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On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: Is That a Meat Cleaver in Your Pocket — or Are My Parents Just Happy to See Me?

“What were they before they were leftovers?” That’s the dramatic meat hook on which Bob Balaban hangs his giddily middling 1989 horror comedy “Parents,” a surrealist satire set in 1950s suburbia, best likened to a chunky jello mold filled with human toes. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t serve cannibalism cinema this underbaked to mixed company; let alone the hubby’s new boss and his one-scene-having wife. But for the IndieWire After Dark family during ’80s Week,...

Lionsgate UK have announced three more cult classics joining their Vestron Collector’s Series. Originally released by Vestron Video, these classic horror and sci-fi titles are restored and remastered on Blu-ray and packed with hours of special features – all three hit UK stores on February 25th 2019.

Class Of 1999 (1990)

The time is the future, and youth gang violence is so high that the areas around some schools have become “free fire zones” into which not even the police will venture. When Miles Langford (Malcolm McDowell), the principal of Kennedy High School, decides to take his school back from the gangs, robotics specialist Dr. Robert Forrest (Stacy Keach) provides “tactical education units”. Human-like androids have been programmed to teach and are supplied with weapons to handle discipline problems. These kids will get a lesson in staying alive!

Special Features: Audio commentary with producer/director Mark L. Lester ‘School Safety’ – interviews with director/producer Mark L.

For this final week of home entertainment releases in January, horror and sci-fi fans have a ton of cult classics to look forward to, including Poltergeist II and Poltergeist III from Scream Factory, and Lair of the White Worm and Parents from Lionsgate via their Vestron Video Collector’s Series.

Synapse Films is also keeping busy with a trio of releases this Tuesday—The Coffin Joe Trilogy Collection, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, and This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse—and for those of you missed it in theaters, Boo! A Madea Halloween comes home to both Blu-ray and DVD on January 31st as well.

Lair of the White Worm: Vestron Video Collector’s Series (Lionsgate, Blu-ray)

Bram Stoker’s last novel is the basis for this wild tale of a horrific beast and the evil forces it unleashes on the beautiful English countryside.

Vestron Video...

“You eat people!”

The Vestron cult classic horror title releases continue with Parents, coming to Blu-ray on January 31st with all new special features!

There’s a new name for terror when the Vestron Video Collector’s Series brings the family back together in Parents, coming to limited-edition Blu-ray on January 31from Lionsgate. In this black-comedy horror classic, a young boy in 1950s suburbia suspects his parents are cannibalistic murderers. The Parents Blu-ray includes all-new special features, including an audio commentary with director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef and interviews with screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne and actress Mary Beth Hurt. This limited-edition Parents Blu-ray will be available for the suggested retail price of $34.97.

Check out this excluive clip of Parents screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne on the Casting of Randy Quaid in Parents:

Blu-ray Special Features

· Audio Commentary with Director Bob Balaban and Producer Bonnie Palef

· Isolated Score Selections/Audio Interview...

“You eat people!”

The Vestron cult classic horror title releases continue with Parents, coming to Blu-ray on January 31st with all new special features!

There’s a new name for terror when the Vestron Video Collector’s Series brings the family back together in Parents, coming to limited-edition Blu-ray on January 31from Lionsgate. In this black-comedy horror classic, a young boy in 1950s suburbia suspects his parents are cannibalistic murderers. The Parents Blu-ray includes all-new special features, including an audio commentary with director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef and interviews with screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne and actress Mary Beth Hurt. This limited-edition Parents Blu-ray will be available for the suggested retail price of $34.97.

Meet the Laemles. Dad’s got a great job, mom has all the modern conveniences a happy homemaker could ask for, and ten-year-old Michael has great new friends and two parents who kill him with kindness. They...

“You eat people!”

The Vestron cult classic horror title releases continue with Parents, coming to Blu-ray on January 31st with all new special features!

There’s a new name for terror when the Vestron Video Collector’s Series brings the family back together in Parents, coming to limited-edition Blu-ray on January 31from Lionsgate. In this black-comedy horror classic, a young boy in 1950s suburbia suspects his parents are cannibalistic murderers. The Parents Blu-ray includes all-new special features, including an audio commentary with director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef and interviews with screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne and actress Mary Beth Hurt. This limited-edition Parents Blu-ray will be available for the suggested retail price of $34.97.

Meet the Laemles. Dad’s got a great job, mom has all the modern conveniences a happy homemaker could ask for, and ten-year-old Michael has great new friends and two parents who kill him with kindness. They...

Horror fans hungry for the seventh release in Lionsgate's Vestron Video Collector's Series will have their appetites sated in January with the limited edition Blu-ray release of 1989's suburban cannibal horror comedy, Parents.

Press Release: The Vestron cult classic horror title releases continue with Parents, coming to Blu-ray on January 31st with all new special features!

Street Date: 1/31/17

Blu-ray™ Srp: $34.97

Program Description

There’s a new name for terror when the Vestron Video Collector’s Series brings the family back together in Parents, coming to limited-edition Blu-ray on January 31 from Lionsgate. In this black-comedy horror classic, a young boy in 1950s suburbia suspects his parents are cannibalistic murderers. The Parents Blu-ray includes all-new special features, including an audio commentary with director Bob Balaban and producer Bonnie Palef and interviews with screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne and actress Mary Beth Hurt. This limited-edition Parents Blu-ray will be available for the suggested retail price...

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

The Criterion Collection will launch in the U.K., Variety reports:

Sphe will bring selected titles from Criterion’s extensive catalog and future new release slate to the U.K. for the first time. The first wave of films, featuring all the supplements from the U.S. editions along with their exclusive artwork and packaging, are “Grey Gardens,” “It Happened One Night,” Roman Polanski’s “Macbeth,” “Only Angels Have Wings,” “Speedy” and “Tootsie.”

Watch Bradford Young discuss shooting Denis Villeneuve‘s Story of Your Life:

David Bordwell looks at Tony Rayns‘ new book on In the Mood For Love:

In fewer than a hundred pages, many of...

After almost 200 years at an Eero Saarinen-designed location in the posh Mayfair neighborhood of London, American diplomats will be moving across the Thames to a new headquarters in 2017. And today, Philadelphia-based firm KieranTimberlake took home a hefty commission as its design was selected for the new U.S. Embassy. If you think it looks like a castle, you're right: The $1 billion Efte-covered cube even has a moat, which the architects hope will deter any unexpected guests. But the airy fin-like skin and a footprint that appears to almost hover--not to mention the garden notched out of an upper corner--make it feel friendly, transparent and green.

The Los Angeles Times' Christopher Hawthorne approves, noting that it "aspires to a different and broader set of values, primarily having to do with ecological responsibility and neighborliness within a tight urban fabric." KieranTimberlake's win is even more amazing when you see the short-list:...

What does architecture mean now? Like, right now? According to Arch Is_, a new award given by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects, architecture means bold, gravity-defying forms, experimental materials, and patterns and behaviors inspired by nature. Aia/La recently named two firms that master these concepts--Oyler Wu Collaborative and Emergent--as its 2010 Arch Is_ winners, effectively declaring them the two firms to watch in Los Angeles this year.

Oyler Wu Collaborative, headed by Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu, bend simple lines into jungle-gym quality configurations like the Materials & Applications installation Density Fields (top left), a massive cantilevered structure made from aluminum tubing and polypropeleyne rope. The same material found a home in another competition-winning idea: Live Wire (above) was a staircase-like element that joined two floors of the gallery at the Southern California Instititute of Architecture (Sci-Arc).

Oyler Wu's Tapei Tower uses stainless steel screens to...

The latest crop of Led facades works like an Hud for the planet.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it started in Austria: In 2003, the 930 fluorescent rings covering Kunsthaus Graz's blobby facade flickered to life and ushered in a new era of architecture-as-video-screen. As far as architectural symbologists were concerned, this was like the Second Coming.

Since then, we've seen dozens of flickering, flashing facades, but they've mostly been used for shock-and-awe art projects. Now there's a new wave of Led-equipped buildings that do more. Christopher Hawthorne in the La Times hints at this new trend in an essay last month where he basically says, 'Shut up with the Blade Runner references, already.'

The appearance of all these screens is not some harbinger of cultural decline. It doesn't signal the end of architecture or even, necessarily, a cheapening of it. What it does mean is that...

The Oz-like Burj Khalifa in Dubai officially opened today, succeeding Taipei 101 as the world's tallest building. There is no disputing its preposterous height: At 169 stories, or 2,717 feet, the $1.5 billion tower on the edge of Dubai's business district stands a little more than half a mile high, roughly twice the height of the late World Trade Center twin towers. But not everyone agrees that it qualifies as the tallest manmade structure. And suppose it does? Given how egregiously the Dubai boom has cratered, it's hard not to think of the building as a monument to the false economies of the 2000s.

Countries on the verge of economic ascendancy can be relied on to build the tallest structure in the world as an expression of their ambition. It was true of America when the Empire State Building topped out in 1931, as it was Kuala Lumpur in the late 1990s and Taiwan in the mid-2000s.

Michelle Kaufmann Designs, a path-breaking seller of modern, eco-friendly pre-fab homes, is folding due to the anemic housing market and the credit crisis at large.

Kaufmann's firm became synonymous with the contemporary pre-fab movement. On paper, it looked like a phenomenal business, offering boutique architects such as Kaufmann a chance to reach a wider market by exploiting economies of scale, while serving would-be modernistas without the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to commission a custom design. But it hasn't worked out that way--the market for modern pre-fabs never exploded as expected. Kaufmann, for her part, has just seen two major suppliers close in recent weeks, even as home buyers were unable to secure home loans in a roiling, uncertain mortgage market.

Though founded in the boom year of 2004, her firm only managed to complete 40 homes. It's not the first time that gravity has brought grand plans for democratic...