Miscellanea

YOUR VOTE DETERMINES THE WINNER OF THE 15TH ANNUAL WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS

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This year, The Substance (and , The Substance) mark the only overlap between the Weirdcademy Awards and Hollywood’s lipstick-on-a-pig hootenanny, the Most Conventional Movie Awards. This follows a trend dating back all the way to last year of Hollywood recognizing one and exactly one weird film for awards season. ‘s gonzo body horror had just enough satirical traction to get the Academy to overlook the fact that at the end a bizarre mashup of its two lead characters drenches a tux-and-gown wearing audience in blood, but besides that, weird movies got about as far with the Academy as they normally do: nowhere. couldn’t sell enough wineries buy a single nomination for Megalopolis, which has to be the best New York-set Roman epic ever made where Jon Voight marvels at his own erection.

Instead, we get to choose between two musicals (one an overblown bore and the other mired in scandal), another (yawn) musical biopic, and a three-and-a-half hour movie about a destitute Holocaust survivor who’s also an impotent morphine addict and a rape victim with a mute sister-in-law and a wheelchair-bound wife, but other than that is a pretty carefree guy. (It’s the brutalest).

The Oscars are a joke, and everyone knows it. But you, my friend, you aren’t content with the same-old same-old. You want weird in your movies. The Weirdcademy Awards are for you, the moviegoer whose friends roll their eyes and sigh loudly when you suggest movie night should feature a gory all-puppet movie about a recovering alcoholic forced to become a serial killer because aliens have implanted a bomb in his neck.

Although the editors of 366 Weird Movies select the nominees from the pool of available movies, the Awards themselves are a naked popularity contest, and do not necessarily reflect either the artistic merit or intrinsic weirdness of the films involved. The Weirdcademy Awards are tongue-in-cheek and for fun only. Ballot-stuffing is a frequent occurrence. Please, no wagering.

The Weirdcademy Awards are given to the Weirdest Movie, Actor, Actress and Scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.

Who makes up the Weirdcademy? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. If you can figure out how to vote in the poll, you are qualified to join. You can not be turned down because of your age, sex, religious or political affiliation, pronouns, or whether you still use “X.” There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see any of the movies listed before voting. You can vote for any or all categories.

You can only vote once—so choose carefully. We’ll keep voting open until March 1, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.

Be sure to also vote for Weirdest Short Film of the Year. To watch all five nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.

Here is your ballot for the 2024 edition of the Weirdcademy
Continue reading YOUR VOTE DETERMINES THE WINNER OF THE 15TH ANNUAL WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS →

Miscellanea

VOTE FOR THE WEIRDEST SHORT FILM OF 2024

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It’s time for the 2024 edition of the Weirdcademy Awards, the premier (only) awards contest exclusively focused on weird films, chosen by weird film fans. That means shorts as well as features. We’ve collected all five nominees for 2024′s Weirdest Short of the Year together in one place, for ease of voting. You can cast a vote for your favorite until March 1. Choose carefully, because you can only vote once. This year’s slate features party-hearty doppelgängers, cotton ball cookies, psychic pet science, an animated plague of mutations, and an eerie minimalist music video from an old friend.

You can watch all the nominees in full below before voting (shorts may contain adult language, dead pets, cartoon blood, and unsanitary cookie preparation):

“The Answers to the Questions” by

“Coreys” by

“Opulent Round Edible Object” by

“The Rainbow Bridge” by

“Uncanny Alley” by

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Pod 366: A Weird Movies Podcast

POD 366, EP. 104: THE 2024-25 WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS NOMINEES

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Quick links/Discussed in this episode:

Sundance Film Festival: Normally, we would preview this festival before it started, but this year we lost track and waited until it was over to start our coverage. That’s probably a better procedure anyway, as we can now read the early returns and get a better sense of what’s meaningfully weird at what remains America’s most significant indie movie festival. Here’s a bunch of premieres we’ll be looking for in the coming year:

  • By Design – turns into a chair (seriously, that’s the plot). From , so you know it’s weird.
  • Dead Lover – A gravedigger reanimates her dream man in what is described as a campy and gonzo spin on Frankenstein with some cult movie potential.
  • OBEX – A man travels into a video game to save his abducted dog. From , so you know it’s weird.
  • Rabbit Trap – Two musicians record a mystical sound which drives them mad in this Welsh folk horror.
  • The Thing with Feathers – A grieving father is haunted by a giant talking crow.

Punch-Drunk Love (2002): Read the reader recommendation. ‘s “off kilter” romantic comedy starring Adam Sandler gets an upgrade to 4K UHD from the . Buy Punch-Drunk Love.

The Sacrifice (1986): Read Alfred Eaker’s review. ‘s final film (he was dying of cancer as he filmed it) is a typically austere and challenging spiritual tale of a man who wishes to sacrifice himself to save his family from an apocalypse. This is the 4K UHD release of a previous Blu-ray (also included). Buy The Sacrifice.

“Twin Peaks: From Z to A”: Probably the ultimate collection (although all of this material has been available in various previous editions). Includes all three TV seasons and Fire Walk with Me, a 4K UHD of the pilot and the notorious “Gotta Light?” episode from Season 3, along with 20+ hours of (all previously released) bonus material. Buy “Twin Peaks: From Z to A”.

FREE ONLINE WEIRD MOVIES:

Warner Brothers quietly dumped released a slew of back catalog titles on ad-supported free YouTube streams this week. The most notable, for our purposes, are Canonically Weird titles True Stories (1986) (our review, viewing link) and The Science of Sleep (2006) (our review, viewing link). No idea how long these will be available, so enjoy while you can!

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE:

No guest is currently scheduled for next week’s Pod 366, but Giles Edwards and Gregory J. Smalley plan to return with a look at what’s weird in news and new releases. Of course, on Sunday the Weirdcademy Awards voting opens to everyone, so be sure to get your votes end (voting ends on March 1, the day before Hollywood’s Most Conventional Movie Awards airs.) In written reviews, Shane Wilson takes on one that Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue in Hanzo the Razor (1972), about a Tokugawa-era lawman with an unusual crime-fighting tool; Giles Edwards also dives into the queue for the 2007 English horror The Devil’s Chair; and Gregory J. Smalley gives another answer to the eternally-recurring question If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? Onward and weirdward!

Capsules

CAPSULE: LOVE ME (2024)

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Love Me is available on VOD for purchase or rental.

DIRECTED BY: Andrew Zuchero, Sam Zuchero

FEATURING: ,

PLOT: After the apocalypse wipes out Earth’s entire population, an AI-equipped buoy connects with an AI-equipped satellite that holds a digital record of humanity, and together they decide to recreate a human relationship in virtual reality.

Still from love me (2024)

COMMENTS: Love Me, the debut feature from real-life married couple Andrew and Sam Zuchero, debuted at Sundance in 2024 to underwhelming reviews, but managed to get a theatrical release a year later based on the strength of stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. The overall reaction to the film has been tepid, both from critics (who have tended to find it too obvious) and audiences (who have tended to find it too outlandish). Still, although not without flaws—including an unwillingness to pursue the most interesting ideas it raises—Love Me is original and adventurous enough to elevate it above the usual dreck that litters the romance genre.

Although the core romantic relationship inevitably falls into cliché (including the mildly offensive trope of a hysterical girlfriend who demands every detail be storybook perfect as a way of eluding her own insecurities), the film feeds off its high concept post-apocalyptic premise. The most interesting part of Love Me, in fact, is its nearly experimental opening, which shows a spinning globe briefly shrouded in a flash of nuclear flame, before zooming into the planet for a time lapse montage showing the passage of innumerable days. Stewart’s smart buoy, equipped with a scanner shaped like an eye, clicks to life and her speech module gets stuck on stutter mode as her programming resets, post-apocalypse. Meanwhile, Yuen’s satellite, a kind of eternally revolving monument to humanity containing  pedabytes of data, is already fully operational. The two beings connect and, via the satellite’s archive, try to reconstruct what it means to be a human being (in the 21st century, at least).

The film’s take on A.I. remains willfully unexamined (the movie is not about A.I. at all; the characters could just as well have been aliens). The answer as to how these machines developed emotions like loneliness and curiosity is a little thing called “willing suspension of disbelief.” Love Me‘s technological focus is more on current Internet culture and social media, and the take seems positive enough at first: the A.I.s effectively investigate human behavior through YouTubes and memes, encountering genuine human miracles like baby laughter reinforcement loops. As the film goes on, this attitude develops more a satirical edge, as it becomes clear that modeling a relationship on an influencer’s Instagram feed won’t lead to an accurate simulacrum of human connection. But the attempt creates a dual romantic metaphor for the film. On a shallow level, it’s a warning about the destructive influence of the unobtainable sanitized fantasies presented on social media as model lifestyles, as the buoy slaves to in vain to perfectly recreate a spicy quesadillas/whimsical onesie/”Friends” marathon date night video she’s seen starring an Instagrammer (also played by Stewart). On a deeper level, one on which the viewer must do most of his or her own work, Love Me can be viewed as an existential parable about persona and authenticity. The buoy and the satellite can only meaningfully interact in a shared virtual reality where they are represented by their chosen avatars—which is almost a religious scenario, when you think about it.

The film’s audiovisual elements are good, for the budget. Many reviewers complained about the midfilm virtual reality section being too long and repetitive; it’s easy to see where they are coming from, even if I don’t share their level of frustration. Once the movie shifts into live action for the final act, Stewart and Yuen show real chemistry and passion (as they must, since there are no supporting actors to turn our attention to). Josh Jacober’s solo piano accompanies the film throughout, in a fashion reminiscent of a silent movie score. And the film features a one-billion year fast-forward, which sets a record by exceeding even the eons-spanning smash-cut from 2001.

While there’s no question Love Me doesn’t soar to the thoughtful heights of similarly-themed movies like Wall-E, Her, or A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, it easily exceeds the low standards we expect from the romantic movie genre. While it’s not something I’d recommend actively seeking out, if you’re a couple who finds yourself with 90 minutes to kill on an evening, you could do a lot worse on date night (for example, mail-order Mexican food and a “Friends” marathon).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a daringly weird debut, executed with real style and vision. It’s an oddity that’s bound to appeal to fans of similarly strange high-concept love stories, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”–Tasha Robinson, Polygon (contemporaneous)

Love Me [Blu-Ray]

Love Me [Blu-Ray]
  • Love Me [Blu-Ray]
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