When David Lynch descended on a midsize North Carolina city to shoot his distinctive, out-of-time tribute to - and/or subversion of - small town Americana, he meticulously determined what we'd see and how we'd see it. Blue Velvet strains the eighties zeitgeist through a filter of fifties nostalgia and Lynch's own particular aesthetic tastes but a West German documentarian was there on location to capture the process of the director's creativity - and also the raw material of the world around the 1985 production. Watching this documentary for the first time a couple years ago (this review was recorded immediately afterwards), I was completely taken with this contrast - a peek into the world as it was when I was a toddler - as well as by Peter Braatz's moody, meditative, avant-garde take on this footage, so striking yet distinct from Lynch himself. Originally dubbed No Frank in Lumberton when it was assembled as an even more experimental program for German TV, the Super 8 footage was re-born when Braatz was inspired by music from the group Cult With No Name and decided to mix black-and-white still photos, aestheticized titles, and voice tracks into a new assembly. The result was much more widely distributed than the original when it was released for the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Velvet. This podcast provides the perfect complement to my upcoming episode on connections between Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks on the Twin Peaks Cinema feed (scheduled for March 15; this cross-post link will be active the next morning). It also can be listened to as a sequel to my earlier Lost in the Movies podcast on Blue Velvet as a standalone film.
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(TWIN PEAKS Character Series)
Gersten Hayward (#79) & Beverly Paige (#78) & Darya (#77) & Detectives T., D., and "Smiley" Fusco (#76) & The Road House Patrons (#75) & Becky Burnett (#74) & Betty Briggs (#73) & notes on an old entry: Black Rose "Blackie" O'Reilly (#72) & FBI Chief of Staff Denise Bryson (#71) & Carl Rodd (#70) & notes on an old entry: Andrew Packard (#69) & "Hutch" and Chantal Hutchens (#68)
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Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ John Bernardy & Part 2 of Twin Peaks Conversations w/ Twin Peaks Grammar
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EXCLUSIVE advance: TWIN PEAKS Character Series #51, 50 & 47 (#49, 48 & 46 already published) & Episode 99A: 50s bonus / Concluding the 00s & 60s... All That Heaven Allows (capsules on Jailhouse Rock, Sweet Smell of Success, Shane, From Here to Eternity, Bell, Book, and Candle, The Manchurian Candidate, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Departed, Mystic River, The Descent, Saw, Idiocracy, Anchorman, Zoolander, Fahrenheit 9/11, archive readings of Some Came Running, Kiss Me Deadly, Funny Face + feedback/media/work updates including A Goofy Movie & more) & Episode 99B: The 10s in January (& beyond)... Under the Skin (capsules on Jurassic World, Knives Out, American Sniper, Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows, Personal Shopper, The Phantom Thread, Fahrenheit 11/9, Uncut Gems, Gravity, Straight Outta Compton, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The Big Short, Joy, Mother!, Fruitvale Station, Carol, The Witch, Hereditary, The Love Witch, Looper, 13th, Snowden, Birdman, Bridesmaids, Baby Driver, The Great Gatsby, John Wick, archive reading of The Force Awakens & more)
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Episode 99 prologue - Zeitgeist Fiction (10s Archive) & Episode 99 epilogue - A Decade of Olympics (10s Archive)
Previously on this podcast
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