A new feature looking at potentially weird films that are currently in theaters, coming to DVD soon or in production. Visit the official sites to see trailers.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Toe Tactic: A card game played by dogs in an alternate dimension effects the fate of a grieving girl on earth. The dogs are crude but whimsical animated creations which sometimes interact with the live cast. Scored by Yo La Tengo, with Eli Wallach providing one of the voices and independent film icon John Sayles in a small role. A very limited release: it’s opening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, then touring selected venues throughout the US. The Toe Tactic Official Site.
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.
“Headmasters never sing!” –line sung by the headmaster in Help! Help! The Globolinks
DIRECTED BY: Joachim Hess, from a production of composer/librettist Giancarlo Menotti
FEATURING: The Hamburg State Opera
PLOT: In this children’s opera, the world has been invaded by bizarre alien creatures named Globolinks, who are allergic to music. A bus full of children returning to boarding school breaks down in the middle of a lonely forest, and the students are surrounded by the alien creatures. Meanwhile, back at the school, the headmaster is infected by one of the aliens, meaning that he will soon turn into a Globolink himself.
BACKGROUND:
Gian Carlo Menotti, the author of Help! Help! The Globolinks, was a well respected, Pulitzer Prize winning composer. His most popular work is the Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, which was commissioned specifically to launch the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” television series, and which was shown annually in the United States on television during the Christmas season from 1951-1966.
Help! Help! The Globolinks, by contrast, was a flop and is rarely performed. It is usually only mentioned in complete biographies of Menotti.
Menotti was a pioneer in adapting opera for telecast, and the film version of Help! Help! The Globolinks was originally shown on German television in 1968.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: No doubt, it’s the Globolinks themselves (pictured above), who come in two varieties: one that looks like a wriggling rook from a chess set, and one that looks like an avant-garde ballerina dressed in a full-body dayglo bungee-jumping suit.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: A children’s opera about music-loathing aliens is already, presumptively, pretty weird. But when the opera is made in 1968, at the height of the psychedelic sixties, and utilizes all the camera tricks, distorted electronic noises, and bizarre set designs Summer of Love filmmakers developed in an attempt to mimic the disorienting effects of LSD, there’s no more need for the presumption: we’re definitely caught in a very weird nook of film.
A new feature looking at potentially weird films that are currently in theaters, coming to DVD soon or in production. Visit the official sites to see trailers.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED REALEASE):
Growing Out: There’s not a lot of information or many early reviews about this low-budget independent horror (?) production, but the plot summary states that it’s about a songwriter who develops a strange relationship with a person that begins growing out of his basement floor sounds intriguing. Growing Out Official Site
IN PRODUCTION:
9: A dark, post-apocalyptic animated fantasy. May be geared towards kids and mass audiences, but it’s produced by Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands), whose name always makes weird-film fans ears perk up. 9 is a remake of a 2005 Oscar winning short film. Trailer is available from slashfilm.
NEW ON DVD:
Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008): Announced in the very first Weird Horizon, Repo is already on DVD after its micro theatrical run. Gory sci-fi musical comedy about a future where organs are bought on the open market, and occasionally have to be repossessed. Adapted from am underground LA stage play. Very poorly reviewed. The initial entry forgot to note the presence of Paris Hilton in the cast; she’s already been nominated for a Worst Supporting Actress Razzie for her performance. Repo: The Genetic Opera Official Site
Tokyo Gore Police (2008): By all accounts this is another bizarre and perverse Japanese gore film, in the tradition of Ichi the Killer. The name is certainly weird enough, but it remains to be seen whether Takashi Miike’s followers can make films with as much style as the master. Tokyo Gore Police Official Site (Japanese Only)
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.
FEATURING: Zachary Bennet, Stephanie Moore, Michael Riley
PLOT: Audiences return to the cube from Cube in this prequel, only this time
we see the diabolical prison from the vantage point of its bureaucratic overseers as well as the poor souls trapped inside.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: While the first Cube sequel (Cube 2: Hypercube) tried unsuccessfully to ratchet up the weirdness factor by throwing in more effects and a hyperbolic, reality-twisting plot, Cube Zero instead chooses to focus on a standard rescue narrative. It also purports to answer (although unrealistically) pretty much every question one might have as to the cube’s design or purpose, thus completely exorcising the mysterious atmosphere of the original and leaving nothing left to be said or done in the Cube universe.
COMMENTS: Unlike its predecessors, which showed b-movie influences but had higher aspirations, Cube Zero is an unapologetic action/sci-fi vehicle. The paranoia of the previous entries only arises sporadically: once when drone Wynn asks a co-worker about his memories, and once in a highly effective scene that poses a surprisingly literal theological question. Otherwise, the movie is more interested in the cube’s traps, imbuing them with gleefully gory capabilities (in an early scene, a victim startlingly dissolves into a pile of gooey grue before our eyes). Add to this formula a cartoonish villain in the person of Jax, who sports not only a cane and an ironically genteel cadence but also a glittering metal implant where his eye once was, and you get an effective (if standard issue) b-movie, but a highly ineffective weird movie.
Some Cube fans (who apparently missed the major point of the movie) yearned for answers to the riddle of the Cube’s existence. They finally got them with this installment. Unfortunately, since these revelations destroy the fragile mystery and deliberate ambiguity that made Cube special, Cube Zero probably deals a fatal blow to the franchise.
PLOT: Just as in the 1997 surprise hit, eight strangers wake up stripped of
their memories in a mysterious, deadly cube composed of indistinguishable rooms–but this second generation “hypercube” has some new tricks to play on its captives.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Cube 2: Hypercube can get pretty weird, especially when the film throws in gratuitous alternate realities in an attempt to up the original Cube‘s ante. The sequel also does a fair-to-middling job of recreating the atmosphere of paranoia and existential anxiety from the original. The first movie is a classic, but if there is to be room for more than one Cube movie on the list of 366, Hypercube needs to take the series in a startling, original new direction. This, it fails to do; the sequel merely attempts to provide this audience more of what they loved about the first movie. It can’t possibly achieve this feat, however, because what people loved about the original was it’s originality: the shock and surprise of finding a low-budget independent science fiction gem that was thoughtful, exciting, and weird.
COMMENTS: Cube 2: Hypercube is of interest mainly to fans of the original who want to revisit the cube and hope only for a few new twists. The CGI special effects are mildly upgraded, and the cube has a new gleaming white color scheme, which may make some happy. One of the things that made the original so exhilarating, however, was the varying reactions of characters to the predicament of being trapped inside the bizarre structure: some fight to survive, some give up hope, some become paranoid and suspect their fellow travelers know something about the cube and are trying to deceive them, some simply go mad. The way the trapped inmates bounced off one another made Cube at times seem more like a character-centered play rather than an effects-centered movie. Although Cube 2 tires to recapture this interplay, wooden acting from several of the leads frustrates the attempt.
Cube 2: Hypercube also stumbles when it takes baby steps towards trying to explain why the cube exists. In the original, although the structure exhibited signs of order that suggested a diabolical intelligence behind it, there was no unambiguous hint to its origin or purpose; this made the cube a powerful metaphor for brute existence. While trying to recapture the ambiance of the first movie, Cube 2 deliberatelytakes steps towards demolishing its essence.
