Miscellanea

WEIRD HORIZON FOR THE WEEK OF 7/29/2011

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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):

The Future (2011): Narrated by an injured cat awaiting adoption, there are strong elements of magical realism (e.g. a talking moon) in this speculative indie dramedy.  Congratulations are in order to Miranda July for getting this thing out of Sundance and into real theaters.  Opening at the IFC Center in Manhattan (with the director in attendance July 29 & 30), across the nation thereafter.  The Future official site.

Our Home: The Astral City [Nosso Lar] (2010): The most expensive Brazilian movie ever made is an afterlife fantasy about a celestial city where souls wait to be reincarnated.  It’s from a novel by a spiritualist medium, sports a score by Philip Glass, and seems like a weird choice for 20th Century Fox to distribute.  Our Home [Nosso Lar] official site.

NEW ON DVD:

American Grindhouse (2010)/Nightmares in Red, White and Blue (2009):  An interesting package of two clip-packed salacious cinema documentaries: Grindhouse addresses exploitation movies, while Nightmares covers the horror beat.  These compilation pictures—which cull the most outrageous segments for your viewing pleasure—are almost always more entertaining than the actual movies they profile. Buy American Grindhouse / Nightmares in Red, White & Blue: Double Feature (2-Disc Set).

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010):   Hollywoodized bastardization of the somewhat surreal comic that was also the basis for Dellamorte Dellamore [Cemetery Man]; it’s about a private eye who deals with the undead.  We get the feeling this is more of a wannabe blockbuster than a weird movie, but we mention it due to the tenuous Cemetery Man connection. Buy Dylan Dog.

Jackboots on Whitehall (2010): An alternate history comedy adventure in which the Nazis capture London by digging a tunnel under the English channel, told with puppets.  With the voices of Ewan McGregor as the hero, Alan Cumming as Hitler, and Richard “Riff Raff” O’Brien as Himmler, among others. Buy Jackboots on Whitehall.

Matrimony (2007):  A Chinese ghost story about a dead fiancee who resents her once-betrothed’s future marriage of convenience.  By all accounts its a subdued, dramatic, and slightly weird film, but the grisly DVD cover shows a man apparently putting a wedding band on a rotting, severed hand!  Buy Matrimony.

Park Benches [Bancs publics (Versailles rive droite)] (2009): A French comedy set in motion by sightings of a mysterious banner reading “Man Alone”: the film’s in three distinct sections, and the last (set in a shop called “Brico Dream”) is reportedly madcap surrealism.  The ad copy brags that there are almost 90 speaking roles (including one for Catherine Deneuve). Buy Park Benches.

The Puppet Monster Massacre (2010):  Truth in advertising in this direct-to-DVD spoof of/tribute to 1980s monster movies, with Nazis, puppet gore, and a character named “Raimi.”  The humor is said to verge on Meet the Feebles territory at times. Buy The Puppet Monster Massacre.

NEW ON BLU-RAY:

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010): See description in DVD above. Buy Dylan Dog [Blu-ray].

FREE (LEGITIMATE RELEASE) MOVIES ON YOUTUBE:

Nosferatu (1922):  The earliest adaptation of Dracula (unauthorized) still chills people to the bone, thanks to the unearthly presence of the unearthly Max Schreck as Count Orlock.  This is the silent movie to watch if you think you don’t like silent movies.  Be sure to turn the lights out.  Watch Nosferatu 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

THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965): EXISTENTIAL POTPOURRI

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Wojciech Has’ The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) is a filmmakers’ film. , Martin Scorsese, Luis Buñuel, David Lynch, and my associate are among its impassioned devotees.  Has’ film is also a cult favorite, no doubt helped by Jerry Garcia’s advocacy.  Superlative artistry and bold originality would be reason enough for its elevated aesthetic standing, but The Saragossa Manuscript also begs description.

The methodical, brooding, short-lived Zbigniew Cybulski (Ashes and Diamonds, 1958) heads a prodigious cast that remarkably fleshes out Count Jan Potocki’s 19th century, picaresque, magical realist novel.  After the discovery of the titular manuscript, The Unknown Soldier is transported in time and space joining Alfonso van Worden’s (Cybulski) on a phantasmagorical, anecdotal journey during the Napoleonic Wars.  Van Worden leads his uneasy party down a depraved path through the Spanish Mountains, temporarily settling at the infamous Sierra Morena.

Temptation comes in the form of incestuous, Wagnerian sisters who seduce the protagonist in the imaginative terrain.  Heresy is the sacrificial lamb, aflame in adroit eroticism. Van Worden’s journey commands relentless attention as Has masterfully weaves a Byzantine labyrinth of multi-layered tales which range from the epic to the intimate, from Gothic surrealism to frivolous exoticism. These vignettes are simultaneously romantic, satirical, parlous, buoyantly humorous, macabre, exotic, grandiose, enigmatic, heinous and sprinkled with erotic spirituality. Yet, the flow of the film is remarkably contained by Has’ surprisingly consistent, effervescent  handling of Potocki’s dizzying narrative.

Still from The Saragossa Manuscript (1965)Inquisitors, spectral gallows, Tunisian princesses, and Nubian slaves are part of van Worden’s trial as he finds himself, repeatedly, in the paradoxical Magic Flute-like roles of steadfast hero (Tamino) and wayward prodigal (Papageno), which results in a boundlessly expansive pilgrimage.  Clues to van Worden’s riddle lie in recurring, treacherous symbols of hanging carcasses and discarded maps.  Much like Moses in Arnold Schoenberg’s “Moses und Aron”, van Worden is impotent in expression, requiring his potential, charismatic savior Aron in the form of a second protagonist: Velasquez (Gustaw Holoubek).  Velasquez’s grasp of poetry and mathematics far surpasses that of van Worden, and his rescue of van Worden from the Grand Inquisitor is as much a symbol of sight and salvation from van Worden’s blind impotency in all things physical, psychological and spiritual.

The texture of The Saragossa Manuscript often resembles a Max Ernst canvas.  The production design by Jerzy Skarzynski fleshes out van Worden’s visionary desert-scape, which becomes increasingly alien in its milieu. Paradoxically, the main characters are impressively three dimensional, which is no easy feat in surrealism.

The Saragossa Manuscript integrates the eclectic tenets of Phenomenology, Imagism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Absurdism, to name but a few.  Rationalism is, to quote Heidegger, delightfully out the door, making for an incomparable, existential potpourri of idiosyncratic weirdness.
List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: BLACK MOON (1975)

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Black Moon has been promoted onto the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made. Comments on this post are closed; please visit Black Moon‘s official Certified Weird entry.

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Louis Malle

FEATURING: Cathryn Harrison, Therese Giehse, Alexandra Stewart,

PLOT: A 15-year old girl flees a shooting war between the sexes and ends up at a farm estate inhabited by a bedridden old woman, a brother and sister both (like her) named “Lily,” a gang of naked children who herd pigs and sheep, and a unicorn.

Still from Black Moon (1975)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST:   If we were making a list composed only of European-style arthouse surrealism, Black Moon would easily make the List.  Here at 366, Black Moon has to fight for its space not only with other Buñuel-based concoctions, but also with the mutant species of crazed B-movies, the maddest of midnight movies, and intentional and unintentional oddities of every stripe; the competition makes this (admittedly very weird) experimental art movie a more marginal choice.

COMMENTS:  Mercurial auteur Louis Malle (Au Revoir les Enfants) had dabbled in light absurdity with 1960’s Zazie dans le Metro, but audiences weren’t prepared for the sudden onslaught of full-on surrealism he unleashed in 1975 with Black Moon.  The movie concerns a young girl’s flight from an absurd world—where camo-clad men line up female prisoners of war and execute them, with gas mask-wearing ladies returning the favor to their male captives—into a totally irrational one.  With Malle behind the camera, we know that this will be a deliberate, quiet, beautifully-shot film.  Indeed, there are lots of long atmospheric shots and no dialogue at all for the first fifteen minutes, until Lily, the fleeing girl, finally comes upon the villa hidden deep in the woods and meets its insane inhabitants.  Her adventures are loosely inspired by that old weird warhorse, “Alice in Wonderland.”  There’s a pig /baby that may be an explicit reference to “Pig and Pepper,” and the characters Lily meets have the casually insulting demeanors of the denizens of Wonderland: the bedridden old lady says she looks “stupid… and she has no bosom, no bosom at all!’  In a Caroll-esque exchange, the unicorn accuses her of being “mean” for trampling some daisies (who, disturbingly, scream), while the myth is munching down on the selfsame flowers.  But don’t let the Alice references confuse you into supposing Malle’s film is a light absurdist comedy; although Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: BLACK MOON (1975) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: IMMORTAL (AD VITAM) (2004)

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366 Weird Movies may earn commissions from purchases made through product links.

DIRECTED BY: Enki Bilal

FEATURING: Linda Hardy, , Thomas M. Pollard (voice),

PLOT: The Egyptian god Horus shows up in a pyramid floating above Manhattan in 2095 and possesses the thawed body of a cryogenically frozen political prisoner to search for a blue haired woman.

Still from Immortal (Ad Vitam) (2004)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: It might make the List for the outrageous premise mixing Egyptian mythology and futurist fiction, for the bizarre mingling of live actors with CG characters, and for the confusing storyline which makes the entire film seem like it might be a pagan god’s bad dream after having eaten a tainted planet for a midnight snack.

COMMENTS: The visual ambition of Immortal sometimes surpasses its budget, but it’s always beautifully designed; take the vision of a blue haired pixie women balancing on a girder as she ambles through a cityscape of gray steel art deco skyscrapers.  Immortal‘s Manhattan is a wondrously vertical place of soaring buildings, flying cars, and floating billboards.  No matter how attractive the digital backdrops, though, the watcher is likely to be taken aback by the fact that almost everyone on the screen looks like an animated avatar from the “Final Fantasy” video game series.  You might expect to see computer generated figures portraying the aliens, mutants and ancient Egyptian gods that populate Immortal‘s world, but most of the major human players are completely animated, while the occasional disposable extra of no importance is played by a real live actor.  ‘s meddling doctor (with a hairdo made from melted black plastic) is no more important to the tale than a police inspector searching for what he believes to be a serial killer, but one is animated and the other isn’t; it’s disconcerting when they perform scenes opposite each other.  The limited emoting ability of computer-generated images makes them fairly creepy when they’re among their own kind; putting them next to real people highlights their uncanny plastic imperfections.  The seemingly arbitrary decision to animate Continue reading LIST CANDIDATE: IMMORTAL (AD VITAM) (2004) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: TROLLHUNTER [TROLLJEGEREN] (2010)

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DIRECTED BY: André Øvredal

FEATURING: Otto Jespersen, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Johanna Mørck, Tomas Alf Larsen, Urmila Berg-Domaas

PLOT: Three journalism students traipse about the Norwegian countryside following a

mysterious poacher, only to discover he is a government-funded troll hunter trying to contain an outbreak of monsters in the mountains.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Though a troll-themed found footage horror/comedy sounds like a novel concept, for the most part TrollHunter is a straightforward and predictable—and enjoyable—horror flick.

COMMENTS: Building slowly up to its fantastical pay-off and composed of edited footage purportedly sent anonymously to a news station, TrollHunter begins with Thomas (the reporter), Johanna (the sound woman), and Kalle (the rarely-seen camera operator) driving through the Norwegian mountains after suspected bear poacher Hans. There’s something fishy going on with this guy, as evidenced by his strange, solitary habits and tricked-out hunting truck, and they aim to find out exactly what’s up.  When they finally catch up with him, they learn firsthand that he’s an honest-to-goodness troll hunter, employed by the government to protect humans from troll attacks.  An entire troll subculture is explored and explained matter-of-factly; they’re like a typical woodland animal species, only ten times bigger and wholly improbable.  They’ve been breaking out of their contained areas and wreaking havoc lately, so it’s up to Hans and his new camera crew to determine the cause.

Hans’s gruff and fed-up line deliveries coupled with the students’—especially Thomas’s—befuddled reactions make for much of the film’s cheeky comedy, but they rarely elicit big laughs, keeping an understated atmosphere for most of the running time.  Of course, when the actual trolls come into play, action and thrills take precedence.  Director Øvredal makes good use of unseen monsters and intense sound effects, injecting the affair with fear of the unknown more than anything else.  The trolls are well CGI-ed, kept primarily in dark lighting; the effects showcase several different monster designs.  The shaky-cam vérité style can be taxing at points, but overall the first-person camerawork is incorporated effectively.

TrollHunter is the kind of genre mash-up that doesn’t lean to any one side.  Many will think it should be much funnier, or much scarier, or both. Personally, I appreciated its low-key approach.  The story and characters are interesting enough to keep the momentum going, and the gorgeous Scandinavian scenery and multiple gruesome troll bouts are entertaining to the eye.  Some of the specifically Norwegian references are likely lost on outside viewers, but this look into Norwegian folklore is never abstruse or alienating.  For the most part, it’s just fun!

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“With impressive technical credits, stunning fjord and forest locations and a winking ownership of its own absurdity, ‘Trollhunter’ manages to be at once spooky, satirical and endearing.” –Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune (contemporaneous)

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