Brand Upon the Brain!

Winnipeg nutbag Guy Maddin's newest, Brand Upon the Brain!, is getting the deluxe treatment at NYC's Village East Cinemas this week. Not only is the director himself in attendance, but there's live orchestra, foley, and narration by a bunch of other famous weirdos including Lou Reed, Justin Bond and Crispin Glover. My screening was narrated by TV on the Radio lead singer Tunde Adbembe (who seemed pretty normal actually).

This all may seem like bells and whistles to distract the audience from a experimentally boring movie, but it's not the case. Though not as grand as his best-known film, The Saddest Music in the World (where current BUTB! narrator Isabella Rossellini played a double amputee walking on glass legs filled with beer), this new film grabs the audience with paternal claustrophobia, Universal monster/sci-fi images, and a healthy dose of psycho-sexual confusion.

The story begins with a young Guy Maddin and his sexually repressed teenage sister Sis stuck on their parents' island, where the family runs a lighthouse and a orphanage. Their mom watches their every move from the top of the lighthouse and their father conducts experiments in a lab (back to camera) all day. Their lives are disrupted by the sudden appearance of Wendy Hale, one half of the famous teen detective/harp playing Lightbulb Twins. Guy likes Wendy, Wendy likes Sis, then Wendy impersonates her brother Chance in order to get Sis, then Guy likes Chance (in a George Costanza/Dan Cortese kind of way). Oh, and their parents may be sucking the life force out of the orphans through holes in the back of their necks.

The whole experience is highly recommended (but pricey...$30/ticket). It only runs a few more days, so catch it if you can.

Also, it turns out that the lovely Katherine E. Scharhon who makes a cute boy and a cuter girl, lives in Brooklyn. If you see her, please give her my number.