Balloon-faced monkeys, shopping paraplegics, people lacking facial features, and pastries who possess facial features tell a story that effectively portrays our own melancholy.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 2/4/2011
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.
There’s nothing debuting in theaters this week to pique the interest of fans of weird cinema. We’re truly in the winter doldrums. We’re so bummed out by the cold temps and long nights, in fact, that we totally forgot about Sundance this year—I mean, it completely slipped our minds. We’re late enough to report the winners, but we won’t: just rest assured that the typical slate of coming-of-age dramas and earnest, liberal minded documentaries swept the major prizes. The big news is that Sundance has instituted a new category, “Park City at Midnight,” that aims to give would-be cult and horror films a fair shake by keeping them away from the normal Sundance crowd. We don’t sense any must-catches in the lineup, though; still, we report on several interesting possibilities to look out for in the coming year below.
FILM FESTIVALS – SUNDANCE (Park City, Utah, Jan 20-30):
- All Your Dead Ones – Colombian political allegory about a pile of bodies discovered in a cornfield on election day; it’s “tinged with mordant surrealism.”
- The Catechism Cataclysm – A priest who’s recently quit the Church takes a canoe trip with an old high school buddy and things start to get “weird” (in unspecified ways). A “Park City at Midnight” film.
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Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same – We hate to stereotype, but cool weird b-movie title usually equals lame predictable parody. “Park City at Midnight.”
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Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel – A documentary on Roger Corman is not in itself weird, but a portrait of a film outsider who’s had his fingers in some weird pies is worth noting. “Park City at Midnight.”
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The Future – narrated by a stray cat, there are elements of magical realism in this speculative indie drama. Reviews were mixed, though it did get picked up for distribution. The name “Miranda July” is naggingly familiar.
- Hobo With a Shotgun – not weird but worth a mention: like last year’s Machete, it’s a feature movie expanded from one of the fake trailers in Grindhouse. “Park City at Midnight.”
- Lost Kisses – a satire about a Sicilian girl who claims the Virgin Mary has told her where a missing Madonna head has disappeared to, with “fabulist flourishes.” Extra-worthy of note because it comes from Roberta Torre (To Die for Tano).
- Magic Trip – A documentary about Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters” that promises to show the viewer “what it’s like to drop acid.” With actual Merry Prankster footage.
- The Oregonian – This horror flick was probably the most disliked film to play Sundance—which could be a good sign, but is probably a bad one. “Park City at Midnight.”
- Prairie Love – Dakota-set story of a man who sneaks into the place of another guy going to meet his prison-bound paramour for the first time is self-described as “wonderfully bizarre” and “brazenly idiosyncratic.”
- Red State – Another “not weird but notable” entry—Kevin Smith (Clerks) tries his hand at a horror movie (with religious fundamentalists as the psychokiller villains). With Melissa Leo, John Goodman, and politicial baggage.
- Septien – This story of an ex-high school athlete returning to live with his two eccentric brothers sounds oddball at the very least. Sundance thought it was weird enough to place in the “Park City at Midnight” category. It’s also contemporaneously available on Video-on-Demand on many US cable systems.
- Silent House – Another “young woman descends into madness” movie; it’s all done in one take. Weirdness uncertain. “Park City at Midnight.”
- Take Shelter – Michael Shannon plays a crazy guy (daring casting, that) whose dreams of impending tempests storms are so lifelike that he’s convinced to build a storm shelter in real life.
- The Troll Hunter [Trolljegeren] – Norwegian “found footage” film about a man who literally hunts trolls, for the government. It’s weirdness is questionable, but it appears to be a crowd-pleaser. “Park City at Midnight.”
- The Woman – Horror from Lucky McKee (May) about a feral woman raised, and forcibly civilized, by a family. Another questionably weird one we thought worth a mention. “Park City at Midnight.”
BOOKS:
“Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda”: There have been a lot of books dedicated to kaiju (Japanese monsters), but to our knowledge this is the first book-length treatment of director Honda, who made the original Godzilla [Gojira], the fairly surreal Attack of the Mushroom People, and the campy Destroy All Monsters, among other fondly remembered fantasy treats. Peter H. Brothers, 296 pages, paperback. Buy “Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda”
NEW ON DVD:
Cold Dog Soup (1990): A black-comedy in the vein of After Hours: the scenario involves Randy Quaid as a taxi driver who drives NYC all night meeting bizarre characters as he tries to rid himself of a dog’s corpse. For whatever reason, a Blu-ray version was released two weeks ago and the DVD follows this week. Buy Cold Dog Soup
Never Let Me Go (2010): Read our capsule review. Strange mix of speculative fiction and English boardinghouse drama, from Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel. Not that weird but worth a look. Buy Never Let Me Go
A Woman, A Gun and a Noodle Shop (2009): Maybe not “weird” per se, but definitely a bit out there and strange as hell by mainstream standards: its a remake of the Coen Brothers Blood Simple made by visual stylist Yimou Zhang (House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern). Buy A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Alice in Wonderland (1951): Read our review. Disney’s quite decent version of Alice in Wonderland gets a further upgrade, with a few additional Blu-ray only features that weren’t on the 2-disc special edition released a few months ago. Buy Alice In Wonderland (Two-Disc 60th Anniversary Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
The Double Life of Veronique (1991): Criterion upgrades this mysterious Krzysztof Kieslowski arthouse parable about two women on opposite sides of Europe who seemingly share a single soul to Blu-ray. Buy The Double Life of Veronique (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Never Let Me Go (2010): See description in DVD above. Buy Never Let Me Go [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:
The Adventures of Baron Muchausen (1943): Yes, it’s the Terry Gilliam fantasy about the old man who tells tall tales, including the one about visiting Robin Williams’ rolling head on the moon. Watch The Adventures of Baron Muchausen free on YouTube.
The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting (2010): Speaking of Sundance, they have graciously put many of the shorts playing at this year’s festival up on YouTube for the pleasure of those who can’t make it to Park City, Utah. This one mixes relationship comedy with fairy tales as a swan-woman and a hunter describe how they met to another couple over dinner. Watch The Hunter and the Swan Discuss Their Meeting free on Youtube.
Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006): Read our review. Pleasant, quirky, mildly weird comedy about a romance in a purgatorial afterlife reserved for suicides. Watch Wristcutters: A Love Story free on YouYube.
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.
THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961)
This post is part of an ongoing series on Hammer horror director Terence Fisher.
Terence Fisher never considered himself a “horror” filmmaker, and he clearly disliked the term. While a number of Fisher’s film could be apt examples to drive home his point that he was more than a mere scare merchant, The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) will suffice quite nicely. This is a quite literary film, far better than either of Universal Studio’s versions of The Wolfman (1941 & 2010).
Fisher and writer Anthony Hinds (loosely adapting Guy Endor’s novel) weave a narrative tragedy through folklore, mythology, religious metaphor, and character revelation. The symbols of class struggle ebb throughout the film, beginning in 18th century Catholic Spain. A beggar is imprisoned in the dungeon by the powerful and callous Marques (Anthony Dawson). Naturally, the beggar is forgotten about, cared for only by the jailer and his mute daughter. Years later, after her father’s death, the now grown servant girl (Yvonne Romain) tends the beggar. While cleaning the aged Marques’ room, Romain rejects her master’s sexual advances and is imprisoned in the very same dungeon occupied by the beggar. After resisting the brutal, savage passions of the Marques, the girl is raped by the crazed and dying beggar for whom she has cared these many years. In retaliation, once released, she stabs and kills the cruel Marques, fleeing into the woods where she is found, face up in the river, by Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans), an empathetic patriarchal figure.
Corledo’s servant Teresa (Hira Talfrey, who seems more like a wife than a servant) notices that their new guest is with child and dreads the thought of the baby being born on Christmas, which, according to her tradition, is an affront to God. Dec 25th arrives and the child, Leon, is tragically born to a dead mother, who is finally released from the misery of a peasant life.
In a reversal of the Christ child’s dedication at the temple, the local priest baptizes Leon, soliciting a storm from the heavens. Even the baptismal water reacts to the sanctifying of this curse of birth. The water bubbles intensely and reflects the face of a gargoyle from above. The motherly Teresa, the superstitious one, alone recognizes the sign, while the priest and Don Alfredo dismiss it.
Years later, the child Leon ventures out, tasting the sweet blood of a squirrel, killing lambs and goats. By now Don Alfredo and the priest know that Leon suffers the curse of the werewolf and the priest warns that only love can relieve Leon from his affliction. Surrogate parents Don Alfredo and Teresa supply that love to the boy, but as a man, Leon will need the true love of a woman, ala Beauty and the Beast, to harness the wolf.
Some reviewers have predictably commented that the first half of Curse is slow, yet it is in the first half that the narrative is uniquely compelling. The film unfolds like a literary fairy tale. Once the narrative takes the obligatory horror route, in the last quarter, with a gray-furred, Henry Hull-looking lycanthrope, it feels a bit recycled, complete with the beast, atop a cathedral, being chased by the torch carrying mob.
Still, Oliver Reed is superb as the adult Leon, registering torment far more convincingly than either Lon Chaney, Jr. or Benicio Del Toro. Hira Talfrey and, especially, Clifford Evans are equally accomplished as Leon’s concerned guardians. There are genuinely effective moments of tingling suspense, such as Leon’s cornering an unfortunate prisoner in a cell. Leon’s virtuous fiancee is his potential salvation, but the animal side of Leon emerges once he ventures out from his sanctuary into a hedonistic society; after which there is, literally, hell to pay.
Curse of the Werewolf is a fine example of a director who utilized a genre for his own aesthetic expression, much the same way that Rod Serling utilized science fiction for his own expressionist gain.
77. SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR [Sånger från andra våningen] (2000)
“Beloved be those who sit down.”
–César Vallejo
“People have wondered how to classify my film. Absurdism or surrealism? What the hell is it?… This film introduces a style that I’d like to call ‘trivialism.’ Life is portrayed as a series of trivial components. My intention is to touch on bigger, more philosophical issues at the same time.”–Roy Andersson, DVD commentary to Songs from the Second Floor
DIRECTED BY: Roy Andersson
FEATURING: Lars Nordh, Stefan Larsson
PLOT: Set at the dawn of the millennium in a nameless city that seems to be undergoing an apocalyptic panic—traffic is at a standstill as people try to leave all at once, parades of flagellants march down the street, and the Church considers returning to human sacrifice—Songs unfolds as a series of brief, seemingly unrelated, vaguely surreal scenes. Eventually a main thread emerges involving a family: the father’s furniture business has just burnt down, one son has gone insane from writing poetry, and the other son is a melancholy cab driver. The father enters the retail crucifix business and begins seeing ghosts.
BACKGROUND:
- The film was inspired by the verse of the relatively obscure avant-garde Peruvian poet César Vallejo (1892-1938), whose poem “Stumble between to stars” is quoted in the film. Anyone who thinks Andersson is obscure would do well to avoid Vallejo, whose work—with its invented words and grammar and difficult symbolism—recalls James Joyce at his most impenetrable.
- Songs from the Second Floor was Andersson’s third feature film, and his first since 1975’s Giliap. He spent most of the intervening time directing commercials, although he did complete two highly regarded short films.
- Andersson discovered Lars Nordh shopping for furniture at an IKEA.
- Many of the exterior shots were actually shot inside Andersson’s studio with trompe l’oeil paintings or three-dimensional models as backgrounds .
- All scenes are completed in one take. The camera only moves once (a calm tracking shot in the railway station).
- At the time of the film’s release reviewers consistently marveled that none of the scenes had been scripted or storyboarded beforehand. The method here shouldn’t suggest that Andersson simply made up the film as he went along, however, as unused footage shows that each scene was meticulously rehearsed and refined dozens of times, often on incomplete sets with stand-ins for the actors, over what must have been a period of weeks or months. Andersson says they sometimes shot twenty to twenty five takes per scene to achieve the perfect performance.
- The film took four years to complete.
- Songs from the Second Floor tied for the jury prize at Cannes in 2000 (the jury prize is the third most prestigious award after the Palme D’Or and the Grand Prix).
- Andersson followed up Songs with You, the Living [Du Levande] (2007) (also Certified Weird). The two movies are extremely similar both thematically (the comically apocalyptic mood) and stylistically (made up of intricately composed, brief vignettes). Andersson has said he intends to create a trilogy; however, he has suggested that the third film may not follow the same style as the first two.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Fat Kalle standing at a deserted crossroads by the pile of discarded crucifixes, gazing at the figures approaching on the horizon, is an image worthy of European arthouse greats like Buñuel or Fellini.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: There are a few moments of magical realism in Songs from the Second Floor, involving subway commuters bursting into classical verse and the matter-of-fact appearance of ghosts, but even if these interludes hadn’t been included, the movie would feel strange because of the high artificiality of Andersson’s style: the static camera, the constant crowds of expressionless figurants gazing dispassionately at the action in the foreground, the carefully controlled compositions filled with background detail. Adding deadpan absurd black humor, bleak existentialism, and a sense of looming catastrophe into the mix produces a singular concoction, one that captured Sweden’s—and the West’s—mood of anxious despair as the new millennium dawned.
Scene from Songs from the Second Floor
COMMENTS: Songs from the Second Floor uses deep focus—the photographic technique Continue reading 77. SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR [Sånger från andra våningen] (2000)
WHO WILL WIN THE ACADEMY AWARDS – BUT WHO WILL WIN THE WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS?
You’ll find out our cynically scientific guesses as to who will win the major prizes 2011 Academy Awards below. But, before we get into that nonsense, we’d like to unveil a more interesting competition—the 2011 Weirdcademy Awards. This is the award given to the weirdest movie, actor, actress and scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.
Who makes up the Weirdcademy, you ask? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. All you must do to officially join the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness is to say to yourself, out loud, three times, while looking in a mirror, “Man, I’d like to be an official member of that thing on 366 Weird Movies where you vote on the weirdest movies and stuff of the year, I forget what it’s called.” Do not scratch any part of your body within twelve inches of your own (or another’s) genitalia while repeating the formula, or you will be judged “unclean” and forced to repeat the ritual after a five minute purification period. Once you have completed this ceremony, you are officially a member of the Weirdcademy and entitled to vote in the online poll below. (Vote as many times as you like, but only once per day, please. We’ll keep voting open until February 27 at noon, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.)
Without further delay, here are the nominees for the 2011 Weirdcademy awards:
Click below for weirdest actor, actress, and scene categories, and to see our picks for Hollywood’s “most conventional” Award Show. Continue reading WHO WILL WIN THE ACADEMY AWARDS – BUT WHO WILL WIN THE WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS?