Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 11/19/2010

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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 (LIMITED RELEASE):

Heartless: Philip Ridley (writer/director of the Certified Weird The Reflecting Skin) is back after a fourteen year hiatus from filmmaking with this arthouse horror starring Jim (Across the Universe) Sturgess as a photographer with a disfiguring birthmark who makes a Faustian bargain in a hellish modern London. Ridley’s return would be notable even if the film wasn’t being well-reviewed; as it is, it won “Best Independent Feature” at the Toronto After Dark festival. Heartless official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Best Worst Movie (2010): This documentary on an unlikely subject—the making of the laughably inept 1980s horror Troll 2, a movie featuring vegetarian goblins—became an even more improbable critical favorite. Buy Best Worst Movie.

The Complete Metropolis (1927/restored 2010): Kino’s restoration of the mystical, visionary science-fiction masterpiece finally arrives on DVD! From our own Alex Kittle’s review of the theatrical version: “While its story is standard allegorical fare and the performances are often melodramatic, the sheer inventiveness and visual splendor of Metropolis warrants its status as quintessential science fiction. It set the standard for a host of weird films that came after it and has several iconically bizarre scenes and characters.” Buy The Complete Metropolis.

Don’t Look Back [Ne te pas] (2009): French psychological thriller starring two beauties—Sophie Marceau and Monica Belluci—and a confusion of their identities. From weirdstress Marina de Van (In My Skin). Buy Don’t Look Back.

The Extra Man (2010): Eccentric tale of an aspiring playwright and cross-dresser who rents a room an educated, aging gigolo (played by Kevin Kline). This didn’t get more than a token theatrical release; the reason may be that it was too literary for cineplexes, or it may be because it just wasn’t very good. Buy The Extra Man.

Night of the Hunter (1955) [Criterion Collection]: Robert Mitchum gives an unforgettable performance as the deranged, misogynistic preacher who marries widows and kills them for their money; darker than the blackest film noir and expressionistic to the point of being dreamlike, this movie was way too much for 1955 audiences to handle, but has since been acknowledged as a classic. This is already in our reader-suggested review queue, so this Criterion Collection release can only speed it along. Buy The Night of the Hunter (Criterion Collection).

Sherlock Jr. (1924)/Three Ages (1923): Also from Kino this week comes this restoration of two Buster Keaton silent comedies: Sherlock Jr., a fantasy about a projectionist who enters into the film he’s watching, is the weirder one; Three Ages tells the tale of romance in the Stone Age, Roman times, and the modern era. Buy Sherlock Jr. / Three Ages .

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

The Complete Metropolis (1927/restored 2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy The Complete Metropolis [Blu-ray].

Crowley [AKA Chemical Wedding]: Read our capsule review. This occult/science ficition/fantasy hybrid about Aleister Crowley in modern times is from Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson; our staff agreed on its weirdness, but disagreed on the quality of the filmmaking displayed. Buy Crowley [Blu-ray].

The Extra Man (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy The Extra Man [Blu-ray].

Night of the Hunter (1955) [Criterion Collection]: See entry in DVD above. Buy The Night of the Hunter (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Sherlock Jr. (1924)/Three Ages (1923): See entry in DVD above. Buy Sherlock Jr. / Three Ages [Blu-ray].

Capsules

CAPSULE: NINJA SCROLL [JÛBÊ NINPÛCHÔ] (1993)

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DIRECTED BY: Yoshiaki Kawajiri

FEATURING: Voice actors

PLOT: Masterless samurai Jubei joins with an ancient spy and a cursed female

Still from Ninja Scroll (1993)

ninja to thwart a plot by an old enemy to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate with the assistance of the eight Devils of Kimon.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s not truly weird, though the Devils of Kimon are novel and bizarre to Western eyes. Ninja Scroll is, rather, a well-made fantasy adventure set in a magical feudal Japan, with gratuitous sex and violence that make it inappropriate for the age group most likely to be entranced by it.

COMMENTS: There’s no scroll, and the main character, Jubei, is a ronin (former samurai now for hire as a mercenary) rather than a ninja; but, accuracy of title aside, Ninja Scroll is an average fantasy adventure with some shocking scenes and startling artwork. Jubei is an archetypal wandering folk hero, helping out the less fortunate out of a sense of duty to mankind rather than avarice. His eventual companions are a more interesting lot: a withered, gnomelike spy from the court of Tokugawa who’s willing to go to any lengths to trap others into working for him, and a virginal ninja woman under a sexual curse who’s even more of a loner than the ronin. The story, often the red-headed stepchild of anime, is a strong point here. The intrigues between the various feudal factions and the character’s backstories are richly detailed, yet free of plot holes and surprisingly easy to follow (although Jubei’s code of honor can be difficult to penetrate at times). Even if you don’t catch all the intricacies of the plot on a single viewing, the basic strands—a quest for vengeance on a wicked old enemy, a succession of monstrous antagonists to defeat, reluctant companions with crossed agendas, dilemmas of honor and loyalty—create a familiar heroic context for the tale that makes it easy to pick up the gist of things. The animation style is naturalistic rather than stylized (that is to say, the characters don’t have huge round eyes and bizarre hair hues). As is frequently the case in amime, which tends to be cheaply produced, the animation is not fluid— most of the time, it’s almost a series of stills, with characters standing stock-still, moving only their lips. But the frame rate picks up dramatically for fight sequences, and excellent editing creates a sense of movement that makes the fight scenes thrilling. There are points where the animation overcomes its budgetary limits and becomes magical, as when Kagero stands in the eye of a swirling cyclone of bees and rose petals. The Devils, partly drawn from Japanese mythology, are as grotesque a gallery of rogues as you could hope to find outside of the Mos Eisley cantina, and a good deal nastier. There’s a giant with stone skin and a taste for rape, a snake-woman who stashes a spare serpent in an unusual hiding place, a dwarf who births wasps from the hump hive on his back, and one Devil is even a homosexual with the hots for the archvillian. The frequent sexual content is sometimes erotic—the nude tattooed snake woman—but mostly gratuitous, as when one clan master delivers his directives while delighting himself inside a village geisha. The violence is also extreme; monster rape, daggers in eyeballs, showers of blood, limbs torn off, and a man whose head is repeatedly bashed into a bloody pulp. The strong (falling just short of ‘extreme’) content adds some cachet to the fantasy film for a certain age group (evidence that this ninjas vs. monster tale isn’t just “kid’s stuff”), but it serves little other purpose. The truth is that the younger, and more male, you are, the more likely you are to groove to Ninja Scroll’s beat. It starts out as a five-star spectacle of awesomeness in your teens and early twenties, but you can expect to subtract a full star for every decade of life that passes until it flattens out and reveals itself as nothing more special than a darn good adventure yarn. And the world could certainly use a few more of those.

Animator/director Yoshiaki Kawajiri was also responsible for the anime standout Wicked City (1987) among others. The British censors understandably cut some of the rape scene for the original UK DVD release, but unexpectedly also removed two scenes with shurikens (throwing stars), apparently believing they constituted “imitable weaponry.” The cuts were restored for the 2004 release and the movie is now uncensored.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“For those more accustomed to Anime or Japanese cinema in general you really won’t find anything new or ground breaking here… Yet it remains a solid entry essentially on all counts.”–Nakadai, Infin-tropolis

Saturday Short, Shorts

SATURDAY SHORT: SINGING BABIES!

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Everything is Terrible! is a group whose sole purpose is to take the most hilariously awful VHS tapes they can find, and post them on YouTube for everyone to loathe or enjoy, depending on their sense of humor. What’s perhaps more weird than the video itself is the thought that whoever made this was, more than likely, a little serious when doing so.

 

More of Everything is Terrible at their website: http://www.everythingisterrible.com/.

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 11/12/2010

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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? (LIMITED RELEASE):

You Won’t Miss Me (2008): Experimental—meaning utilizing various film stocks and non-linear storytelling—mumblecore about a confused, arty, promiscuous twenty-something gal in NYC.  Rotten Tomatoes lists it as being released this week, but no one knows where, not even the movie’s homepage. You Won’t Miss Me official site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Blubberella (intended 2011): Another exercise in tasteful restraint from the inimitable Uwe Boll: a comedy about a fat superheroine who fights Nazis in WWII.  Boll himself has a cameo as Hitler.  He’s simultaneously releasing Bloodrayne 3: The Third Reich. We’re guessing the second may be the funnier film.  Entertainment Weekly thinks this is newsworthy, so who are we to argue?

NEW ON DVD:

Antichrist (2009):  Read our review.  After months of rights wrangling, Lars von Trier’s singular, controversial, howlingly depressive rant of a movie finally gets a proper release—a two-disc edition from Criterion Collection, no less.  This home video release makes the film List-eligible. Buy Antichrist (The Criterion Collection).

“Mystery Science Theater 3000″: Vol. XIX:  Four more episodes of robots riffing on the worst movies of all time. The offerings in this “monsters and devils” set include the spectacularly bad Robot Monster (a season 1 episode), Ed Wood‘s Bride of the Monster, the ventriloquist’s dummy horror Devil Doll, and the Italian creature-feature Devil Fish (which was possibly the inspiration for Mega Piranha).   This limited edition contains a Gypsy figurine. Buy “Mystery Science Theater 3000″: Vol. XIX [Limited Edition].

Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailer Collection: A collection of graphic “pink movie” trailers from Nikkatsu studios, with titles like Female Gymnastics Instructor: Jump and Straddle, Race Across the Drenched Wasteland and Nympho Diver: G-String Festival.  Remember, Nikkatsu fired Seijun Suzuki so they could put all their resources into making these.  We promise not to tell anyone if you order this.  A quick and dirty (emphasis on dirty) review of this title can be found at DVD Drive-In. Buy Nikkatsu Roman Porno Trailer Collection.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010):  Read our capsule review.  Scott Pilgrim is a burgeoning cult movie that’s destined to do much better on DVD than it did in theaters; we dare you to like this movie now, before it becomes cool.   Buy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Antichrist (2009): See description in DVD above. Antichrist (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray].

Highlander 2 (1991): The first movie about battling Immortals was a cult hit because of its originality; the sequel is a notoriously confusing and illogical mess that’s a cult movie for the wrong reasons. This movie is so bad, it actually has less than a 4 1/2 out of 5 star rating at Amazon.com. Only a select few films can say that (Plan 9 from Outer Space has a 4 star Amazon rating. This sucker has a 2). Buy Highlander 2 [Blu-ray].

Rock & Rule (1983): Animated feature wherein a good rock band fights to stop an evil rock band from raising a demon in the post-apocalyptic future.  We never heard of this Heavy Metal ripoff before, but it features the voices/music of Debbie Harry, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Cheap Trick, and Earth Wind and Fire. Buy Rock & Rule [Blu-ray].

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010): See description in DVD above.  Of course it’s a DVD/Blu-ray/digital copy combo pack; that’s becoming standard. Buy Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Blu-ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy).

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

SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN (1951)

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I suppose I was in the vast minority in 1978 when I still preferred as Superman, and especially as Clark Kent, as opposed to Christopher Reeve.

One could argue this was, perhaps, merely nostalgia since I grew up watching repeats of the Adventures of Superman every Saturday as a young child, but it was more than that.

The Superman I recalled pre-1978 was derived from film noir, rather than science fiction, although there was always latent and simplistic sci-fi elements. The art deco Fleischer cartoons were a resplendent example of this. Superman/Kent might tackle a local mad scientist or robots run amok, but he still had to predominantly deal with diamond stealing gangsters, a feisty Lois Lane, and a cigar chomping news editor boss. In the classic Superman comics he did occasionally have a colorful villain, such as the impish prankster whose name no one can pronounce, Braniac, and Bizarro, but he was not blessed with Batman’s rogue gallery of nemeses, and usually was content battling wits with the dull Lex Luthor.

Still from Superman and the Mole Men (1951)Since the Richard Donner film, the Superman character has completely forsaken its golden age and radio origins, and Superman is a pimply faced superboy, not long past puberty.  George Reeves’ Superman was already pushing forty when he made his debut.  Reeves remained in the monkey suit (as he called it) until his death at forty five. Reeves personified the classic age Superman in that he was every adolescent boy’s idea of a super father figure.  Sure, he wore a padded suit, clearly “flew” on a glass table and ducked when bad guys threw their emptied Continue reading SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN (1951) →

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