With Halloween coming up, we made a point to pick out something especially eerie. In this short, two inseparable chimney sweepers are injected into a man’s brain, and make war with his memories.
CONTENT WARNING: This short contains brief animated gore.
WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 10/28/2011
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):
The Rum Diary (2011): Bruce Robinson‘s adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel about the boozy adventures of hard-drinking expatriate journalists in Puerto Rico in the 1960s. We’re not expecting it to be anywhere near as hallucinatory as Fear and Loathing, but there is a wealth of talent involved and Johnny Depp looks like he will be doing his spot-on Thompson impression all over again. The Rum Diary official site.
NEW ON DVD:
Island of Lost Souls (1932): A classic early horror talkie based on H.G. Wells’ novella “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” the story involves a mad doctor who is bringing human intelligence (and bipedalism) to animals on a deserted island. Charles Laughton stars as the deranged Moreau and Bela Lugosi has one of his better roles as the bestial “Sayer of the Law.” An unusual but very welcome Halloween choice by the Criterion Collection. Buy Island of Lost Souls (Criterion Collection)
Nine Nation Animation (2010): Nine short films (with a tenth “bonus” short), with each selection coming from a different country. As the trailer illustrates, there are surrealistic images in a good number of these—dig the vacationing family posing in front of the functioning Panzer tank on family vacation and the strange birds being dragged into the sea by tentacles. Buy Nine Nation Animation
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010): Santa Claus is kidnapped and held for ransom, but the kidnappers didn’t reckon on his cadre of killer elves in this Finnish production that has “cult movie” written all over it. We missed this last holiday season, but this year we’re considering indulging our inner Scrooge with this humbug. Buy Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
A Serbian Film (2010): A down on his luck Serbian ex-porn star is lured back into the business with the promise of a big payday, but is not told what he will have to do to earn it. Many have suggested this is one of the most depraved movies ever made, with a finale that would make the Marquis de Sade cringe. WARNING: the commercially available version censors the key scenes (however, if you’re one of many who “enjoyed” the uncut version for free, you might consider sending a few dollars to the people who made the film). Buy A Serbian Film [cut]
Starlight & Superfish (2010): An atheist finds himself a ghost in his apartment, now occupied by an evangelical Christian woman; a glam rock band serves as his guide to the afterlife, singing clues to lessons he must learn to avoid an eternity of perdition. This comedy didn’t even play the usual festivals and thus flew well under our (and everyone else’s) radars, but the synopsis is intriguing. Buy Starlight & Superfish
NEW ON BLU-RAY:
Destroy All Monsters (1968): Ishiro Honda’s nutty kaiju romp, which sees Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and pals all go on plywood-city smashing sprees at the same time, is a tons of fun. This Tokyo Shock Blu-ray was so awaited by Japanese monster fans that it went out of stock within a few days of release . Buy Destroy All Monsters [Blu-ray]
Island of Lost Souls (1932): See description in DVD above. Buy Island of Lost Souls [The Criterion Collection Blu-ray]
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010): See description in DVD above. This package includes a DVD copy of the film as well. Buy Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (Blu-Ray + DVD)
A Serbian Film (2010): See description in DVD above. Buy A Serbian Film [Blu-ray]
FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIE OF THE WEEK ON YOUTUBE:
White Zombie (1932): Maybe it’s just us, but when Halloween rolls around, we like to go old school for our scares, and there’s little out there creakier than this Bela Lugosi outing featuring “real” (i.e. Haitian) zombies. Read our capsule review if you’re on the fence. Watch White Zombie 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.
M22: THE MOZART OPERAS AT SALZBURG (2006): LA FINTA GIARDINIERA
*This review is part of a series on the 2006 Salzburg Festival, in which the 22 filmed operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were diversely and, sometimes, radically staged by the most innovative directors working in opera today. The results provoked wildly mixed reactions and controversy, proving that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart remains a vital voice in the world of 21st century music.
La finta giardiniera (“The Pretend Garden Girl”) is an opera buffa from Mozart’s youth (written in 1777, when Mozart was all of 18, with a libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini). The jealous Il Count Belfiore has attacked and stabbed his mistress, La Marchioness Violante Onesti. Believing he has killed her, Belfiore flees. The frayed, but quite alive Violante disguises herself as one Sandrina and, with her servant, Roberto (who also takes a disguise, as Nardo), she sets out to find Belfiore. Nardo and Sandrina find employment as gardeners for Don Anchise, the Podesta (Governor) of Lagonero. The Podesta falls head over heels for his new gardener while Nardo falls for Serpetto, the housekeeper. The Podesta’s niece Arminda enters the story; she was was once the lover of Il Cavalier Ramiro, jilted him, and is now engaged to Count Belfiore. Sandrina eludes the Podesta’s constant advances; she’s further stressed when she discovers Belfiore’s engagement. Tension increases further when Ramiro appears at the estate. The characters are thrown into a whirlwind of confusion: Arminda’s engagement is called off when Belfiore is officially charged with the murder of Violante. Sandrina comes to her ex-lover’s rescue, revealing that she is Violante, alive and well. Initially, no one believes Sandrina, but Belfiore reasserts his love for Violante. Sandrina and Belfiore go mad in a cave, believing themselves to be gods, but their madness subsides after they fall asleep and reawaken in each other’s arms. Arminda decides to marry Ramiro after all, Nardo decides to marry Serpetto and the Podesta will remain single until he finds another Sandrina.
Now what is an artist to do with such a ludicrous plot? As he often did when tackling an absurd libretto, Mozart responded with inspired music. In the true Mozartean spirit, director Doris Dorrie has just as much fun with Giardiniera as when she bounced through her 2003 staging of Cosi fan Tutte (set in the psychedelic 60’s flower children era). Dorrie’s personality is stamped all over this charming production. Primary colors abound.
The opening fight between Belfiore (John Mark Ainsley from Zaide) and Violante (Alexandra Reinprecht) is performed as a ballet in the opera’s overture (and done true to period—traditionalists, do not get your hopes up). Dorrie and set designer Bernd Lepel replace the garden estate with a busy, 21st century superstore. A black leather clad Ramiro (mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose) looks like an extra from Road Warrior (1981), while the two leads are still adorned in powdered wigs, making for whimsical contrast. Veronique Gens’s Arminda could give Cruella de Ville competition and she delights in tormenting her poor Ramiro (Donose supplies meaty angst). Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) shows up ( I kid you not), chomps down on both Belfiore and Violante, thus generating their “madness’—which takes place in a spider’s den with an arachnid that’s about as animated as Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955). But, it’s all in good fun, even if a good thirty minutes of music has been excised, and if conductor Ivor Bolton and his orchestra don’t seem to have as much fun as Dorrie and company.
Dorrie wonderfully succeeds in elevating what could have been a lackluster event into a spirited Halloween-like Mozartean treat.
96. THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (2003)
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“I’m actually trying for something a little bit different this time. I’ve always used, as a safety net, dreamlike delirium, confusion among the characters. On this I don’t really have a safety net. It feels good to remove the safety net… I really need to tell a story the way my idols had to tell a story. Still, it will, perhaps, I hope, strike people as ‘different’ than most of the other pictures made today.”–Guy Maddin on The Saddest Music in the World
DIRECTED BY: Guy Maddin
FEATURING: Mark McKinney, Isabella Rossellini, Maria de Medeiros, Ross McMillan, David Fox
PLOT: During the Great Depression Lady Port-Huntley, a legless beer baroness from Winnipeg, organizes a contest to discover which nation produces the saddest music in the world, offering a $25,000 prize. Musicians from across the globe descend upon the city, including three members of a Canadian family: a father (representing Canada) and two brothers (one a Broadway producer representing America, the other an expatriate cello virtuoso playing for the honor of Serbia). It turns out that the family has a twisted history with each other, and with the contest organizer, involving amnesia, medical malpractice, broken hearts, betrayals, and beer.
BACKGROUND:
- The Saddest Music in the World was based on a screenplay by novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go), but was extensively rewritten by Guy Maddin and his writing partner George Toles (for one thing, the setting was moved from 1980s London to Canada in the Great Depression).
- With a budget of 3.5 million Canadian dollars, this was the largest budget Maddin had ever worked with. Unfortunately, the film made back less than $1 million at the box office.
- Maddin sent Rossellini copies of the “legless” performances of Lon Chaney in West of Zanzibar and The Penalty to watch in preparation for the role of Lady Port-Huntley.
- The Saddest Music in the World was the second Maddin feature released in a busy and amazing 2003; Cowards Bend the Knee (also Certified Weird) debuted at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January, while the relatively more mainstream Music was first shown in August at the Venice Film Festival.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: Isabella Rossellini’s bubbly new gams, which she proudly displays while dressed as Lady Liberty as dancing girls dressed as Eskimos lie on their backs kicking their heels in the air, all set to the heartbreaking strains of the melancholy ballad “California, Here We Come!”
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Guy Maddin’s promiscuous mix of retro-film techniques, including iris lenses and a primitive two-strip Technicolor process, that drops us into an artificial, alternate movie world that never really existed. These visuals illustrate a preposterous plot packed with the delightfully absurd coincidences that were the coin of early melodrama—everyone of importance in the movie has a dark, hidden history with everyone else—all interrupted by screwball one-liners and absurd Busby Berkeley-style production numbers. It’s as if random selection of melodramas and musicals made between 1915 and 1935 had been carelessly stacked on top of each other, and over the years the degenerating nitrate gradually melted into a single filmstrip.
Original trailer for The Saddest Music in the World
COMMENTS: The Saddest Music in the World is the strangest, and funniest, movie about Continue reading 96. THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (2003)
CAPSULE: ELENA (2011)
Heart of a Dog ((The title of a 1925 novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, a biting satire of the New Soviet man.))
The Russian Revolution of 1917 and Michail Bulgakov gave birth to a new biological species: the “dog-man” Sharikov ((The hero of “Heart of a Dog,” made by crossing a dog with a proletarian man)). The Internet revolution of the 21st century gave birth to the “Anonymous Man.” The Anonymous Man is a crafty creature who is almost as clever as a dog. The Anonymous Man has neither fortune, nor any features. Yet for all that, when herding together, Anonymous Men become omnipotent and invincible. In ancient times the Anonymous Men used to have another name: “the People.”
The Anonymous Men throng the Internet step by step. Then they crawl to the Tahrir and Manezhnaya Squares like zombies from a horror movie. Africa’s colonels are trembling in fear. The Persian Gulf’s sheiks are hiding out in corners. The faces of the former masters of Europe are painfully pummeled by statuettes.
In Russia, Alexey Navalny ((A Russian political and social activist who in recent years gained great prominence amongst Russian bloggers and mass media due to his social campaigning activity)) raises the Anonymous Men against the power of the “Thieves and Swindlers.” (( A humorous nickname for the ruling party in Russia led by Prime-Minister Putin.))
On the other hand, the fate of the present idols, the “people’s protectors”, is not much better. As soon as you raise your head a little above the crowd of Anonymous Men and become a bit wealthier, smarter or luckier, you are punished. You, Navalny, and you, Shevchuk ((Yuri Shevchuk is a Russian singer/songwriter who leads the rock band DDT. Shevchuk is highly critical of the undemocratic society that has developed in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.)): once you’ve struck a pose—get a whack! The anger of the Russian Anonymous Man finds its allegorical counterpart in left-wing and liberal cinema – the so-called Russian “New Wave”. Almost all important Russian movies of 2006-2010—Help Gone Mad, Wolfy, Wild Field, Yuri’s Day, School, Russia 88, The Revolution That Wasn’t and the quasi-national My Joy—look at reality from the little man’s position. (Ilya Demichev’s Kakraki is a rare exception). In Russia, a war between the power and the people, the aristocracy and the plebs, is looming.
And now, against the background of the egalitarian left-wing cinema, Andrei Zvyagintsev makes Elena, the most anti-populist film in 20 years. In the context of current political life, this picture may become the Elite’s banner in its war against the underprivileged of all sorts. We have seen nothing of the kind since Vladimir Bortko’s film adaptation of Heart of a Dog.
If we discard the metaphors, the plot of Elena can be vulgarly described as a battle between relatives for a posh apartment in the center of Moscow: a typical sort of topic for the popular TV show “Time of Court.” The “new aristocrats,” youngish pensioner Vladimir (Andrey Smirnov) and his heiress she-devil Katya (Yelena Lyadova), confront the “grassroots people.” The Continue reading CAPSULE: ELENA (2011)