Columns
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MEDIA CURRENT: IS NET NEUTRALITY DEAD?
Will net neutrality take effect on November 20th? Approximately sixty days ago, the FCC published its net neutrality rules in the Federal Register, thus setting in motion a formal review process that ends on the 20th. Adopted in December 2010, only now, nearly a year later, they will go into effect. Given the enormous pressure exerted by the communications trust, the rules have not only been significantly watered down, but face powerful challenges from the Congress and in the court. Under fierce pressure from corporate lobbyists and hefty payoffs to Congresspersons on various oversight committees, net neutrality will likely be […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #39
Second #1833, 30:33 1. Jeffrey: Can you drive this car? Sandy: Yeah, but . . . Jeffrey: Leave it in front of my house for me, okay? 2. In Haruki Murakami’s novel IQ84, a group of characters discuss the implications of an act they have committed: You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates around the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath. 3. One month after Blue Velvet’s U.S. release, another David’s movie was released, David […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #38
#1784, 29:46 In what is perhaps Haruki Murakami’s best, most neglected novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, the narrator recalls the effects of listening to a recording of a Liszt piano concerto: And the music itself was wonderful. At first it struck me as exaggerated, artificial, even incomprehensible. Little by little, though, with repeated listenings, a vague image formed in my mind—an image that had meaning. When I closed my eyes and concentrated, the music came to me as a series of whirlpools. One whirlpool would form, and out of it another would take shape. . . […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #37
Second #1739, 28:59 The lights on the stage, they illuminate Dorothy, whose talent in this frame to deny Jeffrey her gaze. She is Gilda transported from 1946 to 1986, the curtains behind her unanimated with the sort of predatory menace that the Production Code forbade Rita Hayworth from exploiting. Lynch must have recognized the power of restraint, of not showing, and so nearly the first one-third of Blue Velvet is as tame as an Andy Hardy movie. In this regard, the enduring power of Blue Velvet is that it meets a very specific need and desire: our desire for the […]
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MEDIA CURRENT: NEWS & ANALYSIS FOR INDIE MAKERS
Indie-Current is a monthly heads-up tracking developments effecting the indie film scene. It’s a big — and forever getting bigger – world out there, so readers are encouraged to e-mail me stories I’ve missed or something you believe is important for others in the indie community. I can be reached at drosennyc@verizon.net. * * * Occupy Wall Street rocks To shouts of “We Are the 99%,” the Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading throughout the country and the world. Indeed, the whole world is watching. FCC latest scam On October 27th the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a plan to reform the […]
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Lady Vengeance: Halloween Dream
While theaters all across America have been raiding the vault to bring us horror favorites throughout the month of October, there’s just nothing like catching something gory, bloody, spooky or flat out disgusting on Halloween night, sweating in your topical costume and getting sugar-high on candy corn. Here are my All Hallow’s Eve picks from a few special theaters around the country, and if you don’t happen to reside in one of the cities below, there is always Netflix and Amazon streaming, several options on demand, and a typically killer lineup on Turner Classic Movies, including Lady Vengeance favorite Village […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #36
Second #1692, 28:12 “Ladies and gentlemen, the Blue Lady. Miss Dorothy Vallens.” And so Dorothy is introduced by the Master of Ceremonies, played by Jean-Pierre Viale, in what appears to be his only movie role. As one hand touches the vintage suspension-mount microphone, and one hand beckons Dorothy, the frame captures the tipping point of the film, as darkness is about to spill into Sandy’s and Jeffrey’s world as Dorothy takes the stage. Those curtains, otherworldly in the way they echo the blue velvet curtains from the film’s opening credits, signify a range of electrified meanings, none of them happy. […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #35
Second #1645, 27:25 A slow dissolve, from Sandy’s house (she has just agreed to break her date with Mike and go to the Slow Club with Jeffrey) and the red neon sign of the Slow Club, in its elegant—but somehow slightly off-kilter–cursive. The dissolve, deriving from the pre-cinema technology of the magic lantern (there’s a nice example of a magic lantern dissolve about half-way down the webpage) to create transitions or to suggest time-lapsed effects, and isn’t there something magic in the very act of “dissolving” time? Two images: Sandy’s house, steady and unmoving, slowly overtaken by the Slow Club, […]
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Martha Marcy May Marlene — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Martha Marcy May Marlene earned Sean Durkin a Best Director award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, where it was picked up for distribution by Fox Searchlight. It opened theatrically on Friday, October 21, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. EDITOR’S NOTE: HTN co-founder Ted Hope is an executive producer on the film.) Looking at Elizabeth Olsen, you know exactly who she’s related to. It’s a trait that lends the actress both familiarity and strangeness—as though you know her but you don’t. It also makes her perfect for the title role in Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May […]
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The Blue Velvet Project, #34
Second #1598, 26:38 The open space surrounding the car. The feeling of freedom. The two car mirrors, one of them reflecting Jeffrey’s face. The pink barrette in Sandy’s hair, and the impossible beauty of the length of her arm. The light between the branches and leaves of the trees, and the way those trees fill most of the frame. The vanishing point near the middle of the screen, doubling back on us via the rear view mirror. Sandy and Jeffrey talk in a car, but not a moving car. The emergence of mechanical reproduction is accompanied by modernity’s increasing understanding […]
