Columns
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The Blue Velvet Project, #59
Second #2773, 46:13 There is a tendency, with the passage of time, to soften the edges. If Blue Velvet is remembered as notorious, it is notorious in a faintly wholesome, Frank Capra, nostalgic way. The danger of nostalgia is that it drains away the extremes, and leaves you with a comfortable—but inauthentic—middle ground. Blue Velvet earns its tender glow only because that glow has had its origins in the black evil furnace of Frank. The frame brings to mind Walton Ford’s painting Malmaison (2008), and the momentary gap it suggests between victim and prey. That gap, that space . . […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #58
Second #2726, 45:26 1. The danger of the close-up, bringing the viewer ever nearer to the rage of Frank’s face. It’s almost clinical: a portrait of a madman and of an actor playing a madman. Reaching out to part Dorothy’s robe, Frank’s hand occupies nearly as much screen space as his face. And almost half the screen is in darkness, as if leaking in from some extra dimension. 2. Sergei Eisenstein, in his 1944 essay “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today,” wrote: We know from whence the cinema appeared first as a world-wide phenomenon. We know the inseparable link between […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #57
Second #2679, 44:39 The full and furious roar of Frank. The camera has just completed a somehow menacing lateral tracking shot passing very close behind Dorothy’s back. Frank, having deeply inhaled from the mask (as if to prepare himself for the performance that he—Dennis Hopper, not Frank—is about to deliver) is now contorted with fury and sorrow. And something else: terror. Terror, perhaps, for something he has summoned. Poem #259, stanzas two and three, from The Dream Songs, by John Berryman, goes like this: When worst it got, you went away I charge you and we will wonder over this […]
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MEDIA CURRENT: YOUR TV FUTURE
Internet Video (IV) will play an increasingly important role in the distribution of independent “film.” Even for the few who still shoot, edit and distribute on 16mm or 35mm stock, your future – if only for marketing and promotion — is tied to the digital 1s and 0s that are redefining media and communications. IV distribution is restructuring release “windows” and revenue recoupment. Revenue opportunities through DVD sales are shrinking; the TV market (with the exception of HBO, PBS and some made-fors) is evaporating; international commitments are tougher to snag; and the once higher mark-up on educational sales is a thing […]
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The Microbudget Conversation: What Is Your End Goal?
As the editor of this column it is my job to choose the contributors, shape the voice, and move the column in a forward direction. The last post really struck up a good conversation, and it is now clear that my decision to move the blog in a new direction would be a welcome change. This does not mean, however, that we will stop talking with micro-budget filmmakers on timely topics and take the time to check in on their latest projects. Despite what some people feel, one of the functions of this column is to help contributing filmmakers get […]
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Lady Vengeance: Last Minute Gift Guide for Genre Buffs
Still not sure what to get your comic-book-obsessed little brother? Forget to pick up something for mom that satisfies her cinematic blood lust? The following gifts are Lady Vengeance approved, and most arrive just in time for December 25th. For the Low-Brow Art Lover: Crazy4Cult: Cult Movie Art (Gallery 1988/Kevin Smith, $25) The currently out-of-fashion but undeniably hard-working Kevin Smith has teamed up with the LA-based Gallery 1988 to collect the best in good, pulpy, sometimes downright dirty artwork inspired by cult films. The aesthetic style and subject matter is fairly diverse, meaning there’s something for everyone. […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #56
Second #56, 43:52 The implied violence before the explicit violence, as the patterns and objects of Dorothy’s apartment have settled into a merciless, strict formalism. The fact of Dorothy’s bare leg, the tenderness of her foot upon the carpeting, sets a machine in motion somewhere. In his monumental, multi-volume work Rising Up and Rising Down, William T. Vollmann explains his reasons for exploring violence in such calculus-like detail: “I wanted to find a base point beneath which we couldn’t go—the ‘floor’ of evil. I could then note that the fall would not be bottomless. I might hit it and die […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #55
Second #2585, 43:05 Frank has, as they say, arrived. And he is one suave motherfucker. Bourbon in hand, he commands the room. He is Sinatra minus the musical talent. He barks at Dorothy, as if he himself was the director of Blue Velvet: he orders her to light the set and arrange the props. Then he directs her in her performance, forcing her into a brutalizing form of Method acting. For Dorothy is clearly acting for Frank, in the same was that Isabella Rosselleni is acting for Lynch, and for us. Her apartment suddenly has been transformed—with the entrance of […]
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Sleepless Nights Stories — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Sleepless Nights Stories opens theatrically at the Anthology Film Archives on Thursday, December 15, 2011. Visit their website to learn more.) December can be perverse, especially in New York. Underneath the jingling bells, cinnamon, and pine, the promises and obligations to keep, there’s a pervasive anxiety about the dying light. Time flattens the remaining days like a steamroller as we frantically categorize our memories into lists of ten and wrap it all up in colored paper and ribbons. This can create a hectic, merry numbness that doesn’t subside until January’s hangover, when the cold is undeniable. Perhaps the timing is […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #54
Second #2538, 42:18 Frank has arrived, banging on the door. The fact that we anticipated his arrival makes it no less terrifying. Jeffrey—naked—has been shuttled into the closet, while Dorothy ditches the knife behind the radiator, in one of Blue Velvet’s many sly, tension-breaking references to Eraserhead. In Art and Fear, Paul Virilio reminds us that the coming of sound in film in the late 1920s effectively transformed silence into something alien, almost a special effect: Yet one crucial aspect of this mutation of the seventh art has been too long ignored and that is the arrival of the talkies. […]
