not planned, but was a happy accident.
  • In interviews the Coens have steadfastly disavowed any intentional symbolic or allegorical reading of the final events of the film, saying”what isn’t crystal clear isn’t intended to become crystal clear, and it’s fine to leave it at that” and “the movie is intentionally ambiguous in ways they [critics] may not be used to seeing.”

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Barton Fink is full of mysterious images that speak beyond the frame.  The most popular and iconic picture is John Goodman wreathed in flame as the hallway of the Earle burns behind him.  Our pick would probably go to the final shot of the film, where a pelican suddenly and unexpectedly plummets into the ocean while a dazed Barton watches a girl on a beach assume the exact pose of a picture on his hotel wall.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A nightmarish, expressionistic, and self-satirizing evocation of the difficulty of creation, Barton Fink pokes a sharpened stick into the deepest wounds of artistic self-doubt. A pure mood piece, its amazing ending achieves the remarkable triumph of leaving us with nothing but unanswered questions, while simultaneously feeling complete and whole.

COMMENTS: The most accurate word to describe Barton Fink is “enigmatic.”  It’s a work Continue reading 51. BARTON FINK (1991) →

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