June @366 Weird Movies: TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE, REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE, more!

[Rev. Powell]

Catching up with two weeks of reviews (hey, where was the outcry when I forgot to post these links the first week of June?)

DAISIES (1966): Certified Weird! "Made a year before and half a world away from San Francisco's Summer of Love, this proto-flower power film nonetheless captures the anarchic spirit of Sixties psychedelia; it's a relic from an alternate universe populated by sexy Czech hippy chicks with serious cases of the munchies."

SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (1978): "Add in dubious casting (the singers can't act, the actors can't sing, no one can dance except Billy Preston), garish art direction, many open shirts, tight pants, and the enormous hair of Barry Gibb, and of course some truly awful musical performances."-SW

CHILD BRIDE (1938): "...before the credits roll, you will know that you have truly entered a twilight zone from the gutter cinema of yesteryear."-AE

SHANTY TRAMP (1967): "Elmer Gantry with a dose of The Intruder on a 75 cent budget."-AE

TALE OF THE FLOATING WORLD (2001): Watch it on site! "Plenty of strangeness accompanies us in our journey though this dream of the Rising Sun: calligraphic characters turn into ants and crawls off the page during an eclipse, ashen nude zombies dance, and a samurai duel with flashing blades in a watercolor blur."

JEANNE DIELMAN, 23 QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (1975): "When I read critics rave about Jeanne Dielman, I sometimes feel like I'm scanning reviews from the Bizarro World Times, dispatches from an alternate universe where up is down and audiences are enthralled by watching women shop for buttons and cook meatloaf for hours on end."

CHRONOPOLIS (1982): "...one of the few silent stop-motion arthouse films synched with an electrical atmospheric soundtrack that has yet to take on a cult audience. "-MHC

[tracy]

I found this movie a sad and pitiful attempt to cash in on the Beatles....I couldn't stand it.

[Rev. Powell]

I found this movie a sad and pitiful attempt to cash in on the Beatles....I couldn't stand it.

The reviewer (Shane Wilson) thought it was terrible too, but in a so-bad-it's-good way. I haven't seen it yet so I won't take one side or the other.

[tracy]

I found this movie a sad and pitiful attempt to cash in on the Beatles....I couldn't stand it.

The reviewer (Shane Wilson) thought it was terrible too, but in a so-bad-it's-good way. I haven't seen it yet so I won't take one side or the other.

I understand....but as a huge Beatles fan I was past disappointed.

[Rev. Powell]

Summer blockbuster season is here! So we've been staying home and watching

UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929): Certified Weird! "...the undiluted essence of the pure unconscious spilled onto celluloid like vitreous humor."

3 DEV ADAM (1973): "The near-constant action, needlessly complicated criminal schemes, and hordes of disposable henchmen beaten up by a duo of stoic heroes is all lifted straight from the Shaw Brothers playbook, and this movie is about as much fun as a typical chop-socky product, with an extra dose of costumed ridiculousness to give it a particularly Turkish spice."

DAY OF THE NIGHTMARE/SCREAM OF THE BUTTERLY (1965): "Something Weird Video offers up two of the most obscure, absurd, sexually depraved white trash soapers in this 1965 double feature."-AE

CASTLE IN THE SKY (1986): "There's not too much in terms of weirdness here—keep an eye out for a gang of toughs incongruously dressed in white and pink leisure suits with yellow bow ties, and for Miyazaki's brief 2001 tribute when the youngsters fly through an electrical storm en route to the floating island in the hurricane's eye—but the magical vistas will evoke a childish wonder in all but the most jaded adults."

[Rev. Powell]

The usual strangeness...

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (2003): Certified Weird! "...the opening scene [is] a Fleischer Brothers pastiche in which a theater full of morbidly giant women and their meek, miniscule husbands watch a parade of famed caricatures—Django Reinhardt, Josephine Baker, Fred Astaire and his man-eating tap shoes—cross the stage to the tune of the title Triplets' unforgettable hit, 'Belleville Rendez-vous.'"-SW

REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (1973): "...starts out as one of the director's weirder and artier efforts, but just when the movie goes totally porno on you and you think you can write it off, Rollin whips out the vagina bat, and you're right back where you started."

CERTIFIED COPY (2010): "Kiarostami does not reveal what is real or unreal, and it is up to us to wade through the wandering dialogue and gorgeous cinematography to find our own truth."-AK

GLASS LIPS (2007): "Surreal, kaleidoscopic, and predominantly silent, Glass Lips feels like a series of interrelated shorts literally forming a 'motion picture.'"-AE