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The Blue Velvet Project, #83 (Part 2)
Second #3901, 65:01 (pt. 2) And so, for the first time in this project, two posts on the same frame. Why? Most of all, it’s because of the brown, paneled wall to Sandy’s left. A wall where you think a window ought to be. Why do you think this? What gives rise to the suspicion that a wall artificially covers (hides) a window? Probably because it’s linked to the first time Sandy and Jeffrey were together at Arlene’s (covered in post #25). Even though it’s possible that they are simply at a different booth, one framed by a wall and […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #83 (Part 1)
Second #3901, 65:01 1. Jeffrey: “I’m seeing something that was always hidden.” 2. J. G. Ballard, from Concrete Island, 1974: When he reached the embankment and searched for the message he had scrawled on the white flank of the caisson, he found that all the letters had been obliterated. 3. André Breton, from “Manifesto of Surrealism,” 1924: Under the pretense of civilization an progress, we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy . . . It was, apparently, by pure chance that a part of our mental world which […]
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The Forgiveness of Blood — A Hammer to Nail Review
(The Forgiveness of Blood is being distributed by Sundance Selects and comes to theaters on February 24, 2012. It world premiered at the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival. NOTE: This review was first posted at Hammer to Nail in conjunction with its screening at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.) The future of American independent filmmaking may not lie in America at all. In recent years, a number of filmmakers have turned their eyes away from the complexities of 21st century American life and toward the world beyond our national borders. The decision to engage another culture through filmmaking, to […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #82
Second #3854, 64:14 “I saw The Yellow Man come out and meet up with a well-dressed man carrying an alligator briefcase,” Jeffrey tells Sandy, as we see him snapping a picture with his rigged-up camera-in-a-shoebox, a strange, analog echo of the Lumière brothers’ early motion picture camera. The sequence is reminiscent of a similar one (also involving doubles) in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, when Kate’s (Angie Dickinson’s) son Peter (Keith Gordon) has suspicions about Dr. Elliott (Michael Caine) and concocts a camera set-up to photograph the entry to his office. The whole operation is so dead-on: the detective’s […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #81
Second #3807, 63:27 1. “Today,” Jeffrey tells Sandy at Arlene’s, as we see a flashback of what he’s describing, “I staked out Frank’s place with a camera. Now, there’s another man involved in all this. I call him The Yellow Man.” These shots, in the bright of day, are some of the most quietly beautiful in the film with their burnt-orange 1940s-era Allied Vans, as if Walker Evans photographs had switched to color. 2. In Derek Raymond’s novel The Devil’s Home On Leave, the nameless Detective Sergeant recalls a terrible dream: But in the night I dreamed that two figures […]
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Lady Vengeance: Trailer Happy, February 2012
Trailers have the ability to psyche us up, freak us out, turn us off, and lead us very, very astray, but the heightened anticipation (they don’t call them teasers for nothing) is part of the fun, regardless of how accurate a representation of the film that cleverly constructed little bugger ends up being in the end. Here’s a little commentary on a selection of recent genre trailers; let’s both judge a book by its cover and appraise the cover itself. THE SNOWTOWN MURDERS (Justin Kurzel, in theaters March 2nd) I always feel wary of trailers that start off […]
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Jess + Moss — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Jess + Moss world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. It opens theatrically at the reRun Gastropub in New York City on Friday, February 17, 2012. If you are not in NYC, don’t worry, as it is now available on VOD at the following outlets: YouTube, iTunes, Sundance Now, and Amazon. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) While there are many pressing existential questions, to my mind, this is one of the most significant: can one make a truly effective film about aimlessness and boredom without that film becoming excruciatingly aimless and boring in its own right? […]
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The Micro-Budget Conversation: Is Enough… Enough ?
When and how did Edward Burns become the mouthpiece of micro budget cinema? That’s a question I asked on Facebook after a late night holiday bender and noticing the ridiculous amount of press Ed got for making a film that certainly didn’t cost him 9K. Then I thought, who really does make a film for 9K? If you add up all the favors and salaries that are not getting paid you’re in the hundreds of thousands. Then I thought, oh man is there any such thing as micro-budget at all? Or is it like the myth of cover girl beauty. […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #80
Second #3760, 62:40 Jeffrey, having arrived later than expected to pick up Sandy after school, has just been spotted by Sandy’s boyfriend Mike, who is doing a variation of jumping jack exercises with the football team (in full uniform, including helmets) on a tennis court across the street in a scene that oddly predicts the “Do the Locomotion” scene in Inland Empire. We are back in the sunlight now, the deeply coded normalcy of high school, the girls in their long skirts recalling the teenage rebel movies of the 1950s. The frame captures no one looking at anyone. Dead gazes. […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #79
Second #3713, 61:53 Jeffrey, having followed Frank to a building, sneaks inside at night to confirm that it is, indeed, where Frank lives. The shot only lasts a few seconds, and serves as a bridge between what has just come before (Jeffrey’s cloaked, nighttime pursuit of Frank) and what will come after (the scene at Arlene’s Diner with Sandy as he recalls to her witnessing the actions of the Yellow Man, the Well-Dressed Man, and Frank). The frame is pure Expressionism as Jeffrey finds himself searching for Frank’s name on the mailboxes in a low-angle shot whose shadows and lines […]
