MartinHafer Jan Svankmajer is certainly one of the strangest filmmakers in history....and I am not talking about strange but mega-strange...and often very creepy. This Czech filmmaker has been working on mostly stop-motion films for decades and the movies are almost impossible to describe....you just have to see them to believe the weirdness of Svankmajer's imagination! His version of "Alice in Wonderland" ("Alice", 1988) is about his most bizarre films. But tonight I finally got to see his "Greedy Guts" (also called "Little Otik") and certainly didn't disappoint when it comes to weirdness!"Greedy Guts" is unusual for Svankmajer in that it's mostly a live action film...with some stop-motion here and there. In this bizarre fairy tale- like story, a young couple want to have children but cannot. One day, the husband pulls up a tree stump and fashions it into a crude version of a child. While it obviously looks almost nothing like a child and he apparently intended it as a joke, his deranged wife believes it's her new baby and goes to amazing lengths to convince her neighbors she's pregnant. Ultimately, she pretends to go into labor and soon comes home from the hospital with this tree stump baby! But the couple hide the fact that it's a stump and pretend as if the child is real...and the neighbors are fooled.Now I know this sounds strange....but soon the film will go off the deep end in strangeness! Soon the woman begins to feed this 'baby' cabbage soup. However, the baby soon magically becomes a living creature...and it doesn't want soup...it wants meat! First, it eats a few pets...which is annoying enough. But then it eats a neighbor...and then another neighbor...and then another! But the foster parents of this abomination cannot bring themselves to kill the monster and so they keep it hidden in the basement. During this time, the little girl you've seen throughout the film finds Little Otik and befriends it...and begins bringing it food as well! What's next in this super-bizarro but well made film? Well, get the DVD from Netflix and find out for yourself. And, if you think of it, try "Alice" as well. I would like to say you won't be sorry...but you might! The films are not for normal folks but offer a twisted version of stop-motion that is hard to fathom until you see it for yourself!

johnnyboyz I think it'd be fairly safe to say that Jan Svankmajer's 2000 Czech film Little Otik will be unlike most things, indeed anything, that you've ever previously seen; the film a quite mad but gloriously creative, often blackly amusing and frankly rather scary piece blurring lines between realism and surrealism whilst taking on a great deal of social satire and keeping a wholly self-aware eye on proceedings. I rather like films grounded within realistic enough realms covering people whom happen to stumble upon an otherworldly presence; a presence that arrives with its own infrastructure and makeup before just being let loose amidst the people and their problems with which we spent the opening. Little Otik is one of these films. If one were permitted to use hindsight, one might compare it favourably to a recent Canadian film entitled Splice; a film about those we sensed could exist and were going through the motions in life which came with some very real, very personal problems – both projects ending up happening to have this somewhat beastly, rather monstrous creation of an uncanny nature just crash land into proceedings mixing things up and allowing such a presence to act as the catalyst for a greater extent of dramatic content.The film eventually comes to follow the misadventures to that of Alzbetka (Adamcová), a young teen-aged girl living with her mother and father but, crucially, without siblings, in a humble part of the Czech Republic amidst several other patrons in a tower block. Her presence is one of a supporting act initially, the acts and experiences of certain neighbours paving way for her greater involvement. Alzbetka's life is one of a carefree and somewhat boisterous nature; the charging down the narrow stone stairwell in the process of chasing a ball, even when it bounds out of the main entrance and into the road thus nearly leading to tragedy, alluding to an energetic and adventurous person; something that goes hand in hand with what is a distinct characteristic of curiosity - the reading of certain books on contraception another of her little hobbies but one of which is frowned upon by a father, whom looks more temperamental than he probably is.In the mean time, neighbouring married couple Karel (Hartl) and Božena Horák (Zilková) cannot conceive; Karel's job as a doctor seeing him come into contact on occasion with an array of pregnant women whom he must aid and treat forcing him into working with, on a professional level, what it is he cannot aid or work with on a personal level. He glances out of his office window, daytime hallucinations alluding to a greater extent of frustration bordering on mental illness when he 'observes' arrays of newborns being handed out as if an exchange at a market stall highlighting his perception of everybody else's apparent ease as to which to garner a child. The Horák's secluded retreat, merely a shack with a small garden away form the bustle of the town, acts as the locale in which an event straddling that line between what could be perceived as a miracle or a curse occurs; the uprooting of a rogue tree stump, and the mock caring for it as if it were a newborn, seeing Božena forcefully tear everything off of a table so as to make room to cater for it such is her desperation to play the mothering role. It's here the film leaps from its Czech working class foundations and into some other realm; this caring, against all odds, eventually giving way the damned chunk of wood coming alive and adopting human baby-like characteristics: the titular Otik. The situation at once calls to mind the likes of the famous Pinocchio fairy tale and, given the premise of the mother's maternity situation plus shack-like locale, the coming of Christ as this miracle birth unfolds.Despite the high concept, not for one second does director Svankmajer deviate from the giddiness of such a selling point, nor other necessary proceedings, and allow for the item overbearing all to act as the sole focal point. Such an action would render the film a freak show; rather, the integration of the concept to act as a band around which deeper studies of character frameworks; observations on morals and social commentary as well as the hybridising of genres are allowed to play out. Take, for instance, Michael Bay's 2007 science-fiction film Transformers; a piece which cannot get past the fact it has, at the core of it, machines capable of turning from an everyday piece of machinery into a large robot - as a result, becomes so overwhelmed by its U.S.P. or essential premise that it submits to the continual gratification of the idea leading onto a mess of character study and genre demands trailing miles behind.The film's morphing into this odd meshing of serial-killer sub-genre conventions as people in the block go missing blends well with the constant questions of ethics the parents ask themselves in relation to killing it; caring for it and keeping it a secret. Alzbetka's role as that of a supporting act is gradually manoeuvred, impressively, into a more recurrent character whose strand is at once an interesting tale of detection later playing more as a tragedy. With this, the film is peppered with a wry commentary on the Americanised, consumerism driven lifestyle that has seemingly infiltrated this, an apartment block acting as an epitomisation of Czech living, via a series of televised advertisements; advertisements speaking of products promising much which consist of shots dissolving into actual physical incarnations of the things malfunctioning in the home. Svankmajer's film, a body horror in which characters venture out to see a body horror movie and then come home criticising it, is a knotting of several codes and genres together to produce something at once gleefully original and impressively played.

Imdbidia A bizarre horror-comedy by Surrealist master Jan Svankmajer that adapts and reinterprets the folk story of Otesanek (aka Greedy Guts) for the big screen.Otesanek tells the story of the struggle of a childless couple, Bozena and Karel, to hide and control heir piece-of-wood son Otesanek -a freak of nature with an insatiable appetite that they brought to life- and to stop him behaving wildly.The film re-examines the myth of the primeval creation, in which the natural order is subverted and disrespected. The couple succumbs to an act of greedy love that produces, as a result, a greedy gluttonous carnivore despite the creature being a piece of wood.On the other hand, Svankmajer depicts with great insight the sins of parenthood in our modern world, in which children are spoiled rotten, to whom everything is allowed, any bad act excused, and nothing denied.The movie also depicts with great humor and realism the social dynamics of small groups in blocks of apartments and neighborhoods, paced by gossip, the power of appearances, the help and support neighbors give to each other, the enmities and tensions existing amongst them, the human types that populate them, etc.The role of food in this movie is also very interesting, as most human characters in the movie eat disgusting porridge-ish meals, despite them fancying meat, while Otesanek is the only one eating meat all the time! The Actors are all great and charming in their respective roles. Veronika Zilková plays with great conviction the non-easy to play barren wife Bozena, while Jan Hartl plays with sweetness her doubtful and confused husband Karel. Also terrific are the actors playing the good-hearted neighbors: Kristina Adamcová as the incisive rebel child Alzbetka -who is also the catalyst of the story-, Jaroslava Kretschmerová as Alzbetka's sensible Mother, Pavel Nový as Alzbetka's typical working-class male Father, and Dagmar Stríbrná as the patient caretaker.The stop-motion animation of Otesanek is delightfully awkward, especially when Otesanek is a baby, and the illustrations by Svankmajer's wife for the original tale in the book Alzbetka is reading are beautifully colorful and artistic. They are a contrast to the ugly-looking 70-80s colors and lighting with which Svankmejer shot the movie. Also delightful are the episodes involving the old spectacled neighbor and Alzbetka, which are really naughty.On the negative side, beyond the ugly film and colors used, the movie is too long and its pace too slow at times.A grotesque mesmerizing humorous adult tale with a great story, terrific performances, and very interesting themes. This is not a film for lazy watchers, though.

HumanoidOfFlesh Karl Horak and his wife Bozhena are unable to have a child;the man carves a stump of wood into something that resembles a baby,and little Otik comes to life.Bozhena loves it with all she has and they name Otik.But Otik's appetite grows and grows,it soon devouring the cat,the postman and neighbors.Only the neighbor's inquisitive daughter realizes that the Horak's have given birth to an Otesanek,a creature from fairytale that supposedly grew in size devouring everything around it."Little Otik" by Jan Svankmajer is a wickedly humorous film.Svankmajer's traditional obsession with rampant consumerism and folk tales is clearly visible.Veronika Zilkova gives an absolutely hilarious performance,treating the piece of wood as though it were a baby with steadfast certainty-bathing it,clipping its nails,changing its diapers,rubbing cream on its butt.A must-see for fans of surreal world of Jan Svankmajer.