Tag Archives: 2023

Miscellanea

YOUR VOTE DETERMINES THE WINNER OF THE 14TH ANNUAL WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS

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(If you’d like to watch Gregory J. Smalley and Giles Edwards reveal this year’s nominees on YouTube first, click here. Otherwise, proceed with your reading.)

This year, Poor Things (and , Poor Things) mark the only overlap between the Weirdcademy Awards and Hollywood’s lipstick-on-a-pig hootenanny, the Most Conventional Movie Awards. Other than ‘ fantasy, weird movies got about as far with the Academy as they normally do: nothing at all. Even an Academy suck-up like can’t buy a single nomination for Asteroid City—not even a “Best Original Song” nod for the year’s best filmed hoedown, “Dear Alien, Who Art in Heaven.”

Instead, we get to choose between the usual brace of biopics, an estrogenic advertisement for a kids’ toy, ‘s attempt to remake Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles as a Nazi movie, and an indie comedy thatmade such an impression in the public consciousness that Bing is still calling it “Untitled Erasure adaptation.”

The Oscars are a joke, and everyone knows it. But you, my friend, you aren’t content with the same-old same-old. You want weird in your movies. The Weirdcademy Awards are for you, the moviegoer whose friends roll their eyes and sigh loudly when you suggest movie night should feature a black and white flick about alien bounty hunters who kidnap a corporate mogul who has developed an immortality serum with side effects that turn him into, uh, kind of a dick.

Although the editors of 366 Weird Movies select the nominees from the pool of available movies, the Awards themselves are a naked popularity contest, and do not necessarily reflect either the artistic merit or intrinsic weirdness of the films involved. The Weirdcademy Awards are tongue-in-cheek and for fun only. Ballot-stuffing is a frequent occurrence. Please, no wagering.

The Weirdcademy Awards are given to the Weirdest Movie, Actor, Actress and Scene of the previous year, as voted by the members of the Weirdcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Weirdness.

Who makes up the Weirdcademy? Membership is open to all readers of 366 Weird Movies. If you can figure out how to vote in the poll, you are qualified to join. You can not be turned down because of your age, sex, religious affiliation, pronouns, vaccination status, or the fact that you only watched the Superbowl to see what Taylor Swift was wearning. There is no requirement that you’ve have to actually see any of the movies listed before voting. You can vote for any or all categories.

You can only vote once—so choose carefully. We’ll keep voting open until March 9, so we can announce our results before the Academy Awards and steal their thunder.

We are using new poll software this year, which allows for a much cooler-looking ballot, but gives us less control of some aspects of the voting and which may have yet-unforeseen drawbacks. Please be patient.

Be sure to also vote for Weirdest Short Film of the Year. To watch all five nominees and to cast your vote, please click here.

Here is your ballot for the 2023 edition of the Weirdcademy Continue reading YOUR VOTE DETERMINES THE WINNER OF THE 14TH ANNUAL WEIRDCADEMY AWARDS →

Miscellanea, Shorts

VOTE FOR THE WEIRDEST SHORT FILM OF 2023

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It’s time for the 2023 edition of the Weirdcademy Awards, the premier (only) awards contest focused on weird films, chosen by weird film fans. That means shorts as well as features. We’ve collected all five nominees for 2023′s Weirdest Short of the Year together in one place, for ease of voting.  You can cast a vote for your favorite until March 9. Choose carefully, because you can only vote once. This year’s slate features hallucinogenic chicken nuggets, Thai commercials, modern dancers inside an eyeball room, Joe Biden and Donald Trump eating spaghetti, and the Soviet version of Principal Skinner.

You can watch all the nominees in full below before voting (shorts may contain strong language, substance abuse, and/or disgusting spaghetti):

“The Innocent Eyes” by

“Inside the Blind Iris” by

“Joe Biden and Trump Eating Spaghetti, but it’s an AI generated nightmare” by

“LA on Acid” by

“Steamed Hams but it was banned in the USSR” by

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Capsules

CAPSULE: OZMA (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Keith John Adams

FEATURING: Ferdy Roberts, Victoria Moseley, Jun Noh, Gemma Saunders, Alice Margaroli, voice of Éva Magyar

PLOT: An insomniac widower spends the night toting around an on-the-run telepathic jellyfish creature.

Still from Ozma (2023)

COMMENTS: Jeff attributes his only slightly startled reaction to finding telepathic jellyfish Ozma abandoned in his garden to having been “well rehearsed” to accept strangeness through a lifetime of dreaming. If this film had been merely about that telepathic blob with the blinking lights and nothing else, he would have needed less rehearsal. But Ozma is entirely built on dream logic. There’s the pair of squabbling pursuers disguised as cops who use vegetables as truncheons. A woman who illustrates the story of the journey of Cleopatra’s Needle from Alexandria to London through very crude cutout animation. Rifles whose bullets have effects far from what we expect. And that’s not to mention the tiny touches, like Jeff’s unusually large bed.

And there’s one more weird thing. When Jeff begins his opening narration, he’s lying in bed, complaining of insomnia. A walking bass line accompanies his fretting, soon joined by the complaints of a muted trombone. It’s an effective accompaniment, but more noteworthy is the fact that we can see the bassist and trombonist, apparently vamping right there in Jeff’s bedroom as he tosses and turns. Throughout the movie, musicians show up in the frame with the characters, never acknowledged. The use of musicians onscreen—playing nondiegetic accompaniment, yet visible, like materialized ghosts—is unique. It’s a simple idea, but I can’t recall any movie that uses this technique in exactly this way, and none that’s so dedicated to the concept. And it’s a great idea, because the sounds here are outstanding—ranging from multiple jazz combos to a tabla, a dulcimer, and even more exotic instruments like the Ethiopian krar (harp) and the Japanese shakuhachi (bamboo flute).

It’s all pleasantly eccentric, which is much of the appeal. Ozma does, however, also explore a serious topic: the widower’s pathological, insomnia-inducing grief, which has mellowed from traumatic sadness into a permanent personality feature. Jeff’s entire story, frequently told in voiceover, is addressed to his absent wife. His journey to take the telepathic jellyfish to its appointed rendezvous reflects his adoption of a healthier relationship to his memories. Ozma is modest in means—in its household props and London public street locations, in Ferdy Roberts’s calm portrayal of Jeff, in its reliance on monochrome —but ambitious in its ideas. Ozma is musical, original and inventive: it’s not just the same old tired story about an insomniac toting a telepathic jellyfish around London.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… a surreal mission… all at once city symphony, Egyptological noir, oneiric odyssey and heady tale of psychic healing,”–Anton Bitel, SciFiNow (festival screening)

Ozma [DVD]

Ozma [DVD]
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