366 scribe Alfred Eaker‘s W the Movie is now available for digital rental on Amazon. For only $2.99, you can watch the movie as many times as you want for one week. The movie can be watched on your computer monitor or your television screen, if you have an internet-equipped device like a Tivo-DVR, certain Blu-ray players or TV models.
Amazon allows a 2:30 free preview of the movie; unfortunately, in this case this doesn’t get you very far past the credits. Here’s the full trailer for the film to give you a better flavor of this surrealist satire on the presidency of George W. Bush:
To preview or order, click here or on the video cover above. (Yes, we will earn a few pennies if you rent it). You can also check out this and other titles in the online rental section of our website. We hope you’ll enjoy the movie!
Check in next week to finally see our report on the eagerly anticipated dark fairy tale Ink, which is burning up the torrent sites and already has “cult movie” written all over it. We’ll also be taking a look at the 2006 Frankenstein variation Subject Two. Other reviews that could pop up to fill out the week include Absurdistan (2008) and The Box (2009).
As far as the weirdest search term used to locate the site last week, we’ll go with “weird two worded movies.” Still wondering whether searcher is only interested in weird movies which have two word titles, or in which only two words are spoken.
The reader suggested review queue now looks like this: Greaser’s Palace (substituted for Institute Benjamenta), Waking Life, Survive Style 5+, The Dark Backward, The Short Films of David Lynch, Santa Sangre, Dead Man, Inland Empire, Monday (assuming I can find an English language version), The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Barton Fink, What? (Diary of Forbidden Dreams), Meatball Machine, Xtro, Basket Case, Suicide Club, O Lucky Man!, Trash Humpers (when/if released), Gozu, Tales of Ordinary Madness, The Wayward Cloud, Kwaidan, Six-String Samurai, Andy Warhol’s Trash, Altered States, Memento, Nightmare Before Christmas/Vincent/Frankenweenie, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gothic, 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], Dark Country, Necromania (1971, Ed Wood), Hour of the Wolf, and MirrorMask. We know this thing has been languishing, but we promise to start whittling it down once January comes around.
We’re working behind the scenes on a few surprises for the end of the year. Sorry we can’t be less cryptic, but we have some ambitious plans—look for an announcement in the coming weeks.
Directed by Michael Langan, “Doxology” is an experimental head trip beginning and ending with verses from “Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow” or “The Common Doxology”. This short contains floating carrots, dancing cars, and a tennis ball crashing into the moon. What more could you ask for?
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):
The Lovely Bones: Visionary, and sentimental looking, tale about a little murdered girl who watches over her family from the afterlife. Once weird Peter (Meet the Feebles) Jackson’s fantasy/drama opens to mixed reviews, and given the talent involved and Jackson’s Hollywood cred, it’s a bit surprising that it’s only getting a limited release. Starring young Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Marky Mark, Rachel (The Brothers Bloom) Weisz, and Susan Sarandon. The Lovely Bones official site.
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?: An actor who’s killed his mother holds a family hostage while a detective investigates his bizarre personal history. Sounds like it could be a mundane tale of descent into madness, except that it comes from a weird dream team: directed by Werner (Even Dwarfs Started Small) Herzog, and executive produced by David Lynch! With that pedigree, coupled with mystified early reviews, My Son sounds like a good candidate for weirdest film of 2009—although it’s likely too late to the party to get a mention here until 2010. Debuting in NYC Dec. 11, in LA Dec. 18, and hopefully following soon to the rest of the country. My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done? official site.
SCREENINGS (DEC. 11 & 12, NEW YORK CITY):
Coming Soon (2006/2008): See our review. The controversial bestiality mockumentary makes its U.S. debut at The Living Theater. This is your second and final notice; if you attend, feel free to report back to us on the experience. Expect one weird crowd.
NEW ON DVD:
AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa: The Criterion Collection busts out this massive film geek’s wet dream just in time for the holidays. Contains the intermittently weird Rashomon (1950) along with non-weird, but essential, Kurosawa classics like Stray Dog (1949), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), and nineteen others. We wish the Master’s most unabashedly surreal work, Dreams (1990), was included in the set, but how can anyone really complain that a treasure trove is missing a pearl? Buy AK 100: 25 Films of Akira Kurosawa from Amazon.
Beautiful Losers (2008): A documentary examining the DIY skatepunk art movement in New York City in the early 1990s. Among those profiled is weird director Harmony Korine. Buy Beautiful Losers from Amazon.
World’s Greatest Dad (2009): Robin Williams stars in this dark comedy about a failed writer turned high school poetry teacher who gets a shot at fame late in life. Plot descriptions are circumspect, but we can tell that there is a twist in there, and it’s described as a very black one. Directed by the always outrageous Bobcat (Shakes the Clown) Goldwaith. It had a token theatrical release after a film festival run, but is essentially straight-to-DVD. Buy World’s Greatest Dad from Amazon
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
The Alphabet Killer (2007): A schizophrenic female detective freaks out while investigating a brutal series of murders. Hallucinations ensue. Buy The Alphabet Killer from Amazon.
Rebirth of Mothra II (1997): With his miniature princess guardians, Mothra was always one of the weirdest of the kaiju (giant Japanese monsters). Here, Mothra fights a monster genetically engineered to eat garbage. It’s a modernized Mothra, but it features old school ridiculous dubbing. Watch Rebirth of Mothra II free on YouTube.
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.
In the late 1950s movie star Errol Flynn owned a movie theater in Havana. Not the beautifully chiseled Flynn from The Adventures of Robin Hood, but a fat 50 year old has-been, yellowed with cirrhosis, eaten up with syphilis and dodging numerous creditors, including the IRS, with his latest teen age girlfriend: fourteen year old Beverly Aadland. Flynn, probably feeling his self-fulfilled hour (which predictably came shortly after) wanted to sow his macho oats one last time in the thick of the Cuban revolution (clearly, he wasn’t up to it).
Flynn, with Producer Victor Pahlen, made this pseudo-documentary about Flynn’s meeting Castro, although this meeting is only seen in photographs.
The film proclaims Flynn a sympathizer with Castro’s Batista Regime (paradoxically, he was also posthumously charged with being a fascist sympathizer during WWII). Most likely, this was a feeble effort, on the part of Pahlen and Flynn, to cash in on being in the right place at the right time.
Cuban Story [AKA The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution] was only screened once, in Moscow, and disappeared until Pahlen’s daughter released it the early 2000s. This utterly bizarre film begins with Flynn drunkenly narrating (more like a strained slur), from a cheap office, something about “freedom fighters.” Flynn, with long cigarette hanging from his mouth, picks up a globe to show viewers “‘where Cuba is” and then throws the globe off camera. It can be heard bouncing off the wall. The remaining film narration (credited to Flynn, although it clearly is not) is frequently incoherent, pro-Castro, and pro-terrorist.
According to Pahlen’s film, Flynn made his way through the heart of the revolution to meet Castro, but the only footage of the extremely soused, dissipated Flynn is of his escorting women into one of George Raft’s casinos, to gamble with them and Beverly. The rest of the film is a collage of seemingly unrelated, and often shocking, but historically valuable footage. Silent images of slain “comrades” and the savage killing of young men in the streets as Batista police casually observe are unsettling.
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The film is also available in a 
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