David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is in my top ten favorite films of all time. I remember vividly the first time I saw it on opening day, September 19, 1986, in New York City. When the credits finished rolling, I staggered out of the theater and immediately went to my neighborhood bar where I waxed poetically about the psychedelic noir well into the wee hours of the morning. The next day I went to see it again. This was my kind of film - a dark, funny, dreamlike mindfuck that was beautifully shot and had an exquisitely haunting score.
Blue Velvet’s original shooting script is reputed to have been over four hours long. The theatrical release came in at 120 minutes. An additional hour of deleted footage was thought to have been lost when the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentis, sold his company. Fortunately, the footage was located and was released as an extra on the Blu-ray edition of Blue Velvet . These deleted scenes have been uploaded to YouTube and I present them here for your viewing pleasure. Rumor has it that there is even more footage out there.
Things kick off with a bang in a barroom scene with Jeffrey Beaumont, Frank Booth, a bevy of prostitutes, an old dude singing some deranged blues tune, violence on a pool table and a woman with glowing nipples.
I would love to see a director’s cut with these scenes re-integrated into the film. Would they add any resonance to an already great film or was Lynch right in excising them? Perhaps one day we’ll find out.
A short clip from Come to London, British Pathé‘s featurette highlighting some of the attractions available in the Swinging Sixties’ capital. This is worth watching for the water-bike, but especially for Peter Sellers giving Britt Ekland a birthday cake in 1966.
This gorgeous artistic collaboration by Luke Insect and Kenn Goodall was inspired by Michael Reeves’ 60s British cult horror film, Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm as it was known in the States) starring Vincent Price.
This 370mm x 594mm, 3-color screenprint uses metallic gold, fluorescent red and matte black inks and is printed on 300gsm Snowdon Acid-Free Cartridge Paper in an edition of 50, signed and numbered by the artists.
The last few years have formed a tiny goldmine of music documentaries for fringe music fans, ranging from the previously covered “Bastard Art” to the harrowing Wild Man Fisher film, “Derailroaded” to the Faces-of-Death-trip of the Johnny Thunders documentary, “Born to Lose.” Somewhere in the middle was the Jeffrey Lee Pierce centered work, “Ghost on the Highway” and more recently, is “Autoluminescent,” about the life and work of guitarist, singer and songwriter extraordinaire, Rowland S. Howard.
The figure of Rowland was and forever is, unlike any, in music. The slight, ethereal looking figure, with a shock of dark hair and a cigarette permanently attached to his fingers, approached guitar like a musical whirlwind, sounding almost devoid of any proper musical forefathers. He elevated the Boys Next Door and was the needed catalyst to take them from basic pop-rock to the infernal swamp-rock of The Birthday Party. (A fact that is acknowledged in the film by Nick Cave himself.)
“Autoluminescent” not only documents this, starting from Rowland’s first band, The Young Charlatans all the way to his work with Lydia Lunch, Crime & the City Solution, These Immortal Souls and his own solo career. The later produced two albums, 1999’s “Teenage Snuff Film” and “Pop Crimes,” made ten years later as Howard was dying from liver cancer. What his solo career may have lacked in quantity it is epic in its brilliance. Like a true rock & roll alchemist, the man was able to take a schmaltzy song like “She Cried” (made famous by Jay & the Americans) and make it layered and real.
One of my biggest personal pet peeves with music documentaries is often the lack of actual music. Sometimes it is a legal issue, which was the case for both “Ghost on the Highway” and the Runaways film, “Edgeplay.” That is one thing, but then there are films where they just tease you with scraps, despite the fact that the whole reason you are watching is inadvertently tied to the music itself. Thankfully, that is not a huge issue here, as the balance between the music, interviews and atmospherically poetic interludes is well thought out. (Of course, I wouldn’t have minded even more music, but if it was up to me, all good music documentaries would be 8 hours long. With Rowland S. Howard, we’re talking “Berlin Alexanderplatz” lengths.)
Another thing that is obscenely beautiful about “Autoluminscent” is the way that it is weaved together, merging more traditional documentary elements, like interviews and archival footage, along with the pseudo-cinematic interstitial scenes of smoke and swampy filigree, as Rowland off screen reads narrative bits. The brilliance about this, as well as the marked prominence of the music, is that with artists, the only purely honest truths you are going to get is the art. With anyone, artists and laymen alike, you could talk to eighty different people that know you, but each one of them will get something wrong. It’s rarely an intentional dishonesty but everyone, at one point or time, ends up a victim of round robin.
That said, there are some great interviews here, featuring a veritable who’s who of cool, alternative artists, including Greg Perano from Hunters & Collectors, filmmaker Wim Wenders (whose film “Wings of Desire” featured both Crime & the City Solution and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds), longtime collaborator, member of These Immortal Souls and ex-romantic partner Genevieve McGuckin, Honeymoon in Red collaborator and ex-paramour Lydia Lunch, Birthday Party band mates Cave and Mick Harvey, Barry Adamson and more. There’s also documentary-stalwart Henry Rollins, whom coincidentally appears in about 95% of the documentaries I have seen in my entire lifetime. The most effective out of the great lot, however, is McGuckin and Rowland himself. It is those interviews that reveal Rowland the most as both layered and flawed (as are we all) human and creative force of nature.
“Autoluminscent” will break your heart and though I knew it was an inevitable heartbreak because Rowland S. Howard died only a scant three years ago, the pain and loss are tangible by the end. It doesn’t revel in Rowland’s sickness and keeps an outright respectable distance while still acknowledging the various factors that hindered the man. Anyone dying at 50 is sad but when it is someone as beautiful and brilliant as this man, it just feels like the whole damned world was robbed.
Despite the sadness of it all, at the end of the day what matters is the work and Rowland S. Howard left behind a discography that is timeless, textured and striking. “Autoluminescent” is a fitting film document of a musician that should still be here.
Breathing is a beautiful and affecting short by Anna Österlund (Ravishing Mad) and Truls Bråhammar. The film is based on an original composition by multi-talented composer Mikael Karlsson, taken from his series of “Talk Pieces” called Traps.
The film shows two little girls seemingly at play in the forest, but as we linger with them we start noticing that they’re measuring time and behaving in irrational, robotic or animal ways. They’re on a very strict and hectic schedule somehow, and [our] watching them worries them.
An effective society sometimes forces people into apathetic behaviour in order to cope with everyday life and the sense of being trapped in a treadmill can be frightening. What do we do in situations when inexplicable routines traps us like animals, do we manically continue forward or do we protest?
”A creature in captivity is often driven to pointless, repetitive behaviour.”
Starring Ada Bråhammar and Olivia Holmgren, with Karlsson’s music is performed by the Sirius Quartet.
A whimsical mélange of Kraftwerk’s “Robots” and 70s Soviet sci-fi film Teenagers in Space. According to Coilhouse, the movie is a children’s film “about evil robots.”
That’s pretty much all I need to know to make this a “must see” for me.
If you want to watch Teenagers in Space in its entirety, go here.
Dario Russo’s Italian Spiderman packs more action, drama and romance (Italian-style) in under 40 minutes than 90% of Hollywood’s bloated super hero blockbusters. Add fine acting and cutting-edge special effects to the mix and you’ve got pure cinematic gold.
Plot summary (and it’s a shitload of plot for a film that runs under an hour) courtesy of Wikipedia:
In the middle of a party, an asteroid from a distant galaxy falls to Earth and is taken by professor Bernardi (Carmine Russo) for research. He discovers the asteroid has a substance that can create duplicates from any living being and decides that Italian Spiderman (Franco Franchetti), a fat, rude, and powerful superhero, is the only man capable to have custody of the valuable asteroid.
As soon as Professor Bernardi gives Italian Spiderman the asteroid, he is attacked by the terrible Captain Maximum (Leombruno Tosca) who is interested in using the asteroid for his own evil plans. Foiled in his attempt to steal the asteroid from Bernardi, he transforms the Professor into a snake. Captain Maximum later intercepts the Italian Spiderman and takes the asteroid, although he gives Italian Spiderman a chance to win it by beating Maximum in a surf contest. When Captain Maximum notices the obviously superior surfing skills of Italian Spiderman, Maximum attempts to win by cheating. His efforts fail, however, as Italian Spiderman summons the help of penguins (which hurl themselves at Captain Maximum and his henchwomen) and wins. When Italian Spiderman returns home, he is again attacked by Captain Maximum’s henchmen, where a tranquilizer dart causes the hero to collapse.
Waking up in Captain Maximum’s lair he witnesses how the professor is forced to utilize the powers of duplication on one of Captain Maximum’s henchmen. Italian Spiderman is forced to watch as the professor is shot by Maximum. The furious Italian Spiderman attacks Maximum’s henchmen, killing many in a surprisingly gory battle sequence. Despite Italian Spiderman’s efforts the Professor dies but in his last moments gives the Italian Spiderman the potion. Italian Spiderman again attacks the headquarters of Captain Maximum. Despite having the potion, Italian Spiderman overwhelms by his powers alone the newfound army (showing in the process to have a poisonous bite and removable moustaches that can double as razor-sharp boomerangs). Later, Italian Spiderman returns home with the Professor’s niece. When a gigantic Captain Maximum lays siege to the city, Italian Spiderman finally drinks the potion, growing to the same height of Captain Maximum and battling him until the titles roll.
Presenting Italian Spiderman in high definition Spidercolor and an aspect ratio perfect for filming snakes, with never-before-seen EXTRA BONUS SCENES.
As Britain prepares for the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for Her Majesty, here is The Queen is Dead - Derek Jarman’s Super 8 film triptych (made in collaboration John Maybury, Richard Heslop and Chis Hughes) for 3 classic tracks by The Smiths: “The Queen is Dead,” “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” and “Panic.”
Inner city angst, urban decay, alienation, cute hairstyles, and lots of hand held camera work, well it was the eighties.
As a child, John Cassavetes chipped his front teeth in a fight. As his parents were too poor to buy him caps, Cassavetes didn’t smile for years. The experience made him aware of how others coped with misfortune. Later, when he started making films, his camera fixed on the facial tics and movements of his actors. These were unlike any other movies - improvised character studies, where the camera relentlessly followed, watched, examined, but rarely interrogated. We are always close-up to the characters. When we see them in wide-shots, they are isolated, the scene only highlighting their alienation: Ben Gazzara having breakfast outside after losing $23,000 at a gaming table inThe Killing of a Chinese Bookie; or Ben Carruthers taking a stroll through the gardens in Shadows; or Gena Rowlands at a loss with the world in A Woman Under the Influence.
His characters are suburban, middle-aged, all on the back slice of life. They may have flourishes of rebellion (a trip to London in Husbands), but nothing changes their direction, all stick blindly to some instinctual role.
Cassavetes’ films may not be that innovative, or offer any new or considered insights, or offer redemption, but they succeed because of the ineffable passions, the inexpressible humanity of the central characters that Cassavetes puts on screen. That’s where his genius lies - in his deep and committed humanity.
Cassavetes once told Cahiers du Cinema:
‘I am more interested in the people who work with me than in the film itself or cinema.’
Cassavetes’ films always remind me of what Jack Kerouac once wrote about literature in Satori in Paris:
“…the tale that’s told for no other reason but companionship, which is another (and my favorite) definition of literature, the tale that’s told for companionship and to teach something religious, of religious reverence, about real life, in this real world which literature should (and here does) reflect.”
Made in 1965, Cinéastes de notre temps - John Cassavetes is a profile of the great director and actor as he edits his second feature Faces in Hollywood, before taking it Paris. Cassavetes openly discusses his views on film-making and cinema, and why he takes certain roles to pay for his movie making.
(aka The Conqueror Worm as it was known in the States) starring Vincent Price.
