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"Blue
Velvet", from Johnny Web
Just a couple of
reactions:
- I nominate Isabella
Rossellini for the best singing ever done
by someone who can't carry a tune. She
sings Blue Velvet very slowly, with a
spooky piano accompanying her - actually
he follows her. It's quite clever. Many
notes she sings wrong at first, but then
the piano comes in with the right note
and she slides back into it. The net
effect is good - it sounds like it should
from a boozy singer in a smoky club.
Heaven knows how David Lynch showed
genius enough to cast her for a singing
role, but it worked out, so there ya go!
(Other nominees for getting away with a
tone-deaf singing performance might
include Marlon Brando in Guys and Dolls.)
- The movie isn't as
creepy as I remembered. It shocked and
sickened me back in 1986. I guess my new
reaction is because (a) I've seen some
shit since then, or (b) I've become
inured to it by a subsequent generation
of shocking gore and kink, in the
Tarantino fashion, or (c) the world is
less innocent now, or (d) all of the
above.
- The movie is pretty
cool and quite insidious. The town is
white bread, picket fences, gardens,
smiling firemen who pet their dalmatians
and wave to kids from their trucks. In
this antispetic environment, Laura Dern
and Kyle Maclachlan want to play Nancy
Drew and solve a mystery involving a
severed ear. And then David Lynch asks us
"what do you bastards think would
happen to Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys if
they ran into real-life desperado
scumbags?". And he shows us, and
cures us of our illusions with some shock
therapy. I like the way he sets it up,
with the cornball music and the
excessively sincere acting from the
youngsters, just like a 50's TV sitcom,
until Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell
show up to assault us with over-the-top
kinky and creepy. Pretty damned
effective. Don't count on it as a date
movie, however.
Isabella Rossellini. My
collage is misleading in #1. Isabella is actually
stark naked twice, once in the car and once in
the yard. I compressed them into one image. What
can I say? Seemed like a good idea at the time. (1,
2,
3,
4)
New from GR
Linda
Fiorentino, in "The Moderns" Tilly
and Gershon, in "Bound"
"Bull
Durham", from Tuna
I reckon this is one of
the five or so best baseball films ever made. If
you include only the funny ones, it's probably
one of the two best, joining "Bingo
Long". Most of the really great movies about
baseball are serious ones, like "Field of
Dreams", "The Natural", and
"Bang the Drum Slowly". I talked last
week about Steve Dalkowski, whose completely
uncontrolled 115 mph fastball was the model for
Nuke LaLoosh, right down to the exact stats from
Dalkowski's year at Stockton (Dalkowski and the
screenwriter played minor league ball together.).
Just to repeat a couple of cool Dalkowski facts
(1) he once lost a game in which he struck out 24
batters. (2) one season he averaged 18 k's per
game, a stat made somewhat less valuable by the
fact that he also averaged 18 walks. (3) as far
as I know, he is the only pitcher ever to hit an
announcer up in the booth unintentionally. And I
suppose Susan Sarandon, in her prime, may be have
been one of the five sexiest women ever to walk
on the planet. Hell, she still looks sexy and she
used to party with Hannibal. So one of the
greatest women in one of the greatest baseball
flicks. What more do I need to say? Thumbnails Sarandon (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13) Jenny Robertson (1,
2)
"No Way
Out", from Tuna
Without really intending
to, we accidentally got into a whole Costner
thing here. This movie isn't bad, either. The
concept is how could a country create some really
deep espionage - like creating spies from birth
so they could never be detected. Perhaps it's
good to remind ourselves that we are always
changing. That there was a time when people
thought leeches could cure all ailments, and a
time when Costner was a really hot property,
probably the biggest star in Hollywood. Of course
the differences are that the leeches lost their
status because of forces beyond their control,
and that, as far as I know, no leeches actually
contributed to Waterworld, Robin Hood, or The
Postman. Possibly excepting Christian Slater. Thumbnails Sean Young (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
Strippers (1,
2)
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