Besides a three-word sentence in English, this week’s short is completely in Russian. Even without subtitles, the intensity of “Mr. Freeman” is gripping enough to draw more than a few views from many who don’t understand the language at all. Although, I’m quite sure that those of us who aren’t bilingual are missing out on some great dialog. [Note: Reader Irene Goncharova has provided an English translation in the comments.]
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 12/3/2010
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):
Black Swan: The psychological thriller event of the year comes from Darren Aronofsky (Pi), and involves two ballerinas (Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis) competing for a starring role in Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Early reviews are generally excellent and frequently include words the make us perk up our ears: “absurd,” “strange,” and even “Cronenbergian.” We’re shocked that this award-winning film isn’t getting a wider release: are American audiences so timid they won’t go see something the slightest bit weird-sounding, even though it has Natalie freakin’ Portman in it? Black Swan official site.
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale: Santa Claus is kidnapped and held for ransom, but the kidnappers didn’t reckon on his cadre of killer elves in this Finnish production that has “cult movie” written all over it. Scrooges will flock to the theaters to catch this humbug. Rare Exports official site.
ON THE WEB:
“Tales from Beyond the Pale” – Radio Plays for the Digital Age: Here’s reason #38 why we love Larry Fessenden. There’s nothing this guy won’t try, as long as it raises goose bumps. His latest project revives and re-invents the lost art of the radio play, focusing on the macabre (think “Inner Sanctum“). Voice talent includes James Le Gros, Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Angus Scrimm; an upcoming episode, “The Grandfather,” is written by Graham Reznick (I Can See You), and there’s a cool animated promo by goth favorite Voltaire. Tales from Beyond the Pale home page.
NEW ON DVD:
Fantasia (1940)/Fantasia 2000 (1999): 1940’s Fantasia was Walt Disney‘s pet project: a series of animations to accompany famous classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, and others. The spectacle was stupendous: compositions were illustrated by abstract notes or new story lines involving Mickey Mouse, centaurs and dancing hippos (Stravinsky was reportedly outraged by dinosaurs acting out his pagan ballet “The Rites of Spring”). The sixty-year followup Fantasia 2000 was, as might be expected, more of the same, only less effective; it was welcome nonetheless. A very cool release which contains, as an extra, Destino: a short film collaboration between Disney and Salvador Dalí, completed 50 years after it was conceived! Buy Fantasia / Fantasia 2000 (Special Edition)
Sid & Marty Krofft’s Saturday Morning Hits: The Krofft brothers pioneered a unique brand of campy, fantasy-oriented children’s programming from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The corny, surrealistic nonsense of their puppet-based productions made their shows hits with tots and acidheads alike. This sampler disc collects the “best” (one episode each) of “H.R. Puffinstuff,” “Sigmund the Sea Monster,” “Bugaloos,” “Electra Woman & Dyna Girl,” “Wonderbug,” and “Bigfoot & Wild Boy.” Buy “Sid & Marty Kroffts Saturday Morning Hits”
Valhalla Rising (2010): Dark Ages tale of a mute, one-eyed slave who escapes his Scottish master and joins with a group of Viking renegades; their ship is wrecked and washes up on a strange island. Critics are using adjectives like “trippy,” “crazy,” “hallucinatory,” and “poetic.” From director Nicholas Winding Refn, who already struck weird gold with Bronson (2008). We missed this in theaters but we’re going to make it a priority now! Buy Valhalla Rising
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Fantasia (1940)/Fantasia 2000 (1999): See description in DVD above. This release includes a superfluous DVD copy. Fantasia / Fantasia 2000 (Four-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo)
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 SHOOTING (1967): AMERICAN-STYLED DISSONANCE
As part of our continuing effort to restore all the posts lost in the Great Server Crash of 2010, we’re reprinting this column from Alfred Eaker’s Fringe Cinema, originally published on Sep. 23, 2010.
Several years ago European avant-garde composer Pierre Boulez dismissed the cranky, experimental music of American composer Charles “take your dissonance like a man” Ives as “having come from an insurance salesman.” By contrast, Boulez’ own music is tinkly Euro-avant, a musical tradition that was given freedom towards academic experimentation by old money. Not a single Boulez work can get under the skin like Ives’ “Gong on the hook and ladder” or “Symphony 4.”
American horror has long had a fitful relationship with the American avant-garde; it has also been more genuinely disturbing than anything Europe has produced. Kentucky born Tod Browning produced jagged, feverish dreams while Brit James Whale produced well-crafted, sophisticated, and witty fairy tales. There is something far more unsettling in Lon Chaney painfully looping fishing wire around his eyeballs, or Lon Jr. “accidentally” strangling an extra, than there is in Boris Karloff’s passion for cricket. An avant-garde filmmaker even approached the infamous “naive surrealist” Ed Wood, hoping for a collaboration, but by then Wood was too drained and too ravaged by rejection to respond.
So, it seems only apt that B-horror maestro Roger Corman financed Monte Hellman’s sojourn into a western Oz. Hellman’s The Shooting (1967) could be a disturbed and disturbing younger sibling to Maya Deren‘s At Land (1944). Carole Eastman’s Sarte/Camus-like screenplay is wistfully organic and, simultaneously, startling in its unflinching, unromantic bleak minimalism, assisted greatly by Gregory Sandor’s desolate camera work.
The Shooting begins where Anthony Mann left off, and may well be the defining subversive post-Mann western. Former bounty hunter and miner Willet Gashade (Warren Oates) returns to camp only to find his twin brother, Coin (also Oates) missing and his partner, Leland, shot dead by an unseen sniper. Left in the camp is the hysterical Coley (Will Hutchins) who relates to Willet that he overheard an argument between Leland and Coin. Coin had “ridden down a Continue reading THE SHOOTING (1967): AMERICAN-STYLED DISSONANCE
LIST CANDIDATE: TRASH HUMPERS (2009)
NOTE: Please go to Trash Humpers Certified Weird entry for an in-depth discussion of the film. Trash Humpers was one of the two winners of the second Reader’s Choice poll, and has been promoted to the List. Comments are closed on this version.
DIRECTED BY: Harmony Korine
FEATURING: Rachel Korine, Harmony Korine
PLOT: A narrativeless, shot on VHS chronicle of four rednecks in wrinkled geriatric masks
who wander around a nearly deserted suburbs drinking wine, demolishing abandoned television sets, torturing and murdering the bizarre outcasts they come across in their wanderings, and (of course) humping trash.
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Any film in which four rednecks in latex masks that make them look like escapees from a nursing home for the criminally insane force a pair of Siamese twins connected at the head by what looks like a giant tube sock to eat pancakes doused in Palmolive obviously has weirdness in its corner. But among Trash Humpers many qualities, weirdness isn’t the pre-eminent one: the movie is also repetitive, ugly, pointless, unsavory, deliberately annoying, and tedious. In fact, the weirdness here is likely just another blunt weapon used to bludgeon the viewer; the film is intended as an anti-audience provocation rather than a movie. As one reviewer sagely put it, “Harmony Korine dares you to hate this movie…and I accept.”
COMMENTS: Mimicking the lo-fi aesthetics of VHS tape, complete with horizontal hold tracking errors and blocky-fonted “play” and “rew” legends appearing on the screen, is a great trick to give Trash Humpers an antiquarian, found footage feel. But the look isn’t the only anachronistic thing about the movie, which evokes (like a third or fourth generation dub) the punk spirits of earlier shock auteurs like Paul Morrisey (1960s), John Waters (1970s), and Nick Zedd (1980s). First rejecting conventional cinematography for the camcorder’s glare, Trash Humpers next dispenses with narrative in favor of disconnected episodes celebrating the beauty of vandalism and sadism. In between bouts of garbage copulation, the nameless humpers break TVs with sledgehammers and ride around a deserted, trash-strewn Nashville with baby dolls dragging behind their bicycles. In the course of their wanderings they meet a boy in a Sunday suit whom they teach to slip razor blades into apples, pancake-making fake Siamese twins, overweight prostitutes who serenade us with a Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: TRASH HUMPERS (2009)
READERS CHOICE! PICK TWO FILMS TO GO ON THE LIST OF THE 366 BEST WEIRD MOVIES OF ALL TIME
12/15/2010: The poll is completed! Visitor Q was the winner of Group A, with 35 votes (Adaptation was the runner-up with 19 votes). As I suspected, Alice was the runaway winner in Group B with 42 votes, but Dead Man made an honorable showing with a respectable 14 votes. The “reconsider” category was the tightest race, with What? [Che?] making a late surge to nip The Wizard of Oz, 18-14. Thanks to everyone who participated. The data is extremely useful in determining what our audience regards as weird movie musts. Visitor Q and Alice will be added to the List and get full-scale write-ups very soon.
We’ve looked at a lot of weird movies in two years of operation here at 366 Weird Movies, and to date we’ve Certified 71 of the eventual 366 movies as among the best weird movies of all time. That’s about 20% of the List completed.
Now it’s your turn to add a couple of movies to the List.
The movies listed below were all nominated as candidates to go on the List, but for one reason or another were not selected on the first pass. Many of them should eventually show up, but we want to make sure your favorites actually make it onto the final List. (Remember, we prefer movies that are both weird and good, but we’ll take either very good movies that aren’t that weird or very weird movies that aren’t that good).
You may vote for two movies: one from “Group A” (movies from 2001 on) and one from “Group B” (movies made before 2001). The movie receiving the highest number of votes in each group will be Certified for the List. You may vote once per 24 hours, and the poll will remain open until December 14.
Feel free to explain your vote in the “Comments” section. Maybe you can mobilize others to elevate your choice onto the List.
Still here? OK, we have one more thing for you to vote on… Occasionally we have rejected movies outright for consideration. Maybe the movie just didn’t suit the reviewers taste. We want to give you the chance to rescue one of the following movies from oblivion. We’ll make the winner of this poll into a List Candidate, meaning that it may get consideration for the List again at a later date. Vote to give one of the following movies a new lease on life: