Capsules

CAPSULE: PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1966)

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DIRECTED BY: Jirí Menzel, Jan Nemec, Evald Schorm, Vera Chytilová,

FEATURING: Pavla Marsálková, Milos Ctrnacty, Frantisek Havel, Josefa Pechlatová, Václav Zák, Vera Mrázkova, Vladimír Boudník, Alzbeta Lastovková, Dana Valtová, Ivan Vyskocil

PLOT: Short adaptations of five stories from Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal: racing enthusiasts

Still from Pearls of the Deep (1966)

are obsessed with crashes, two old men in a nursing home reminisce, functionaries try to sell insurance to a mad artist, the discovery of a corpse causes a restaurant to close, and a timid apprentice plumber falls for a fiery teenage Gypsy girl.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Only two of the five segments in this anthology are significantly bizarre, and a paltry 40% weird rate is not going to get your omnibus movie onto the List.

COMMENTS: The Czech New Wave was part of a fascinating period of creativity that resulted from an unprecedented liberalization of film and literature in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s; the movement brought the world the novels of Milan Kundera and the films of director Milos Forman. During this time writers and filmmakers often turned towards surrealism as a way to implicitly critique the absurdity of the totalitarian status quo while maintaining deniability about their political aims (after all, they were merely writing obscure nonsense fiction in the tradition pioneered by national icon Franz Kafka). The New Wave essentially ended in 1968 when, concerned that the rapid pace of democratization might lead Czechoslovakia to exit the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union invaded the country and installed a hard-line regime. Based on short stories by New Wave writer Bohumil Hrabal and featuring entries from five of the top directors of the New Wave, Pearls of the Deep is a sort of sampler of this moment in history when Iron Curtain artists briefly wiggled out of the shackles that had bound them to an ideological wall for decades.

In the wild, you have to open a lot of oysters to find a single pearl; something similar is true of feature length anthology of short films, where the entries have an inevitable tendency to average out. Although even Hrabal’s straightest stories contain small doses of absurdism (which show up in non sequitur dialogues or little narrative oddities), only two of these adaptations have conceits peculiar enough to form surrealistic pearls. Since our focus is on weird films, we’re going to briefly open and reject three out of these five New Wave oysters before looking more Continue reading CAPSULE: PEARLS OF THE DEEP (1966) →

Guest Reviews

GUEST REVIEW: DARK SHADOWS (2012)

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 is an actor, director, producer, and the owner of Liberty or Death productions.  He has directed several short horror films along with the feature To Haunt You, produced W the Movie, and previously provided us with a top 10 weird movies list.

Although I watch a lot of films, for various reasons I’m not huge on reviewing them. However, seeing as I’ve been a “Dark Shadows” fan for over 40 years and a Tim Burton fan since Pee Wee’s Big Adventure (1985), I thought perhaps his new epic deserved a paragraph or two from me. I saw it this past weekend on the Hamilton IMAX screen in what seemed liked a rather depopulated theater, but I’m not sure what their usual Sunday crowd is like–perhaps everyone else was taking their mom to dinner for Mother’s Day. At any rate. . .

I had followed the dribbling out of info and photos over the past year or so and had seen the infamous trailer that makes the film look like “Vampires Suck Part Deux”. As a disciple of the original series, none of this sat any better with me than I think it did for most fans. Once more we have Tim Burton going his own way without much regard for audience’s expectations or their affection for the originals (think especially Planet of the Apes or even more so his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the latter of which I still haven’t managed to make it all the way through.) I can understand not working toward expectations, but is it always necessary to tread on sacred ground with jackboots? This being said I will consider Dark Shadows from two different perspectives: as a remake of the original series, and as another entry in the auteur’s canon.

Still from Dark Shadows (2012)Many fans of the original series are going to hate this film. Hands down. Jonathan Frid’s beloved, beautiful, complex, tortured Barnabas Collins has been morphed into a typically Burtonesque, overly made-up, funny pages version of the character, ripe for rendering into dolls and action figures. Johnny Depp‘s pancake makeup is so thick and obvious he constantly makes the viewer think of someone made up as Dracula for Halloween (indeed, one wonders if this isn’t partly the idea–this is Tim and Johnny’s Continue reading GUEST REVIEW: DARK SHADOWS (2012) →

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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We were so fearful of Dark Shadows, Tim Burton‘s latest Gothic comedy, that we farmed out the review assignment to poor sucker—I mean, trusted industry professional— for comment. Meanwhile, our staff is staying away from Hollywood summer blockbusters and focusing our energy on weird world classics, starting with the 1966 Czech New Wave omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which includes a couple of surreal segments and a couple of entries by directors whose work should end up represented on the List. We’ll also dig into the reader-suggested review queue for Cemetery Man [AKA Dellamorte Dellamore], the world’s only arthouse surrealist Italian zombie gore movie, and maybe even bring you coverage of some surprise deep-catalog vintage exploitation films.

It wasn’t a banner week for weird search terms—summer blockbuster malaise must be infecting Google—but we always see something strange in our server logs to pass along to you. We’ll start with the quest for info about a “thai movie she as hot boob and was killing his king” (Google suggests this searcher might have meant “thai movie she is hot boob and was killing his king,” which is really not as helpful as the Googlebot thinks). There’s also the mind-boggling request for “www.empty libido in alex movies.com” (turns out that domain name is still available!) It’s not weird enough to win, but we just can’t pass up passing along this search we thought we’d never see: “mullets for preteen girls.” For our Weirdest Search Term of the Week award, we’re going to go with the elegantly simple, but still incomprehensible search for “plasticity her panties.”

Here’s how the ridiculously-long-and-ever-growing reader-suggested review queue stands: Dellamorte Dellamore [AKA Cemetery Man] (next week!); “My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117″; The Hour-glass Sanatorium [Saanatorium pod klepsidra] (out of print in Region 1, but we’ll keep looking); Liquid Sky (re-review); 3 Dev Adam; Fantastic Planet; “Twin Peaks” (TV series); Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 5/18/2012

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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):

American Animal (2011): Jimmy and James, two twenty-something trust-fund babies, live together in relative luxury, but unbalanced Jimmy becomes increasingly deranged when bookish James explains that he’s decided to grow up and get a job. Over and over, reviewers have used the word “bizarre” to describe it. We prematurely announced this was opening back in March, but this time we really mean it—for New Yorkers, at least. American Animal official site.

Beyond the Black Rainbow (2011): Surrealist sci-fi supposedly in the 2001 vein about a mute woman trying to escape from a mysterious enclave. Despite being handicapped by weirdness, Black Rainbow survived the film festival gauntlet to get an actual theatrical release; we are excited! Debuting this week in Los Angeles and New York City, with scattered showings across the central U.S. to follow. Beyond the Black Rainbow official site.

Elena (2011): Read our capsule review. Distributor Zeitgeist describes this dramatic battle over inheritance of a valuable apartment in Moscow is as a “modern twist on the classic noir thriller.” Playing sporadically across the U.S. over the early summer. Elena US distributor site.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Farewell to Language [Adieu au Langage]: What may possibly be 82-year old ‘s final movie is reportedly in production. It’s about a husband and wife who no longer speak the same language, and therefore must have their dog translate for them. Oh, and it goes without saying that it’s going to be in 3-D. We really hope this will get the bad taste of Film Socialisme out of our mouths before the Old Wave icon retires for good. Story courtesy of Movieline.

NEW ON DVD:

Being John Malkovich (1999): Read the Certified Weird entry! The Criterion Collection has finally begun stalking the List for new release candidates. Look for a deluxe treatment of Skidoo coming next month. Despite not receiving our finders’ fee, we’re thrilled with this choice. Several of the special features were ported over from the Universal release, but new material includes selected scene commentaries by , a behind-the-scenes mini-doc, and new interviews with director Spike Jonze and the man everyone wants to be, John Malkovich. Buy Being John Malkovich (Criterion Collection).

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Being John Malkovich (1999): See description in DVD above. Buy Being John Malkovich [The Criterion Collection Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009): Read our capsule review! This Terry Gilliam fable about an immortal carnival barker’s various bets with the Devil remains a candidate to make the List—this is a good chance for you to watch it and see what you think. Watch The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus free on YouTube.

What are you looking forward to? If you have any weird movie leads that we have overlooked, feel free to leave them in the COMMENTS section.

Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!