David Lynch Presents the History of Surrealist Film (1987)
What living director has drawn the descriptor “surreal” more often than David Lynch has? If you’ve seen, or rather experienced, a few of his films — particularly Eraser head, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., or Inland Empire, or even the first half of his television series Twin Peaks — you know he’s earned it. Like any surrealist worth his salt, Lynch creates his own version of reality, with its own set of often unfathomable and inexplicably but emotionally and psychologically resonant qualities. In 1987, the year after his breakthrough Blue Velvet opened in theaters, the BBC apparently thought him enough of an authority on the matter of cinematic surrealism to enlist him to present an episode of Arena on the subject.
I believe some movies are so classic, they should be considered untouchable, an opinion I wish more Broadway producers shared. It is likely not as bad as I fear. Stallone himself is co-producing, young director Alex Timbers is deservedly hot, and lyricist Lynn Ahrens is responsible, in large degree, for Schoolhouse Rock.
All the same, prank collective Improve Everywhere’s take on one of Rocky’s most iconic scenes falls more squarely within my comfort zone. The first installment in the group’s weekly Movies in Real Life series, this Rocky features lookalike comedian Dan Black running through the streets of Philly, a crowd of kids tailing him on the final leg. (“S
Silent films had a respectable showing, as it were, on Sight & Sound magazine’s last big critic’s poll. The votes, cast to determine the greatest motion pictures of all time, placed three silent among the top ten overall: F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. These, of course, also rank at the top of Sight & Sound‘s separate list of the ten greatest silent films of all time, which came out as follows: o, uh, you have parents?” he gasps, atop the art museum steps.)
Alfred Hitchock is often hailed as one of the great visual artists of the 20th century. His films are admired for their graphic eloquence — for the power; they have, through carefully planned sequences of images, to manipulate the emotions of a viewer. What tends to be overlooked, though, is that Hitchcock applied the same care and foresight in the design of a film’s sound.
Quentin Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013 in Film | October 7th, 2013 2 Comments
The Quentin Tarantino Archives, which bills itself, perhaps not hyperbolically, as the “web’s biggest and most popular website about Quentin Tarantino and his movies,” has posted an e
If you saw our post on Stanley Kubrick’s ten favorite films in 1963, you may remember that Ingmar Bergman ranked high on his list, specifically with 1957′s Wild Strawberries. Three years earlier, Kubrick had mailed the Swedish filmmaker a fan letter praising his “vision of life,” “creation of mood and atmosphere,” “avoidance of the obvious,” and “truthfulness and completeness of characterization.”
