WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

First off, don’t forget about our latest DVD contest: details here.   We’ve already got a new contest in the works for July, with a special twist: it will be open to UK residents only.

Next week, look for a review of the recently released Alice in Wonderland variation, Malice in Wonderland, set in an underworld of quirky London gangsters; the surreal new indie horror Burning Inside; Julie Taymor’s oft-trippy Beatles musical, Across the Universe (2007) (this one could get bumped for a surprise new release); and Edward G. Ulmer’s expressionist horror masterpiece, The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

It was a good week for weird search terms used to locate the site.  We like the fact that someone came here looking for the straight dope on “psychotronic KGB,” and where else but here would you go to get the lowdown on “very bizarre malice sur tube”?  Still, as far as weird search terms go, it’s hard to beat our favorite, “weird colourful round parasitic things on a wall in an asian village.”

And, in the we-shouldn’t-be-laughing-at-others-misfortune-but-we-will-anyway department, we have to mention that a spammer tried to post a comment from a domain delightfully titled www.i-have-blood-in-my-stool.com.  If you do have blood in your stool, you might go there for comfort.  Or, try a crazy alternative therapy, like seeing a doctor.

The reader-suggested review queue is still growing at an exponential rate.  Here’s how it stands: Trash Humpers (waiting for DVD release); Malice in Wonderland (jumping in line for a review this week); Kwaidan; Six-String Samurai; Andy Warhol’s Trash; Altered States; Memento; Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie; The Science of Sleep; The Attic Expeditions; After Last Season; Getting Any?; Performance; Being John Malkovich; The Apple; Southland Tales; Arizona Dream; Spider (2002); Songs From The Second Floor; Singapore Sling; Alice [Neco z Alenky]; Necromentia; Hour of the Wolf; MirrorMask; Possession; Suspiria; Mary and Max; Wild Zero; 4; Nothing (2003); The Peanut Butter Solution; Ninja Scroll; Perfume: The Story of a Murderer; Danger: Diabolik; Faust; Sublime; Battle Royale; Pink Floyd: The Wall; Escanaba In Da Moonlight; Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter; Zardoz; The Films of Suzan Pitt; Toto the Hero [Toto le Héros]; Paprika; The Holy Mountain; Brazil; The Casserole Masters; Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets; The Nines; 964 Pinocchio; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel; Tetsuo; Dead Ringers; Kairo [AKA Pulse]; The Guatemalan Handshake; Dead Leaves; The Seventh Seal; Primer; Maniac (1934); Hausu; A Boy and His Dog; 200 Motels; Walkabout; Private Parts (1972); Possession; Saddest Music in the World; Mulholland Drive; The American Astronaut; Blood Tea and Red Strings; The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. II (for Lucifer Rising, among others); Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ; The Bride of Frank; La Grande Bouffe; Uzumaki [Spiral]; Hedwig and the Angry Inch; Even Dwarves Started Small; Bunny & the Bull; “I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney” (assuming I can find it); Cinema 16: European Short Films; Freaked; Session 9; Schizopolis; Strings; Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man]; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra]; The Addiction; Liquid Sky; The Quiet; Shock Treatment; Tuvalu; “Zombie Jesus” (if we can locate it); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Society; May; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; Little Otik; Final Programme; Careful; Sweet Movie; The Triplets of Belleville; “Foutaises” (short); Johnny Suede; “Jam” (TV, UK, 2000), The Tale of the Floating World, Un Chien Andalou, Bloodsucking Freaks; Fellini Satyricon; Three Crowns of the Sailor; 8 1/2; Death Race 2000; Dororo; Lost Highway; Valerie and Her Week of Wonders; Dogville; and Julien Donkey-boy; Amelie; The Ten; The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; 1; Fast, Cheap and Out of Control; Tokyo Gore Police; At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul; The Trial [Le procès) (1962); Marquis; Hell Comes to Frogtown; Hellzapoppin’; Seom [The Isle]; Allegro Non Troppo; Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus; and Lust in the Dust.

SATURDAY SHORT: WE WERE ONCE A FAIRYTALE (2009)

Leave it to Spike Jonze to direct a seriously odd short starring Kanye West with some cameos from musician Fonzworth Bentley and skateboarder Mike Carroll.  What starts out as simply a story of Kanye in a drunken stupor, ends in an unpredictable, surreal climax that is trademark Spike Jonze.

CONTENT WARNING: this short contains some strong language, and a scene with mild sexual content.

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 6/4/10

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 (WIDE RELEASE):

Splice:  A speculative strand of genetic horror/science fiction about DNA splicing experiments in the near future.  Unlikely to be truly weird, but it is from a visionary director (Vincenzo Natali, of Cube fame), and it has creepy, alien looking mutant kids; that counts for something.  Starring Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.  Splice official site.

IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):

Double Take:  Archival footage of Alfred Hitchcock and a body double are used to create a new story involving the Master of Suspense meeting an evil doppelgänger during the Cold War.  Sounds utterly fascinating.  Opening in New York City this week, with scattered dates around the US until January 2011; hopefully more will be added.  Double Take official site.

Gone with the Pope (1975/2010):  Here’s an odd story: an ex-con plans to kidnap the Pope in order to extort one dollar from every Catholic in the world.  Now for the strange part: this movie was shot in 1975 by a nightclub singer as a vanity project, but never released; the old raw footage has been pieced by Sam Raimi‘s editor.  Supposedly, it’s a previously undiscovered camp classic that’s as tasteless as a John Waters flick in parts; either that, or it’s one of the best movie hoaxes ever.  It’s been playing for a while but we’ve only just learned about it.  Showing this week in New York City, with screenings to follow in Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Austin, and St. Louis.  Gone with the Pope official site.

Ondine: An Irish Fisherman (Colin Farrel) falls in love with a woman he catches in his fishing nets, whom he comes to believe might be a creature from a fairy tale.  Mild, sentimental-looking magical realism from sometimes-weird director Neil (The Company of Wolves, The Butcher Boy) Jordan.  Ondine official site.

NEW ON DVD:

Alice in Wonderland (2010): Read our capsule review.  Tim Burton’s “meh” vision of Wonderland arrives on home video.  Aimed at today’s kids, not Lewis Carrol fans. Buy Alice in Wonderland.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Vol 7:  A new volume of the popular Adult Swim cartoon.  Eleven short episodes from seasons 7 and 8, with extras to pad the runtime to two hours.  Fast food surrealism, in every sense of the coinage. Buy “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” Vol. 7.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Alice in Wonderland (2010): See entry in DVD above. Buy Alice in Wonderland [Blu-ray].

Pale Rider (1985): A treasure trove of Clint Eastwood movies are being released on Blu-ray this week, but as much as we love the Man With No Name, the guy’s frankly just not that weird.  The closest the legend’s ever come to making a “weird” movie is this Western with mystical overtones about a mysterious rider known only as “Preacher” who rescues miners from a greedy tycoon. Buy Pale Rider [Blu-ray].

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we’ve overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

JOHN WAYNE AND THE SHOOTIST (1976)

Marlon Brando is not the quintessential American male movie star. That honor belongs to John Wayne. John Wayne was a shrewd actor who carefully manufactured his on screen persona. For many, Wayne represents the All-American WASP, yet he was of Irish descent and a Roman Catholic. Most of the B western actors had a favorite horse. In his B western beginnings, Wayne had the horse Duke, yet he disliked horses, preferred slacks and dinner jacket to western duds, wore a toupee through most of his career, and felt more at home on his boat than he ever did on a ranch.

In addition to the being the archetypal cowboy, Wayne represented the ideal American soldier, yet he never served a day in the military. When the second World War broke out in 1941, many of Wayne’s contemporaries, such as Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, and Henry Fonda, all enlisted. These actors were already established as “A” list stars in 1941. Even with Stagecoach (1939) behind him Wayne was not yet secure in his career and still languished in numerous “B” films. Wayne saw this as a golden opportunity, while the competition was away, to grab the number one spot, and he did just that. It was less a case of draft dodging, and more a calculating career move, one for which John Ford would relentlessly needle him ever after. The war interrupted the careers of numerous actors, such as George Reeves, who seemed to be on the way up, but had not yet established themselves in a large enough body of “A” productions. Upon his return, Reeves and many others found they had been virtually forgotten while they were away, never to regain their previous career position, let alone surpass it. So much for studio patriotism towards its contract players.
Still from The Shootist (1976)
Wayne symbolized American virtue, yet he had countless affairs with married women. Some maintain he was racist. In a 1971 interview he made naive and blatantly ignorant remarks about African Americans and Native Americans, yet he enjoyed working with African American co-stars, and was drawn to native American spirituality, an interest on display in his film Hondo (1953), produced and distributed by Continue reading JOHN WAYNE AND THE SHOOTIST (1976) →

LIST CANDIDATE: THE WAYWARD CLOUD [TIAN BIAN YI DUO YUN] (2005)

DIRECTED BY: Ming-liang Tsai

FEATURING: , Shiang-chyi Chen, Sumomo Yozakura,

PLOT: During a nationwide drought, a Taiwanese porn star courts a shy and lonely apartment dweller obsessed with watermelons; characters occasionally burst into fantasy song-and-dance numbers.

Still from The Wayward Cloud (2005)

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE: As a romantic, pornographic, hallucinatory musical that makes sure you will never see watermelons or Taiwanese sex movies quite the same way ever again, The Wayward Cloud is audacious and, yes, weird. The powerful downside is the fact that, outside of the musical sequences, Tsai’s minimalism—long takes, a motionless camera, and the absolute minimum amount plot and dialogue he can possibly get away with—is the most acquired of acquired tastes.

COMMENTS: There are seven memorable scenes in The Wayward Cloud—three bizarre sexual encounters (and a couple of ordinary ones) and four outlandish musical numbers.  Given all that’s going on, it’s amazing that writer/director Ming-liang Tsai still managed to keep the script so arid, and to convey an overall feeling of malaise rather than excitement.  Without these seven scenes, the movie would hardly exist; the wisp of a plot involves a boy-meets-girl-and-never-quite-loses-her story that’s told in nearly dialogue free episodes of long takes of actors reacting to nothing.  The meet-cute (or in this case, meet-mute) involves Shiang-chyi coming upon Hsiao-Kang while he’s napping, then sitting down across from him and taking a nap herself.  It’s five minutes of hot napping action before they exchange their first words.  (It’s helpful to know that these characters have met before, in Tsai’s What Time Is It There? [2001], and in a subsequent short film.)  Hsiao-Kang doesn’t divulge his job as a professional video gigolo to his new girlfriend, but there’s no cover story, no sense of urgency that she might discover his vocation, and there’s nothing divulged about her to suggest she would care either way.  There is a quiet, believable sort of intimacy in scenes where Hsiao-Kang smokes a cigarette held between Shiang-chyi’s toes; the lovers are so comfortable together they don’t have to say anything to each other.  But we, the viewers, still wish they would say something for our benefit.

Fortunately, there is the sex.  It’s graphic, but not explicit: there’s no visible genital- Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE WAYWARD CLOUD [TIAN BIAN YI DUO YUN] (2005) →

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