Captain Millipede, voiced by Tom Waits, tells of his last excursion to harvest milk from the moon 3.7 billion years ago when it was close enough to be reached with a ladder.
Tag Archives: Claymation
1*. THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001)
Katakuri-ke no kôfuku
DIRECTED BY: Takashi Miike
FEATURING: Kenji Sawada, Keiko Matsuzaka, Shinji Takeda, Naomi Nishida, Tetsurô Tanba
PLOT: The Katakuri clan retires to a remote mountain area to run a bed and breakfast, but the place seems cursed, as every guest who stays there dies. The Katakuris try to cover up the deaths to avoid bad publicity, while frequently bursting into song and dance numbers.
BACKGROUND:
- The Happiness of the Katakuris is actually a remake (some say a “very loose” remake) of a Jee-woon Kim’s (non-musical) Korean black comedy The Quiet Family.
- Miike made Katakuris the same year as Visitor Q, an even blacker comedy which also deals with the theme of a “happy” Japanese family. Katakuris and Q were two of a remarkable eight movies the prolific auteur released in 2001.
- The Happiness of the Katakuris received the highest number of total votes in 366 Weird Movies first Apocryphally Weird movie poll, making it arguably the most popular weird movie left off the 366 Weird Movies canon.
INDELIBLE IMAGE: We’ll have to go with that little claymation yōkai/imp that pops out of a random diner’s soup and falls in love with her heart-shaped uvula—with bizarrely comic results.
TWO WEIRD THINGS: Claymation infatuation; reanimated corpse song and dance
WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The Katakuri clan came about as close to making the List of the 366 Weirdest Movies Ever Made as possible; we held off honoring them partly because their movie, while weird indeed, was overlong and uneven, and partly because Takashi Miike was already well-represented with three Canonically Weird movies, and it was time to give someone else a shot. The movie’s inclusion on the secondary list of Apocrypha titles was assured, and it’s a highly appropriate choice for the inaugural title in our runners-up category.
Short clip from The Happiness of the Katakuris
COMMENTS: The Happiness of the Katakuris begins with a four-minute scene, which really has nothing to do with the rest of the Continue reading 1*. THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS (2001)
SATURDAY SHORT: NOCTURNE (2016)
Beasts of the forest gather at night to watch and participate in some high-stakes gambling.
SATURDAY SHORT: OH, MR. PRESIDENT (2014)
Kennedy the dog doesn’t greet his owner after her morning shower, and for a reason.
SATURDAY SHORT: OPERATOR (2013)
Hard at work at his robotic job, Bob comes into contact with a bio-mechanical parasite. He can’t let it slow him down, either, or he’ll be officially cited.
CONTENT WARNING: This short contains violence and disturbing imagery.
This is the first episode of an ongoing series. The second episode was successfully funded on Kickstarter in February of last year, and was just recently uploaded to Vimeo. It includes a stronger combination of strong violence, sexual content, and language. You may view the short here. Funding for the third episode will likely begin in the near future.