Children gather around the window of a toy store to admire their wares. Their visit takes a dark turn, however, when they reach the war toys.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 1/23/2015
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.
IN THEATERS (LIMITED RELEASE):
The Duke of Burgundy (2014): Peter Strickland’s followup to his giallo-tribute Berberian Sound Studio is a strange erotic melodrama about sadomasochistic relationship between an aristocratic butterfly collector and her servant. We have no idea where it’s playing or even how to access the advertised VOD release (UPDATE: it’s been spotted on Comcast cable systems), so we’ll likely have to wait for a DVD. The Duke of Burgundy official site.
R100 (2013): A sadomasochistic sex comedy from Hitoshi Matsumoto about a businessman who joins a secret club that arranges for dominatrices to attack its members in public places. We’ve been waiting on this one since it’s North American debut at TIFF last year; Drafthouse makes sure it hits all the major metro areas. R100 official site.
SCREENINGS – (Cinefamily, Los Angeles, Friday January 23, 8:00 PST):
R100 (2013)/Symbol (2009): Speaking of R100 (see above), the Cinefamily is hosting a Hitoshi Matsumoto double feature to celebrate the film’s release, pairing it with Symbol, the auteur’s bizarro 2009 comedy about metaphysical emptiness and Mexican wrestling. R100 gaijin co-star Lindsay Kay Hayward will be there, and there will be a “sushi eating whipping” contest with prizes. Los Angelinos rush out there now, ’cause it starts at 8:00 PST. R100 (2013)/Symbol (2009) at Cinefamily.
FILM FESTIVALS – Sundance Film Festival (Park City, UT, Date):
The 2015 movie season officially kicks off with Sundance, where a hundred hopeful independent movies, including some off-the-wall ones, come to vie for a handful of distribution contracts. Last year brought us The Double, and the previous year’s Sundance sensation was Escape from Tomorrow, so there is almost always at least one weird winner to be found here. Here are the ones we’ll be keeping an eye on:
- Beaver Trilogy Part IV – A documentary about the making of Trent Harris‘ Beaver Trilogy, an odd movie about an oddball kid from Beaver, Oregon. Screens the 23rd, 27th and 31st.
- The Forbidden Room – This might possibly be of interest: a new Guy Maddin movie, with a cast of Mathieu Amalric, Charlotte Rampling and Udo Kier. Try to catch it on the 26th, 28th, 29th or 31st (but expect to be put on the wait list).
- H. – The story of two women named Helen in Troy, NY who descend into madness, or the end of the world, or something. Screening 1/25, 27, 30 & 31.
- The Tribe – A graphically violent and sexually explicit Ukrainian film, with no dialogue, about students at a school for the deaf who run a prostitution ring. Screens the 24th, 26th & 27th.
- White Dog – There’s been some buzz about this allegorical movie about dogs who go to war with the city of Budapest after it enacts a tax on mixed-breed canines. 1/23, 25 or 31 are your chances to check it out.
Sundance Film Festival official site.
NEW ON DVD:
La Belle Captive (1983): A man finds a beautiful woman lying bound in the road, takes her home, makes love to her, and sees visions of the paintings of René Magritte. The belated interest in the sadomasochistically surreal films of Alain Robbe-Grillet continues, with Olive taking the torch passed by Redemption Video. Buy La Belle Captive
Coherence (2013): Read our review. This “Twilight Zone”-y story about a comet that metaphysically disrupts a dinner party isn’t the weirdest out there, but it was one of last year’s very best ultra-low-budget sci-fi features. Buy Coherence
Lucy (2014): Read our review. Luc Besson‘s dopey sci-fantasy about Scarlett Johansson using 100% of her brain was inexplicably popular; at least the visuals are trippy. Buy Lucy
My Winnipeg (2007): Guy Maddin‘s fantastical, surreal documentary about his hometown of Winnipeg. Maddin and the Criterion Collection are a match made in movie heaven. Buy My Winnipeg
Winter in the Blood (2013): An alcoholic Native American wakes up in a ditch, then returns to his home on a Montana reservation to discover his wife has left him, taking his beloved rifle with her. A modern vision quest with surreal elements. Buy Winter in the Blood
Zero Theorem (2013): Read James Harben’s review. Terry Gilliam‘s latest didn’t make mucho weird waves, but it’s always good to watch the master at work. Buy The Zero Theorem
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
La Belle Captive (1983): See description in DVD above. Buy La Belle Captive [Blu-ray]
Lucy (2014): See description in DVD above. This is a DVD/Blu-ray combo pack. Buy Lucy [Blu-ray/DVD]
My Winnipeg (2007): See description in DVD above. Buy My Winnipeg [Blu-ray]
Zero Theorem (2013): See description in DVD above. Buy The Zero Theorem [Blu-ray]
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.
ATTACK OF THE MORONBOTS!
Dear readers, in the past week we have been under intermittent attack by an idiot botnet trying to brute-force admin passwords so it can insert spam links that would take us a few hours to clean up. There were over 15,000 login attempts over night!
The situation is as if I had a car with two separate keys (username and password), one for the door and one for the ignition. The botnet is like a car thief with a massive keyring of thousands of keys (password guesses). He tries out each key hoping it will magically work. If by some miracle he finds the right key (username) to open the door, then he would need to go through the whole thing again to get the car to drive (by guessing the password). Then, I would recover the car a few hours later with LoJack anyway.
Unfortunately, despite having no chance of success, this moronic behavior taxes our server resources. Therefore we’ve taken some extra security steps to try to keep the scripts from ever reaching the login page in the first place.
The TLDR point of all this is that if you find the site behaving oddly (especially in regards to logging in or commenting) due to the defensive maneuvers we’ve been forced to take, we’d appreciate it if you’d contact us and let us know.
Thanks brave readers!
TIM BURTON’S BIG EYES (2014)
Big Eyes (2015) is probably Tim Burton‘s most satisfactory film since Ed Wood (1994). Alas, that is a minuscule compliment. Burton began as a refreshing original working within a tinseled industry, but formulaic demands soon rendered his later work imitative and an example of style over substance.
Burton was once the hip auteur for the perennial college and goth crowds. Now, he is the butt of their humor: a cautionary warning of a sell-out losing all originality and vitality.
He went the distance in proving the cynical naysayers correct, reaching his nadir with Alice in Wonderland (2010), which jettisoned authentic Carrollesque surrealism in favor of populist fluff and a cringe-inducing slice of Johnny Depp ham.
In vain, one hoped Burton had nowhere to go but up, but he only continued his slide, proving nostalgia is fleeting with an ill-advised and execrable update of Dark Shadows (2012). He followed this with a pointless, self-plagiarized feature, Frankenweenie (2012), which predictably worked better in its original version as a compact short.
Burton is certainly not immune to critical fallout. Of course, it has hardly affected his box office standing, but popularity with aesthetically illiterate masses is only salt to the wound.
With Big Eyes, Burton belatedly responds to critics by playing the narcissistic victim, projecting himself onto the figure of artist Margaret Keane. In doing so, he damn near kills the film, but, surprisingly, his opus (barely) survives him.
Burton’s epic misstep is in subduedly addressing Keane’s art as kitsch. It is kitsch. There is nothing original about her mass-produced art for the Walmart home spread. Her illustrations are a kind of synthetic parody of Modigliani. Yet, Burton is a Keane fan, and fan is short for fanatic. Naturally, he takes the fanboy approach in identifying with his object of adulation. Undoubtedly, Burton can find affinity in Keane’s strategical marketing to a bourgeoise public.
In pedestaling Margaret Keane’s gimmicky, one-note cartoons, Burton casts the art critics and gallery dealers as two-dimensional, jealous predators. It’s the equivalent of a cinematic exclamation point, or a big bang at the end of a pedestrian symphony. The homogenous Tim Burton/Margaret Keane hybrid becomes a much put-upon martyr. Cue big, puppy-eyed closeup. It is the kind of manipulative choice that Spielberg used to be so goddamned guilty of.
Big Eyes would have been a far better film had Burton made a smarter choice by avoiding the topic altogether, or in taking either an objective or idiosyncratic approach (as he did in Ed Wood). In many ways, Big Eyes serves as little sister to Ed Wood, but in that earlier film, a younger, fresher director did not succumb to tomfoolery. Continue reading TIM BURTON’S BIG EYES (2014)
189. THE RULING CLASS (1972)
“The Ruling Class is a rather… unusual film.”–original trailer to The Ruling Class
DIRECTED BY: Peter Medak
FEATURING: Peter O’Toole, William Mervyn, Carolyn Seymour, Arthur Lowe, Coral Brown, Alistair Sim, James Villiers
PLOT: The 13th Earl of Gurney dies, leaving Jack, a madman who believes he is God, as his direct heir to inherit his seat in the House of Lords. His relatives scheme to trick Jack into marriage so that he will produce an heir to carry the Gurney line, and then seek to have him declared incompetent and have him committed. Unexpectedly, however, his psychiatrist’s drastic treatment cures Jack, and now that he no longer believes himself to be God, his disposition is not nearly as gentle.
BACKGROUND:
- Peter Barnes adapted the script from his own play. (The play is till occasionally performed; at the time of this writing, James McAvoy was starring in a performance at Trafalgar Studios). Peter O’Toole bought the rights from Barnes, and director Medak convinced O’Toole to exercise his option after a night of hard drinking (naturally).
- O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar for his performance here, losing to Marlon Brando in The Godfather.
- The original U.S.theatrical release omitted Carolyn Seymour’s striptease scene so that the film could be released with a PG rating.
- The Ruling Class‘ VHS release was cut by 13 minutes so that it would fit on a single tape. Some TV broadcasts used the same shortened version.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Some would say it’s Peter O’Toole as J.C. taking a flying leap off his cross on his wedding day, an image the director liked so much he highlighted it in a freeze frame. We prefer the penultimate hallucination, where the House of Lords is seen as a gallery of cheering corpses and clapping skeletons draped in cobwebs.
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Peter O’Toole’s literally insane performance (“bless the pygmy hippos!”), accompanied by frequent hallucinations and left-field musical numbers, turn this literate upper-crust satire from a pointed class parable into something eccentric enough to deserve the designation “weird.”
Original trailer for The Ruling Class
COMMENTS: Although only making it onto film in 1972, the Continue reading 189. THE RULING CLASS (1972)