Miscellanea

JULY CONTEST: WIN A DONNIE DARKO BLU-RAY (UK) OR POSTER (REST OF THE WORLD)

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The folks at Metrodome Distribution have acquired the rights to distribute the Certified Weird movie Donnie Darko on Blu-ray in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, and they have kindly offered to send a copy to a lucky 366 Weird Movies reader.  The 2-disc release will contain both the director’s cut and the theatrical cut as well as a wealth of special features; as the press release says, “Enter Donnie’s world like never before with crystal clear visuals and a bewildering array of extra features highlighting this most mysterious of modern cult classics. Whether you’ve experienced Director Richard Kelly’s influential, time-travelling masterpiece before or you’re yet to follow ‘Frank’ down the wormhole, DONNIE DARKO on Blu Ray offers an astonishing experience like never before.” For more information, here is the Metrodome page advertising the release. (The disc will be released July 19, if you just can’t wait for the contest to be over to grab your copy).

Donnie Darko posterAnd, since only UK and Republic of Ireland residents are eligible to receive the prize, Metrdodome has generously offered to supply a separate prize for five different people living anywhere in the world: an extremely cool-looking “quad” sized Donnie Darko poster (pictured left). (CORRECTION: I have been informed that the posters are “A3” sized, not quad sized).

Due to the number of prizes involved, the rules for this contest are going to be a little bit different.  Rather than writing an entire review, all you have to do to enter the contest is to make 2 comments on this site.  Here’s how it will work:

1. Make a meaningful comment on any movie review or essay on the site (sorry, comments on the “Suggest a Weird Movie” thread are not eligible).  “Meaningful comment” means something that indicates either that you’ve watched the movie or read the review in question.  Generic short comments like “I luv it 2” or “this movie sux” will be marked as spam and will not count as contest entries.

2. After you have made your comment, return to this post and add a comment here saying A) which movie you commented on and B) which prize you are eligible for.  Example: “I commented on Donnie Darko [UK]” or “US, made a comment on Hausu” would count as entries for the Blu-ray prize and the poster prize, respectively.

3. Any person may enter the contest 4 times during the month of July. Entries are tied to email addresses, so you cannot earn extra entries by changing your screen name.  Please play fair; we reserve the right to disqualify an entry if we discover someone “spamming” entries.

4. The contest ends on July 31 at midnight, U.S. Eastern Standard Time. At that time all entries will be given a sequential serial number and the winner will be selected by lottery conducted through the random number generator at random.org.

5. Winners will be notified at the email address they used to submit their comment. To receive the prize winners will be required to submit their mailing address within 24 hours of notification of winning the prize (you will not be placed on any mailing lists, email or otherwise). If the winner does not respond within 24 hours, a replacement winner will be selected. Prizes will ship after I have notified Metrodome group of the names and addresses of the winners.

That’s not so hard, now, is it? We expect to be hit hard with meaningful comments and dialogue in the month of July. Get commenting, folks, and let’s discuss weird movies!

Miscellanea

JUNE REVIEW WRITING CONTEST WINNER!

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The June review-writing contest was a spectacular success! Besides the high quality of the submissions, it was particularly gratifying to see the entrants commenting on each others entries, bending over backwards to be gracious.

As I said, the quality of the writing was extremely high, and the race was very close. To illustrate how close, consider that I solicited input from three other contributors. Far from one review standing out above the others, each unofficial judge suggested a different review should be the winner.

With no consensus, I was forced to cast the deciding vote—and so, by the narrowest of margins, I’m happy to announce that the contest winner is Alex Kittle for House [Hausu]. Alex’s review was lively, descriptive, and her affection for the movie was infectious. The five runners-up shouldn’t feel bad, because Alex was a little bit of a ringer—she writes her own film review blog, FilmForager, which covers mainstream movies and new releases along with the occasional weird movie review (at the time of this announcement a review of Daisies was gracing the front page). I highly recommend checking out the site if you enjoyed her review.

My gracious thanks to everyone who made this event a success. Check back in a few minutes for an announcement of the next contest.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

DISCOVERING CHARLEY BOWERS

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In the documentary Looking for Charlie Bowers, film archaeologist Raymond Borde recollects buying a box of silent film reels marked “Bricolo” from a gypsy.  Borde was unable to identify the films or the filmmaker, but found the films quite unique.  The character in the Bricolo shorts was clearly patterned off of Keaton, but the gags were highly surreal, mixing animation with live action.  The search for the identity of Bricolo took Borde to the Belgium Royal Film Library and the Annecy Animated Film Festival.  Still, no one could identify the films.  Borde searched the exhaustive reviews of “Midi Minuet Fantastique,” which lead to a dead end.  Finally, Borde discovered a 1928 reference to Charley Bowers as Bricolo in a “Meric Cinematographers” ad in Mareilles.  From there Borden contacted Louise Beaudet of the Montreal Film Library.  Beaudet knew Bowers as the animator of the “Mutt and Jeff” series.  Together, Borde and Beudet contacted the Library of Congress and struck gold.  With much material, including press releases and hundreds of photographs, they were able to positively identify Bowers as the Bricolo of the reels.

Bowers life story proves as fascinating as his films and the discovery of his films.  Charley Bowers joined the circus as a tightrope walker at the age of five.  From there he worked as a jockey, cowboy, horse trainer, theatrical performer and caricaturist for newspapers.  In 1916 Bowers took on the role of producer, opened his own studio, and began producing a series of animated shorts with a small, ragtag team of animators.  In 1924, Bowers began producing shorts which mixed live action with animation, casting himself as the lead.  Bowers character was called Bricolo by French critics of the time.  Bizarre animated objects and puppets were part of the animated sequences.

Borden discovered a late 1930s reference to Bowers by Surrealist Andre Breton.  Breton had only seen Bowers’ short “It’s a Bird” as an introduction to a feature film.  Breton was surprised by the film and listed it as an important surrealist film in “The Surrealist Almanac.”  Borden discovered that Breton’s admiration for Bowers was shared by the avant-garde poet Rafael Alberti.

Still from Charley Bowers' "Now You Tell One"Bowers died, destitute and obscure, at the age of 57 in 1946, following a long illness.  Although he made hundreds of animated short films, along with the live action shorts, only fifteen of his films survive.  These were restored and distributed by Lobster Films in France.  This indispensable collection of Bowers films is on the two-disc set Charley Bowers, The Rediscovery of an American Comic Genius.

Like all great surrealism, Bowers film are imaginatively and aesthetically provocative.  Recurring obsessive themes permeate Bowers shorts.  “Egged On” (1926) and “Say Ah-h!” (1928) both feature unbreakable eggs.  In “Egged On” Charley is an inventor and Continue reading DISCOVERING CHARLEY BOWERS →

Miscellanea

CONTEST WINNER (AND NEW CONTEST) ANNOUNCED TOMORROW

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The winner of the June review writing competition will be announced tomorrow, along with a new contest.

Personally, I was overwhelmed by both the quantity and quality of the submissions. I understand how hard it is to write a meaningful review and I want to thank everyone who participated for their hard work. Thank you for all the weirdness, some of which I had considered, some of which was new to me.

Most gratifying was the wide range of recommendations: we received reviews of American horror movies, 1970’s black comedies, a Japanese haunted house movie, a contemporary indie dramedy, an Italian space opera, and a Czech art film. I’m proud that our readers have such diverse tastes and are willing to try anything, as long as it’s outside the mainstream!

Here are the submissions again for anyone who would like to read over them and place bets on the winner:

J.S Roberts, Society (1989)

Eric SG, Harold and Maude (1971)

Alex Kittle, House [Hausu] (1977)

Billy, Garden State (2004)

Andreas O. Stoehr, Wild Wild Planet (1965)

Kat, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Thanks again to all of you, you’re helping to prove that there is a hunger for movies beyond the pale! Is Hollywood listening?

Capsules

CAPSULE: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood

PLOT: More than thirty Beatles songs illustrate a romance between a working-class Liverpudlian and a New England WASP during the tumultuous 1960s.

Still from Across the Universe (2007)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Set in a sentimentalized Sixties, it’s inevitable that Across the Universe heaves to that decades psychedelic squalls. Spectacular director Julie Taymor relishes slathering lysergic pigment on her CGI canvas for five or six of the thirty plus songs, but the ultimately the story is more about how all you need is love than it is about girls with kaleidoscope eyes.

COMMENTS: In a career of a mere eight years, the Beatles probably cranked out more memorable melodies than Mozart. It was a minor stroke of genius to adapt that songbook into a musical.  he script of Across the Universe, which tells the story of a pair of young lovers and their friends with the Vietnam War protests and the Summer of Love as a backdrop, can be viewed in two ways. It could be seen a complete failure, built out of equal parts of romantic cliché and self-congratulatory Baby Boomer nostalgia. Or, it could be looked at as a masterpiece of craftsmanship, considering the fact that the scriptwriters had to weave a coherent epic tale from a relatively small catalog of three-minute song-stories containing no recurring characters.

Like most musicals, however, the story is almost beside the point; it only needs to be good enough to set up the next production number. Fortunately for weirdophiles, the numbers Universe‘s story sets up are frequently cosmic, though you will have to wade through an hour of character setup before it starts coming on. This being an archetypal 1960’s tale, there’s a nod to acid culture: more than a nod, it’s a magical mystery tour through an extended three song medley. It starts with the principals sipping LSD-spiked drinks at a party while a Ken Kesey type (played by Bono) lectures on mind expansion using “I Am the Walrus” as the holy text; whirling cameras and and tie-dye colored solarization gives their trip to the countryside via magic bus the requisite grooviness. This sequence segues into “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” where another acid-guru (Eddie Izzard) takes the crew inside his magic tent for a twisted computer-generated carnival complete with a roller skating pony, a dancing team of Blue Meanies, and contortionists in spooky wooden tribal masks. The scene’s an impressive visual spectacle whose impact fizzles thanks to Izzard massacring the lyrics through an off-the-beat, spoken-word delivery with some unfortunate improvisations. The dreamy comedown features the flower children staring up at the sky, imagining themselves tastefully nude and making love underwater.

Psychedelia intrudes into other numbers, as well: the carefully layered images of “Strawberry Fields Forever” feature bleeding strawberries that morph into fruit bombs splattering on the jungles of Vietnam. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” includes a cameo by Salma Hayek as five sexy dancing nurses, and a bliss-giving syringe filled with a nude dancing girl. The best and weirdest segment may be “I Want You/She’s So Heavy,” which addresses the draft board and stars a talking poster of Uncle Sam, dancing sergeants with square plastic chins, and a platoon of soldiers lugging the Statue of Liberty. Standout non-weird numbers include a gospel version of “Let It Be” set during the Detroit riots and a funky “Come Together” performed by Joe Cocker, who sings as three different characters, including a natty pimp backed by a chorus of hookers. Hardcore Beatles fans will rate Universe a must see (and they’ve probably already seen it); unless you’re some sicko who absolutely can’t stand Lennon-McCartney compositions, you’ll want to check it out just for the visuals. It can get pretty far out.

Despite its weird parts, Across the Universe was able to secure a mainstream release. Audiences were willing to accept the unreal scenes because they were presented in the lone format where the average person expects and accepts surrealism—the music video. Unfortunately, however, even the Beatles fan base couldn’t make Taymor’s experiment profitable at the box office.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A cameo by Bono as a sort of godfather among hippies (delivering a forceful cover of ‘I Am the Walrus’) shifts the movie into a hallucinatory realm, with a tie-dye color scheme that suggests scenes were shot during an acid trip with Baz Luhrmann. Viewers who like movies to reflect their out-of-body experiences will gladly inhale, but for others, the excess may seem off-putting.”–Justin Chang, Variety (contemporaneous)

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