Welcome back to This Week In Discs! As always, if you see something you like, click on the image to buy it. Wake in Fright John Grant (Gary Bond) is a civilized man doing a stint as a schoolteacher in the Australian outback, but trouble arises when he tries to head home to Sydney and never quite makes it. His layover in a small, forgotten town leads to new friends and a night or two (or three) of drunken debauchery, gambling and animal cruelty. This lost then found again classic of Australian cinema is a dread-filled descent into a sun-baked and alcohol-fueled hell. Bond does a fine and frightening job moving from responsible man to lost soul, but it’s Donald Pleasance who stands out as a disreputable doctor with one foot in the crazy house. Director Ted Kotcheff captures deranged desolation to perfection and marks ’70s Australia one of the most terrifying places on earth. That said, the kangaroo hunt is barbaric and painful to watch (or even to fast-forward through). Also available on DVD. [Extras: Commentary, featurettes, obituary, trailers, 28-page booklet]

Branded is about a cow-shaped constellation that appears to fire lightning bolts onto a marketing expert, who subsequently participates in a corporate branding war in which giant gelatinous balloon-like demon creatures fight each other for global domination. Oh, and you can only see the demons after slaughtering a red cow. Or at least that’s what I think the movie’s about; sorta, maybe. If you need to go back and re-read that monumentally first confusing sentence at least five times, if not ten, don’t fret: You’ve just replicated the experience of sitting through one of the most inexplicable films ever made. Arriving in theaters without press screenings, or advance press of any kind really, this sci-fi piece/faux-infomercial/nonsensical glop inspires a lot of questions. The most pressing: What poor SOB did co-writers/directors Jamie Bradshaw and Alexander Doulerain dupe into funding this?

According to Anne Thompson, Roadside Attractions picked up Jamie Bradshaw‘s sci-fi thriller Branded. The film is set in a future where corporate entities have created brands which make the entire population complacent, and one man fights against them to expose the truth. Hopefully the product placement will be as hilarious as it is ironic. “The most powerful weapon on earth today is not a gun or a disease, nor is it even visible to many,” says Bradshaw. “It is Marketing.  Marketing is the power to control your desires and change your mind, and if you look closer there is something about it that is not of this earth.” It stars Ed Stoppard (Brideshead Revisited), Leelee Sobieski and Jeffrey Tambor. It sounds like a fantastic, timely concept, and for the life of me I can’t figure it out, but I really want to eat a Doritos-shell Taco Bell taco right now. Maybe this finally make people realize what a sharp, satirical masterwork Josie and the Pussycats really was. Pink is the new cross-platform pass-along rate. Or something. Also, it’s important to note that this project has nothing to with the television show Branded (which was featured in The Big Lebowski). Regardless of all that nonsense, the movie should be headed to theaters this September.