WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

Next week, we’ll cleaning up some loose ends from the 2010 wrap-up.  First off, we promise the (slightly delayed) review of the absurd male-pregnancy comedy The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (2009); we’ll cover the latest crazy Japanese splatterpunk offering, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009); and we’ll throw in a free review of C Me Dance (2009), the fable about a good little Christian ballerina who saves infidels through the power of telepathy.

Weirdest Search Term Used to Locate the Site this Week:  If this were any other site, we’d probably consider “eating championchip fire from penis” to be the weirdest search term we’d ever encountered; but, despite the unfortunate preposition placement, we have exactly what the searcher is looking for.  Therefore, we’ll turn to another request for our weirdest search term of the week: “classic spagetti sex movies.”

That ole reader suggestion queue just keeps piling up on us, but now that the 2010 rush is behind us we can start digging into it.  Here’s how it stands: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (coming soon!); Songs From The Second Floor; Possession; Wild Zero; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Faust; Sublime; Battle Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2010

Happy New Year!  Looking back on 2010, we have to say that it was about two or three weird movies shy of being a great year; a lot of films that may end up being 2010 standouts haven’t made it out of the festival circuit yet.  But we did see a bonanza of great weird Region 1 DVD debuts from years past, including Antichrist (2009), Bronson (2008), Dillinger is Dead (1969), Hausu (1977), Taxidermia (2006) and You, the Living (2007), not to mention a restored version of Metropolis (1927), with footage that had been missing for almost 100 years!  So, it would be hard to say 2010 was a total waste.  Here’s our New Year’s Eve rundown of the weirdest movies of 2010 (so far):

  1. Enter the Void, the Weirdest Movie of 2010?Enter the Void: We had to cheat a little to qualify Gaspar Noé‘s neon psychedelic death-trip about a hallucinating expat ghost in Tokyo who sees his sister and best friend making love with glowing genitalia by reclassifying the film from 2009 (copyright date) to 2010 (date the editing was completed and the final version released to theaters), but it was worth it to get the most extravagant Buddhism-on-LSD movie of the last 35 years the top spot.
  2. Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) [Prezít svuj zivot (teorie a praxe)]: We’re cheating even more by nominating Jan Svankmajer‘s latest (about a man who impregnates his own anima while undergoing psychoanalysis) because we haven’t even seen it yet.  But based on what we know about the crazy Czech, and what we see in the trailer below, we don’t think we’ll be eating any crow over this choice (unless it’s for not giving Surviving Life the top spot).
  3. Black Swan: Darren Aronofsky makes Natalie Portman go crazy for her art in a dance fable mixing backstage melodrama, sexual repression, and body horror.  Portman growing feathers onstage as she dances her little heart out for the audience rates as the most beautifully weird moment of the year. Continue reading TOP 10 WEIRD MOVIES OF 2010 →

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 12/30/2010

2010 ends in a theatrical whimper. Still, we take 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 Strange Case of Angelica [O Estranho Caso de Angélica] (2010):  The romantic story of a photographer who sees the dead as the living when he looks through his camera, from 101-year old (!) director Manoel de Oliveira.  I remember the critics being lukewarm on this one at festival screenings, but the NYC press is falling over themselves praising it now.  Opens in Manhattan this week at the IFC Center, with scattered dates throughout early 2011 in Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Rochester NY, Boulder CO, Seattle, and Columbus.  The Strange Case of Angelica official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Legacy (2010): A Black-Ops agent holes up in a hotel room after a botched mission and loses touch with reality. This mindbender was intended as a breakthrough role for TV star Idris Elba (“The Wire”), but it was barely released to theaters. Buy Legacy.

Skeletons (2010): Here’s one we overlooked when it was released in October. The storyline of this absurd comedy concerns two “exorcists” who literally remove skeletons from families’ closets. This was named “Best British Feature Film” at the Edinburgh Film Festival, over another nominee we have our eye on—Jackboots on the Whitehall, the puppet show about Nazis taking over England. Buy Skeletons.

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon [AKA The Mansion of Madness] (1973): Despite the exploitative title, this is an arty and atmospheric adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether.”  There’s memorable imagery of lunatics doing looney things, but the film is quite slow. Watch Dr. Tarr’s Torture Dungeon 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.

ELVIS (1979) & THIS IS ELVIS (1981)

The life of Elvis Presley is “the” perfect American grand guignol tale that has never really been captured on film. John Carpenter’s Elvis (1979) has finally been released in its full three hour European theatrical version. Some consider it to still be the best film on the subject of Elvis.

Elvis Presley was undoubtedly a phenomenon. He was as poor white trash as poor white trash can get. He grew up in a predominantly black Pentecostal church. Many African-Americans have accused him of stealing their music. Actually, it’s all he knew, and he treated it with reverence. Accusations of racism are certainly factual, but only from an off-color perspective. Like Sammy Davis, Jr., Elvis had an intense self-loathing for his own blackness.

Elvis, the dirt poor mama’s boy, filled his flights of fancy with whipped cream dreams of being a movie star more than anything else; but it was his voice, his extrovert sexual chemistry, and being in the right place at the right time, coupled with his insatiable, singular drive, and securing shrewd management, that catapulted him into the status of an American icon.

Still from Elvis (1979)One element that is sorely missing from all of the films and documentaries on him was Elvis’ early sense of perfection in the recording studios. He often demanded up to forty takes on one song.

Elvis was one of the first and certainly the biggest artist whose career was built on eclecticism. The Elvis Presley persona was birthed from what he knew and what he wanted to be in his Walter Mitty-like romantic fantasies. Elvis was part Mahalia Jackson (his gospel recordings are second only to hers), part Dean Martin, part James Dean, part Marlon Brando, and part Rudolph Valentino. Later, both Sammy Davis and Liberace would be added to the mix.

As archaic as the myth and screen presence of silent screen Valentino seems now, its Continue reading ELVIS (1979) & THIS IS ELVIS (1981) →

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!