Easy Rider is not just a significant American movie. It is also an exceptional example of independent filmmaking, one where, with the unwavering ambition of youth and a desire for something different, a film rises above and beyond the studio-beholden establishment to achieve a triumph all its own.
People have a pretty intimate relationship with music. The song that was playing when you had your first slow dance, broke up with that certain someone, or lost your virginity will rank higher for you than it will for some random listener. Even bad songs have a way of causing flashbacks, for better or worse. …
“Funny how secrets travel,” David Bowie croons as the music thumps. The camera zooms down a dark desolate highway, illuminated only by the twin beams of a speeding car’s headlights. This is the beginning of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and it sets the mood for the chaos to come. Lynch rose to auteur status with …
The Conversation is a feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their fourth piece, they will discuss David Lynch’s film The Straight Story (1999). Drew’s Take I am in the midst of my 1999 class and I assigned two films I had yet to …
Love can be a many splendid thing…both in triumph and sometimes in tragedy. The emphasis of this sentiment is mainly on the latter as tragedy can be defined in various degrees of despair. Consequently, we have endured all sorts of conflict between lovers in cinema throughout the history of frequenting the movies. In You’ve Lost That …
Jurassic Park, like many of Spielberg’s best films, allows us to be children again, even if this is, ironically, a film most kids would be scared to death by. It’s a movie that indulges in horror-movie tropes while making them feel fresh, layering a patina of intelligence over the intense, earth-rattling action. Though the human-dinosaur face-offs are the stuff of movie legend, the early sections where Drs. Alan Grant, Ian Malcolm, and Ellie Sattler debate the ethics of a theme park full of the living, breathing extinct are strangely fascinating and entertaining, at least to 28-year old me.
How many filmmakers can you think of that have their own verb? “Lynchian” is a part of even the most casual cinephile, though it’s often used erroneously. All too often, anything a little out of the ordinary, with a vague sense of the uncanny, earns the term. Looking back at the man’s filmography, however, it’s …
Blue Velvet has plenty of the makings of noir: a sultry and dangerous atmosphere, big city fear, femme fatale (Dorothy Vallens/Isabella Rossellini), an intrepid detective working outside the police force (Jeffrey Beaumont/Kyle MacLachlan), and, of course, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a psychopath akin to the best of late-period classic American noirs. By stirring the pot …
In 1986 it was a strange world and it was about to get weirder, as the irradiated detritus from the Chernobyl disaster infected Northern Europe a similarly radioactive event was contaminating cinema screens worldwide, as we alight upon the first masterpiece of Lynch’s career – I just thought I’d be up front about that. After the painful critical evisceration of Dune a wounded Lynch retreated to his lair and decided he needed to go back to his roots and make a smaller, more personal and manageable film, without the distractions that an interfering studio, costly SFX and adjacent marketing concerns which had partially diluted his creative essence and drive.
Nicol Williamson as Merlin in Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981, UK): Turning in by far the best acting in Boorman’s epic, Williamson sets the bar for all other interpretations of the Merlin character. Best known as an acclaimed stage actor with a history of incredibly unprofessional behavior, this is Williamson’s most memorable film role and will …
He He was a cowboy, an outlaw biker, a drug fiend, a madman, a criminal, a gun nut, a hippie, a Republican, and an Obama supporter. Hopper was also a prolific photographer, painter, and sculptor. His painting style ranged from abstract impressionism to photorealism and often included references to his cinematic work and to other …
Undertones: Volume 5 Removing the veneer of squeaky-clean suburban American life to reveal its seamy underbelly, David Lynch’s 1986 film, Blue Velvet, is a modern masterpiece and perhaps the most crystallized example of Lynch’s filmic vision. Concerned with the misadventure of a clean-cut teen called Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) who upon discovering and subsequently investigating a …