Second #5264, 87:44 This shot comes at the beginning of a montage that unfolds in this sequence: 1. Jeffrey on bed, from which the frame at second #5264 is taken: 11 seconds 2. flashback to Dorothy’s face, close-up, “hit me”: 2 seconds 3. back to Jeffrey on bed: 8 seconds 4. flashback to Jeffrey hitting Dorothy: 2 seconds 5. back to Jeffrey on bed, crying, camera dollying in: 8 seconds 6. implied flashback; close-up of Donny’s helicopter hat: 2 seconds 7. back to Jeffrey on bed, crying: 4 seconds 8. flashback to bedroom door in Ben’s apartment where Donny is […]
Second 5217, 86:57 I wondered when, or if, this would happen: a Blue Velvet frame that depicts nothing. This comes from the time-space between the beating that leaves Jeffrey unconscious and waking up the next morning in the dirt. For around six seconds between these scenes, the screen is filled with a close-up of a candle flame holding its own against a roar of wind, only to be extinguished, followed by a black screen, from which this frame is taken. Jeffrey’s mind going black. Blank. The black screen, haunted with psychopaths and monsters. Of all of Blue Velvet’s uncharted associations, […]
Second #5170, 86:12 In the spirit of the humor of the scene from which this frame is taken (and because it’s Friday) this is a post of a different stripe. Part of what constitutes Blue Velvet’s weird chemistry is its humor, the humor that lies at the end of despair and that arises out of a confrontation with the absurdity of evil. Frank is terrifying in this scene—having just wiped some lipstick from Jeffrey’s face with that talismanic swatch of blue velvet—but also oddly funny. He is a monster, but also pathetic, and the aura of theatrical performance he has […]
(The purpose of Milestone Films’ ‘Project Shirley’ is to re-introduce the best available prints of Shirley Clarke’s work to audiences across the world. The Connection opens in NYC at the IFC Center on Friday, May 4, 2012. Visit the Milestone website to learn more.) Usually when you watch a once-banned film decades after the fact, it leads to a deflated feeling that the film wasn’t ban-worthy at all, that it wasn’t ever close to being “dangerous.” But when one of those films is also widely deemed a classic by trusted sources? Well, that just about guarantees it’s going to land […]
Second #5076, #84:36 The car has stopped. Jeffrey and Frank and his gang are outside. Dorothy is going nuts inside the car, pleading for Frank not to hurt Jeffrey. Franks orders “In Dreams” to be played. One of the women from Ben’s apartment who’s come along for the ride, climbs on top of Frank’s black Charger and dances on the roof. In a few seconds, Frank will say to Jeffrey: Don’t be a good neighbor to her [Dorothy]. I’ll send you a love letter straight from my heart fucker! You know what a love letter is? It’s a bullet from […]
Second #5029, 83:49 “Now it’s dark,” Frank has said previously, like some incantation, and now it really is dark. Jeffrey, his back to the camera, is practically swallowed up alive by the blackness, as Frank inhales whatever it is that unleashes his id. There is a flashlight, the dome light of the Charger, and the very small light in the distance that give shape and depth of space to the frame. For the psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan the coherent, unified self is an illusion, a fragile thing constructed gradually during an infant’s Mirror Stage, a stage when the ego […]
Elles is being distributed by Kino Lorber and opens theatrically in NYC and LA on April 27, 2012. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. In Elles, the new film by Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, Juliette Binoche plays a journalist writing an article for French Elle on young women who finance their education (and more realistically, their apartments, clothing, and lifestyles) through prostitution. But forget the pimps and hookers of the movie underworld. The world in Elles isn’t one of coercion or strung out desperation, but of choices. It’s softcore social criticism, far less interested in systemic injustice than in the strange forces that […]
As author of The Blue Velvet Project—which owes a moral debt to the Dogme 95 movement, whose practice of constraint was an inspiration—I feel obligated to make this public statement of confessions regarding the rigors of the project. This is done in the spirit of Thomas Vinterberg’s confession regarding his film The Celebration. Despite the fact that I promised Mr. Macaulay, Filmmaker Editor-in-Chief, that I would compose each entry “well ahead of time,” I confess that the following posts were composed the day of posting: #12 #27 #28 #77 #93 I confess to posting—out of unreasonable affection for the frame […]
Second #4935, 82:15 1. The car has come to a halt. Jeffrey’s crime has been to look at Frank, just as we also have been looking at the film itself. 2. “I shoot when I see the whites of the eyes,” Frank says at this moment, almost directing his stare at us, but not quite. This is either the statement of a psychopath or of a film director. 3. In Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld, there are these sentences: There is no space or time out here, or in here, or wherever she is. There are only connections. Everything is […]
“Filmmaking is a visual medium. Is it a gimmick that I care about aesthetics in a visual medium? I think a well-shot film looks beautiful. I think well shot digital looks adequate. It’s simply a preference. Truth be told, I’ve always thought the idea of micro-filmmaking was something of a gimmick. How little someone spends on a project doesn’t interest me. Is The Blair Witch Project more enjoyable knowing they spent such a small amount? Should I not support the Batman movies because the budgets are excessive? I just don’t think it’s that important. The great thing about Kickstarter is […]