Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie screens May 1 as part of the Friday Night Weird underground film showcase at the Dairy Arts Center. Courtesy: Zapruder Films / Telefilm Canada
What do time-traveling musicians, lonely gravediggers and ass-kicking Chinese bounty hunters have in common? You’ll find all of them on the big screen this month at Friday Night Weird, the underground film showcase that has been thrilling and chilling local audiences at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder for more than a decade.
For our regular round-up of what’s in store, we caught up with Shay Wescott, the nonprofit’s resident “Queen of the Weird,” to talk about all the cinematic strangeness coming to the Boedecker Theater in May.
For a taste of what to expect from the genre-scrambling buddy comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, we turn to the film’s official synopsis: “When their plan to book a show at the Rivoli goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008. Blah blah blah blah blah.”
There’s a lot happening in that blah blah blah — jaw-dropping public stunts, side-splitting jokes and more than a little bromance — but you won’t find spoilers here. Garnering comparisons to everything from Jackass to Back to the Future, this film adaptation of the cult-favorite Canadian web series from director Matt Johnson and co-star Jay McCarrol is unlike anything you’ve ever seen.
“This movie is so fun and so funny and so ambitious and so unbelievable,” Wescott says. “More than just the gags and reminders of the sometimes hilarious bad culture of 2008, it’s also a portal back into a time when the internet was full of infinite possibilities and creators were singular and random and weird and full of joy.”
When a lonely gravedigger’s love affair is cut short by her dream man’s death at sea, things get odd. Blinded by grief, the unnamed protagonist of Dead Lover (director Grace Glowicki) goes down a resurrection rabbit hole through a series of bonkers science experiments. Hailed as everything from “a striking meditation on identity, love and self-acceptance” (Variety) to “an affront to God” (A.V. Club), this grotesque offering from Glowicki takes body horror to new heights.
“I just love women being gross — and Dead Lover is about as gross as it gets,” Wescott says. “Visually, it’s somewhere between a stage play and an homage to James Whale’s campy sci-fi aesthetics with enough idiosyncrasies to feel wholly original. Dead Lover was technically the first of all the recent Frankenstein riffs, but more importantly it’s the most monstrous, depraved, romantic — and horniest.”
Flipping through the low-budget TV ads comprising the satirical comedy-horror Buffet Infinity, you’ll come across some familiar late-night fare: insurance, used car dealerships and the like. But what about religious fanatics, expanding sinkholes and an ever-growing restaurant that becomes sentient? You’ll find that too.
So it goes in the fictional locale of Westridge County, the backdrop of the uncanny new film from director Simon Glassman. Eschewing traditional narrative in favor of mock television commercials, this singular SCTV send-up is a Friday Night Weird offering you won’t soon forget.
“A cross between the Adult Swim masterpiece Too Many Cooks and the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, this film uses 30 second ad spots to do some serious world building in the most audacious way possible,” Wescott says. “If you like your humor underpinned by a sense of cosmic dread, Buffet Infinity is a dream-slash-nightmare come true.”
Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Hayao Miyazaki — some of cinema’s finest auteurs are making their best work in their 80s. Add to that list Chinese director Yuen Woo-ping, whose Blades of the Guardians is a bold martial arts epic from the action choreographer responsible for classics like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill.
Four generations of martial arts stars come together in this visual feast following a bounty hunter (Jing Wu) who discovers the man he’s been hired to protect (Sun Yizhou) is the empire’s most-wanted revolutionary — drawing unwanted attention on the long road to the city of Chang’an.
“Hong Kong action cinema owns the world of stunts, and has always been ahead of the game in having stunt choreographers serve in the dual role of director,” Wescott says. “One of those pioneers is Yuen Woo-ping who basically invented the martial arts comedy. And while his latest Blades of the Guardians is more of a melodrama, the non-stop, inventive action sequences are just as impressive as they were over almost 50 years ago.”
What’s a little witchcraft among girls? This horror-comedy romp from director Meredith Alloway takes viewers into an femme cult operating in the basement of a Dallas mall, where a high-end clothing store is a front for a coven of fruity witches named Apple, Cherry and Fig. But when new hire Pumpkin upends their order, things get nasty.
“I may be late to the party, but am elated to find out that Forbidden Fruits is part of a subgenre being dubbed ‘girl horror,’” Wescott says. “This refers to anything from Julia Ducournau’s Raw to Emerald Fennel’s Promising Young Woman. I will also personally offer up the incredibly uneven, but strangely loveable Lisa Frankenstein.”
“What I love about this is not just the celebration of female directors in horror, but the recognition that there are horror films being appreciated because they are unmistakably and shamelessly girly,” she continues. “The campy, deliciously mean dialogue, the impractical, distracting wardrobe, the impossibly on-the-nose character names, the set existing almost entirely in a mall — these are all features, not bugs.”
