5 Weird New Movies That Deserve Way More Hype
The average movie marketing budget can now run studios anywhere from one half to four freaking times what they spent on the new , officially redefining the "indie" market as any film that doesn't cost as much as an island fortress. So, since we recently introduced you to the most insane upcoming superhero movie possible in this or any other reality, we thought it might be fun to help make way for five other films that are just as crazy as anything Hollywood could dream up, but lack the marketing moola to get a McDonald's tie-in.
The Death of Superman Lives: A Documentary About the Most Hilarious Cinematic Near-Miss
The '90s were a special time when our future Iron Man was seen as a drug-addled criminal and Batman Forever was what passed for an acceptable comic book adaptation. This was also the era in which the most hilariously disastrous film that never was brewed silently beneath Hollywood's surface like a questionable fart: Tim Burton/Nicolas Cage's Superman Lives.
You know. This thing:
"No, Tim. You don't get to avert your eyes. Look. Look at what you've done."
When we told you about this movie a few years back, all we had to go on was one photo of Cage in the suit and some plot details from a clearly traumatized Kevin Smith, who wrote one version of the script. This wasn't enough for filmmaker Jon Schnepp, so he created a full-length documentary recounting the entire $190 million debacle called The Death of Superman Lives, which features interviews with Smith, Burton, Cage, and other people who were aboard this cinematic Hindenburg before it went down in flames. Not only that, but he also scored some concept art, special effect tests, and footage from the original film's production. Behold Nic Cage flying in the trailer:
"Able to leap a producer's coke party in a single bound!"
And holy shit there's more where that came from. Other highlights include: polar bear fights, a Kryptonian cyborg, and a giant mechanical spider attacking Lois Lane in a pit of webs. You can not only watch this thing in the near future, but actually help finish it by crowdfunding its post-production in exchange for action figures and shirts, along with getting to be (to some minor degree) a player in the ever-winding burlesque of hysteria that is Nicolas Cage's personal world.
While we're riding the weed-powered wave of insane Kevin Smith projects, anyone pining to watch a middle-aged Dante and Randal debate which Star Wars ship is the most sensible to carry kids in is about to be sorely disappointed to hear that the Clerks director has forgone his third installment to dump his marbles into three new stories, all of which sound nuts.
The first, which already has a trailer out, is called Tusk, and it will delight children and adults alike with the tale of a man bonding with a walrus -- as in, surgically bonding with a walrus. Human Centipede-style. Yeah, maybe this isn't for children after all.
This mustache alone isn't allowed within 50 yards of schools or playgrounds.
If you can't already tell, the Canada-set aquatic body horror about a transformation-obsessed madman was thought up while substantially pot-blasted. The movie features Justin Long playing the walrus-ed victim, Haley Joel Osment playing an adult, and Smith's teenage daughter, Harley Quinn, along with Johnny Depp's daughter, as convenience store workers -- the same workers who star in the second movie in Smith's all-Canada "True North Trilogy," Yoga Hosers. This one's about "yoga nuts must battle an ancient evil that rises from underground and threatens a planned party."
But the final installment in the trilogy takes the cake: Smith has succinctly labeled it as "Jaws, with a moose" ... which just so happens to be the single greatest combination of words in the history of mankind.
The title? Moose Jaws, obviously.
River of Fundament Is the Craziest Five-Hour-Long, Star-Studded, Sex-Filled Movie You'll Never See
Typically speaking, any hour-and-a-half film with modest star power and boob exposure should be a marginal hit no matter what the subject matter. For River of Fundament, director Matthew Barney simply took that solid formula and applied it threefold, creating a five-hour-long movie featuring Ellen Burstyn, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Debbie Harry, Dick Cavett, Salman Rushdie, Elaine Stritch, and Paul Giamatti as Egyptian pharaoh Ptah-Nem-Hotep. The story, according to the official synopsis, "follows the death and reincarnation of two principal characters who take the form of Norman Mailer and an anthropomorphic automobile." So far, it sounds like The Fountain meets Turbo Teen.
Here's the short, confusing, and breathtaking trailer, and here's a little plot detail they didn't see fit to warn you about there: This movie features the graphic depiction of a glass eye being popped inside of a pregnant woman's anus.
Although this part could be the glass eye's gritty origin story.
So why is it called River of Fundament? Because the protagonist is an Egyptian nobleman who has gained the ability to resurrect himself within his wife's womb, but only after wading a literal river of shit in the afterlife. The three-part story is also accompanied by previously filmed live performances in various U.S. cities, each involving different muscle cars from various eras. The first (slightly NSFW) performance, for example, was shot at an LA Chrysler dealership and featured a bunch of musicians and fire and nudity. If that makes sense to you, please seek medical help immediately, because you're having a stroke.
In fairness, this is all way more coherent than Transformers 4.
Be sure to keep up with the screening dates, lest you go the rest of your life sleeping soundly.
We're About to Get a Bunch of No-Bullshit Virtual Reality Movies
So far the Oculus Rift's reaching grasp into our future has halted at making us look super dumb while gaming and giving nerds kamikaze hand jobs from anime characters with robot vaginas ... which honestly is how most of us expected VR tech to go. After all, it's not like you could do anything worthwhile with the breakthrough ability to engulf yourself in a 360-degree fantasy world that doesn't involve shooting people or cartoon fucking.
Actually, hold on, because there's something at the end of the tunnel that kind of resembles light:
"You can actually feel your rage grow during the 'slow person in front of you on the moving walkway' scene."
Those are a couple of shots we clumsily grabbed while playing around with this interactive trailer to Zero Point, the first documentary that's not only about VR tech, but actually lets you pan around at your own leisure while you watch it. The film begins on an interactive Star Trek-style spaceship where each room brings you to a different story -- a prospect that's almost cool until you realize it's still just a documentary about a topic other than Nic Cage playing Superman. Why can't there be a killer war movie done this same way?
Oh, wait, good news: That's totally going to happen as well with the upcoming short film The Mission, a 10-minute World War II drama currently being shot with cameras designed to give you every angle of the action. Every. Single. Angle.
You can even leave the set and go visit the craft service table.
While we might not see this take over for Hollywood anytime soon, the prospect of Michael Bay going balls-out in an omnidirectional capacity is actually kind of neat. It'll be like we're inside the racism!
Harbinger Down Will Make You Love '80s Monster Movies Again
Nobody wanted to see The Thing get a prequel, but when it promised to feature practical monster effects in an homage to the spirit of the '80s version, it seemed like there might be hope after all ... right until the filmmakers went ahead and replaced all the effects with CGI because, and we are quoting, it looked too much like "an '80s movie."
Yeah, that's way better.
So after taking out the only unique part of the film, The Thing prequel sank into oblivion while Amalgamated Dynamics (the company in charge of the practical effects) were left dicks in hand to see all their hard work go to waste. Their solution? Start a Kickstarter and make their own goddamn film, thus birthing Harbinger Down -- a monster romp about grad students using a fishing trawler to surface downed Soviet space wreckage that ends up housing an unspeakable being from beyond. In other words, it's The Thing ... but on a boat. And with weird tentacle thingies.
"We've doubled our budget by renting these to Japanese porn studios on weekends."
Also, it stars Lance "I was in The Terminator and Aliens, motherfucker" Henriksen to boot, making this the full-capacity nostalgia party everyone was lining up for back in 2011, especially since the entire Kickstarter was founded on the promise of an absolutely CGI-free look at the monster genre with a "no rugs pulled" guarantee.
So it comes down to this: Are you one of the people out there who hates seeing CGI ruin horror movies, or wishes the industry rewarded creativity instead of, you know, the thing that's not creativity? Good for you ... now watch the trailer, stop bitching, and start throwing money.
For a wee bit more expensive film we're also excited about, check out 4 Signs 'Mad Max 4' Is Probably the Craziest Movie Ever Made. And read How One Terrible Movie Ruined Hollywood for a rundown on how Waterworld screwed it up for everybody.
