David Lynch is a very popular director the world over, but perhaps no place more than Poland. His work is greeted with the same fanfare as the latest disposable, multiplex-bound spectacle in this central European country, his rock star status never more in evidence than at the 20th annual Plus Camerimage. The international film world’s most significant festival focusing mainly on the work of cinematographers (they headline the competition here and are the subjects of press conferences, interviews, workshops, tributes), it moved two years ago from its former host city of Lodz (pronounced “Wod-ge”), home of the national film school […]
by Brandon Harris on Nov 28, 2012Some of the best writing we’ve ever published has been Nicholas Rombes’ Blue Velvet Project, a year-long survey of David Lynch’s classic, done solely through the examination of single frames spaced at 47 second intervals. The series wrapped up a couple of months ago, and I’ve been missing it. The Project carries on, however, landing this week at the 27th Mar Del Plata Festival in Argentina. Each year, the festival publishes one book about cinema, and this year’s is, you guessed it, El Proyecto Terciopelo Azul. In the photo above, Rombes signs copies for festival attendees. I’m excited for him […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2012One year ago, Nicholas Rombes proposed “The Blue Velvet Project” to me at Filmmaker. For 12 months, three times a week, he would scrutinize a single frame from David Lynch’s modern classic, looking both inside and outside of its aspect ratio for correspondences, allusions and meanings. For Rombes, it would be another in his “time-based” critical film essays — appropriately so, for it was because of another of these columns, 10/40/70 at The Rumpus, that I discovered his writing in the first place. (In fact, I interviewed him previously about this other fascinating project.) Nick had contributed to Filmmaker before […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 17, 2012We’re on deadline here at the magazine, but there’s always time for a David Lynch video, in this case a promo for the title track from his 2011 album, Crazy Clown Time. And be warned, although it adheres to YouTube’s family-friendly guidelines, it probably stills qualifies as NSFW…
by Nick Dawson on Apr 2, 2012To have the presence of Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Frémaux at your festival is like getting a seal of approval from the godfather of cinema himself. Arguably one of the most important players in the film industry today, Frémaux arrived by helicopter with French actress Isabelle Huppert to Emir Kusturica’s Fifth Annual Küstendorf Film and Music Festival, held this January in Serbia. “Sure Cannes is glamorous with its red carpet,” said Frémaux. “This is not the red carpet, it’s the white carpet, it’s the snow. And I think that is Emir’s style.” Küstendorf is a festival free of corporate sponsorship that aims to […]
by Ariston Anderson on Feb 9, 2012Blue Velvet remains a masterpiece of American cinema – one of the defining films of the 1980s, and arguably still director David Lynch’s best work (personally, I actually slightly prefer Lost Highway, but I’ve become gradually fatigued over the years with people looking at me like I’m insane when I divulge that) – and it still retains every bit of its power today. But to have seen it upon its original 1986 release was like experiencing a bomb going off inside the theater. American films during the conservative Reagan decade were going through an awkward transitional period (and, outside […]
by Travis Crawford on Nov 15, 2011David Lynch’s vexing new album, Crazy Clown Town, releases worldwide today, but that’s not the only project the iconic director has been keeping busy with. Lynch recently traveled to the Abbey of Hautviller in northern France to shoot an ad for Champaign brand Dom Pérignon. Filmmaker Gavin Elder was along for the trip, and shot an accompanying behind the scenes portrait of Lynch for Nowness.com. The Power of Creation: David Lynch for Dom Pérignon is a suitably fractured look into Lynch’s creative process, beginning with the Blue Velvet director espousing on his passion for experimentation, then disintegrating into a collection […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Nov 8, 2011Almost as if they knew today was Halloween, NPR has offered up a free stream of Crazy Clown Time, the much anticipated debut album from director David Lynch. Eleanor Kagan writes: “To those familiar with (Lynch’s) tendencies, the content of Crazy Clown Time should come as no surprise. Written, performed and produced by Lynch with engineer Dean Hurley, Lynch’s first solo album finds him meandering through a series of dark dreams and visceral meditations on modern life and society.” Indeed, the album is a beguiling, often unsettling listen. In other words, it’s unmistakably Lynchian. Many of the songs call to […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Oct 31, 2011As I’ve written before, these days we are taking whatever David Lynch we can get. In this case, it’s an in-studio teaser for his forthcoming album of paranoid blues, Crazy Clown Time.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 18, 2011While we wait, perhaps quixotically, for a new David Lynch feature, here is The 3 Rs, a short film commissioned by and for the Film Festival Viennale. (If you’re a Lynch fan, make sure to check out our Blue Velvet project, a year-long consideration of his classic feature.)
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 24, 2011