Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/29/2015

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Our weekly 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.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Fri. 5/29):

The City of Lost Children (1995): Read the Certified Weird entry! This presentation of the classic about a madman who steals children’s dreams in a steampunk city is kicks off a new French film series at Cinefamily called “La Collectionneuse.” City screens with unspecified shorts (the team made a few of these in the 1980s before garduating to their first feature, 1991’s Certified Weird Delicatessen). The City of Lost Children at Cinefamily.

SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, CA, Wed. 6/3):

Bronson (2008): Read the Certified Weird entry! That’s right, this Cinefamily joint is screening a second Certified Weird feature this summer, sticking a bizarre cinematic thorn into the very paw of Hollywood’s blockbuster season. No wonder they’re our favorite cult movie organization in the U.S.A. This screening celebrates the release of the full Bronson soundtrack on vinyl, with director on hand to sign copies of the LP. Bronson at Cinefamily.

NEW ON DVD:

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014): A professor becomes a vampire-like creature, then strikes up a romantic relationship with a woman. The background to this movie may be stranger than the actual film: this is Spike Lee’s crowdfunded remake of the minor 1970s black vampire romance cult film Ganja and Hess. Buy Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.

The Escapees (1981): Two girls escape from a mental institution and drift across the French countryside. This is a minor film from , with no vampires and less surrealism and less nudity than usual (what’s left in a Rollin film when you take out the vampires, surrealism and nudity?) Redemption already released this on DVD in 2009 in a copy struck from a visually murky print, but this re-release is remastered. Buy The Escapees.

Island of Death (1976): See description in Blu-ray below. Buy Island of Death [Blu-ray/DVD combo].

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014): See description in DVD above. Buy Da Sweet Blood of Jesus [Blu-ray].

The Escapees (1981): See description in DVD above. Buy The Escapees [Blu-ray]

Island of Death (1976): Two British vigilantes take it upon themselves to slaughter local degenerates while on vacation on a Greek island. Seldom-seen Greek exploitation film that was infamously banned in Britain as a “video nasty.” Available on a DVD/Blu-ray combo, with extra features, from Arrow Video. Buy Island of Death [Blu-ray/DVD combo].

Touch of Evil (1958):  Orson Welles’ overheated noir about a Mexican lawman (Charlton Heston!) who uncovers border town corruption, embodied in the massive, commanding personality of bad cop Hank Quinlan (Welles). For a long time Touch of Evil was unavailable on home video; in the last decade, Universal seems to be re-packaging it every few years. This Blu-ray contains three cuts of the film (the theatrical version, the reconstructed version and the “preview version”) and hopefully will stand as the final word on this classic. Buy Touch of Evil [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Kung Fury (2015): After the partner of 1980s karate cop Kung Fury is killed by time-traveling assassin Adolph Hitler, Kung decides to go back in time to kill Der Führer, but miscalculates and winds up in Viking times instead. Kung Fury raised over $600,000 on Kickstarter, which was not enough to make the planned feature film; however, they did produce this thirty minute short and release it for free, so who’s complaining? Unrated, but contains cartoonish violence and profanity. Watch Kung Fury 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.

Alfred Eaker's Fringe Cinema

EAKER VS. EAKER AT THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS: PITCH PERFECT 2 (2015)

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Eaker vs. Eaker is the latest “send Alfred to the summer blockbuster movies so that he can curmudgeonly complain” event, but with a twist, cinema fans and friends! For the first time (without even knowing it), you voted to send Alfred and his wife, Aja, to the flicks and have them duke it out, publicly, about each so-called-blockbuster. Everybody here knows all about Alfred’s cinematic savvy, and his cranky-old-dog approach to film critique. Now, you get 2-for-1: Aja is Alfred’s beloved clinical and counseling psychologist partner, who loves to counter just about every cinematic point Alfred makes. And you, kind reader, chose to send us next to Pitch Perfect 2.

Aja and Alfred 366Aja:

Okay, folks, here’s the story. First, we went to see Mad Max: Fury Road, which caused a bit of a controversy in the differing experiences between Aja and Alfred. We just got home from seeing Pitch Perfect 2. And this is literally what just happened six seconds ago:

“I am totally going to nail your ass on the next write up.”

Alfred cackles loudly, “Are you going to tell them about the snoring?”

“Of course!”

“Well, I hated the the first one. But you know, that’s just me,” Alfred exhales a stream of cigarette smoke that betrays him. Yes, it is true. The man I adore stayed fast-glued to freaking Mad Max: Fury Road, which, really, was lame, and during Pitch Perfect 2 Alfred slept—not just slept—SNORED—through 35 minutes of it.

Still from Pitch Perfect 2 (2015)I am certain of only a few things. First, that Alfred was definitely awakened not by the noise of the onscreen dialog, but by my own howling laughter. In fact, I laughed so hard I farted. It was a small squeak, so I am sure that that is not what woke Alfred. Second, Pitch Perfect 2 was awesome, as the talent, dedication, precision, and sheer effort that it takes to perform as a triple threat (sing, dance, act) is one helluva task, and the entire cast nailed it solidly. Third, Alfred does not dance, only sings David Bowie songs in the shower, and only likes acting if his face is painted blue. So anything he tries to diss about this movie, do not, do not, do not listen to him. Trust me, I’m a doctor.

The appearance of Katey Sagal as a former “Barden Belle” singer was a wonderful surprise. Recently, she has taken on the gritty role of biker babe maven mom in the hit series “Sons of Anarchy.” (For the record, I loved SOA until they killed off Opie. After that, forget it, not Continue reading EAKER VS. EAKER AT THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTERS: PITCH PERFECT 2 (2015) →

Canonically Weird (The List), Shorts

204. DESTINO (2003)

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“A magical display of the problem of life in the labyrinth of time.”– describing Destino

“A simple story about a young girl in search of true love .”– describing Destino

Must SeeWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Dominique Monfery

FEATURING: Vocals of Dora Luz

PLOT: Essentially plotless, but the loose narrative involves a nude woman wandering the desert who comes upon a pyramidal statue with a male figure embedded in it. A bird bursts from the statue and it comes to life. The woman and man try to approach each other but walls and other surreal obstacles constantly grow between them, until the woman is transformed into a ballerina with a dandelion head, and then into a bell housed in a tower.

Still from Destino (1946/2003)
BACKGROUND:

  • After making the (flop) Fantasia, was still looking for opportunities to incorporate high culture into his animated projects. In the 1940s visited Hollywood frequently; fascinated by stars and by filmmaking, and constantly promoting himself, the Spanish eccentric struck up friendships with many Tinseltown luminaries, including Disney. The two men hit it off and conceived the idea of a collaboration on a short film (which would be part of an anthology feature film similar to Fantasia). Dalí worked closely with Disney animator John Hench,  who translated many of the Spaniard’s sketches and ideas into ready-to-film animation cels. The project was begun in 1945 and continued for eight months, but only 17 seconds of footage was actually created before it was scrapped.
  • Secondary sources report that the male statue is Chronos (presumably the god of time) while the female character is named “Dahlia” (a feminization of the artist’s name).
  • The official explanation for Disney’s decision to shelve the project was that the wartime vogue for “package pictures” had passed, and Disney’s distributors were requesting full-length features. The documentary Dalí & Disney: A Date with Destino suggests that Walt may have found the film too “bananas,” citing a report that he blew up one afternoon after seeing that Dalí had stopped painting pictures of ballerinas and had begun drawing baseball players instead.
  • Roy E. Disney, Walt Disney’s nephew and a Disney senior executive, was looking for material to provide extras for the DVD release of Fantasia 2000 when he discovered the unused material for Destino in a moldy corporate storeroom. He decided to reconstruct the film from the existing storyboards and leftover concept art, largely so that the Disney Company would gain property rights in the underlying artwork. Fortunately, John Hench was still alive at the time to provide guidance for the reconstruction.
  • This was animator Dominique Monfery’s first work as a director.
  • The short briefly played theaters as an unlikely introduction to the comedy Calendar Girls.
  • Destino was nominated for an Academy Award for best short animated film in 2004, but—incredibly, given its provenance and historical value—it did not win. (‘s excellent Harvie Krumpet got the nod instead).

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The most impressive of many gloriously hallucinatory moments is the seventeen second sequence that John Hench animated to try to convince a faltering Walt Disney to go ahead with the project. Two grotesque faces, with bulging eyeballs and tattered skin pulled taut and held in place by crutches, are perched upon two turtles who slowly bear them together. In the negative space formed when their noses touch, a perfect, pearly ballerina appears.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Dandelion-headed dancer; baguette-wearing bicyclists; ballerina-head baseball

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Destino is Salvador Dalí’s only moving canvas. A slight breeze from Walt Disney Studios nudges it ever so slightly off its already tilted axis. This dream of a Disney princess trapped in Dalí’s delirious desert is something we will not see the likes of again in our lifetimes.


Promotional clip about Destino from the Dalí Museum (in Spanish and English)

COMMENTS: Salvador Dalí was a genius. This fact may seem Continue reading 204. DESTINO (2003) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: ID (2005)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Kimihiko Hasegawa, Kei Fujiwara

PLOT: A man awakens in a woods and wanders into an urban pig farm where he observes examples of human cruelty and perversion.

Still from Id (2005)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: The confusing presentation and slapstick black comedy undercuts Id‘s serious spiritual themes. Id goes totally nutso at the end, even by its own loose standards of sanity, and the movie doesn’t hang together even by the forgiving parameters of its own weirdness.

COMMENTS: Id‘s confusing, fractured storyline may take more than one viewing to work out (and you’ll probably never be 100% satisfied). On the other hand, the movie seems to have a clear thematic purpose, though it’s developed in a sloppy fashion. The movie’s theme is stated up front and seems simple and noble: “Amida Buddha’s sacred vow is that all be granted salvation… not only the good and wise but even those most depraved by sin and lust will be shown compassion.” There is a complication, however; to take advantage of Amida Buddha’s offer, you must invoke his name. Beasts, being dumb and mute, can’t do this; and neither can our protagonist, a nameless and (initially) mute man we meet see waking up in a forest, listening to dueling voiceovers. This man grabs a harmonica and wanders onto a nearby urban pig farm where he observes absurd examples of “most depraved sin and lust.”

So far, so good; it seems like a clean enough setup for a story of sin and salvation, a meditation on the thin line between the human and the bestial. Of course, things get far more confused than that. Soon enough we are introduced to another, similarly lost, character, a raggedy detective searching for the “master of murder” who may be responsible for local serial killings. The pig farm and its nearby environs supply plenty of subplots, including three slapstick farmhands who jerk about the farm like Keystone Kops, a bullied nine-year-old boy (played by an adult), and a cult proselytizer who miraculously survived a family massacre. The already odd vignettes are further peppered with hallucinations, including some very crude stop-motion animation and shots of a papier-mache pig’s head spouting blood. Somehow, by the end we descend into a hellish slaughterhouse hung with bloody plastic sheeting for a long and gory confrontation with a transformed “humanhog.” And what are we to make of the frequent references to the “id well,” an idea seemingly taken from Freudian psychology that has only a strained connection to the film’s Buddhist ideology?

The idea that “those most depraved by sin and lust will be shown compassion” provides an excuse to show graphic examples of sin and lust, which test our capacity for compassion to its fullest. Among other immoral sights, we get an entire chapter devoted to Peeping Toms (who pull on metallic springs in the place of genitals) and a “comic” transvestite rape. The absurdist elements of the salacious scenes seem to work against the movie’s main theme, however; if Amida Buddha forgives the worst human transgressions, then why the need to make them funny? If he would forgive real Peeping Toms, why does Id feel compelled to make their crimes look silly? It’s symptomatic of the movie’s unsure tone. Id won’t commit to being a black comedy, a serious psycho-spiritual rumination, or a surreal nightmare, but keeps changing its strategy every few minutes, hoping something will stick. It’s a shame, because there seems to be the seed of a promising idea buried somewhere in this film, if only the director could decide how to cultivate it.

Writer/director Kei Fujiwara collaborated with on 1989’s Certified Weird classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man, where she played the female lead as well as providing the costume design and assisting in the camerawork. Id is her second feature in a proposed trilogy; the first, Organ, appeared in 1996, so the third installment is due about now, if it’s ever going to be made.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A lot of viewers might not even finish it, let alone desire a second (or third) serving of the outrageously weird, spicy dish.”–Dejan Ognjanovic, Temple of Ghoul (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Radu.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE VOICES (2014) [PLUS “7TH DAY” AND “ENTER THE DANGEROUS MIND”]

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Gemma Arterton, , Jacki Weaver, Ella Smith

PLOT: A likable schizophrenic struggles to corner reality when he accidentally kills the object of his affections after going off his meds.

THE VOICES
WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:  The Voices is comic in the black style of Blood Diner (1987), yet unexpectedly hits us with grim, sometimes even poignant, perspectives—then throws us curve balls, such as when the movie bursts into a stylized dance number to represent a character’s transition to the afterlife.

COMMENTS: There’s no shortage of movies about crazy guys who murder women. While I like graphic horror, the violence has to further the plot and the plot has to either make me think, or grandly entertain me. In cinema, the torturing of helpless people presented as a spectacle to make up for a poor story line is sick and boring. That said, three recent and overlooked independent movies about crazy guys murdering women have caught my attention as standout works! These films are similar in that in each of them, the killer is the protagonist, and the character-study plots attempt to show us what’s going on inside his head and why.

In these three stories the slayers are vulnerable and delusional in ways that almost make us excuse their actions. Each misguidedly pursues, and us rejected by, an idealized love interest. Each strives to lead a normal life, but keeps tripping over his own mental illness. In all three films, the murderer is schizophrenic who rationalizes his thoughts and actions to, or is advised by, an imaginary confidant. Each entry in this demented trio of serial killer flicks effectively pulls off this fictitious friend gimmick, which not only adds and extra dimension to their respective stories, but oddly—and unsettlingly—compels a twisted sort of empathy for the homicidal central characters.

Still from Enter the Dangerous Mind (2013)In director Victor Teran’s Enter the Dangerous Mind (2013), featuring Scott Bakula and Jason Priestley, Jim (Jake Hoffman), is an aspiring electronic music composer who goes completely insane. It’s a serious film, and Jim has serious issues with the opposite sex. His low self-esteem and the near perpetual berating he receives over his ineptitude with girls compounds his emotional baggage. The admonishment and abuse comes from Jim’s caustic imaginary roommate. Rejection by his love interest leads to paranoia, exacerbated by the ever escalating timbre of a strange and terrible chorus of discordant sounds in Mark’s head; disembodied voices mixed with the maddening phonic trappings of our total-immersion electronic media culture.

7th Day (2012) is a gritty, low-budget but well-produced effort authored by Mark Leake, the writer/director of the -esque cannibal exploitation film parodies Isle (2008) and Pleasures of the Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: THE VOICES (2014) [PLUS “7TH DAY” AND “ENTER THE DANGEROUS MIND”] →

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