“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 …
20. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) Directed by: Terry Gilliam So…drugs, right? Based on Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel of the same title, Fear and Loathing stars Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo, respectively. The pair is heading to Sin City, speeding through the Nevada desert, under …
“I’ve seen Jodorowsky’s ‘Dune’,” director Nicholas Winding Refn announces early on in the new documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune”, “and it is awesome.” Of course, neither Refn nor anyone else has actually seen the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s famed science-fiction novel that Alejandro Jodorowsky planned to make, because funding fell apart and the film never got made.
Jodorowsky’s Dune Directed by Frank Pavich USA, 2013 Alejandro Jodorowsky, Michel Seydoux, Frank Herbert, Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, Moebius, Magma, Pink Floyd, Dan O’Bannon, David Carradine, Mick Jagger, Amanda Lear, Orson Welles, and Salvador Dali. Yes, that’s quite an array of figures, isn’t it? Frank Pavich’s historically illuminating and expertly constructed documentary on one of …
September, as most cinephiles know, is a month almost entirely lacking in film festivals. What’s that? Something going on in Toronto? A film festival, and it’s happening right now? Well, if you say so. Seriously, though, with TIFF starting in full today, and the New York Film Festival kicking off once again at the end …
I don’t remember when I’d first heard about the film adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s Y/A sci fi novel, Ender’s Game – a few weeks ago, a few months – but despite all the talk about the book being some sort of cult fave which has sold millions since it’d first been published in 1985, …
E. B. White once wrote, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” Analyzing trilogies seems to the same. The entire point is to enjoy them. Still, given the many sins to be found in film, there are worse things than movie trilogies but few have …
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 …
With the turn of a new year, the uncomfortably futuristic sounding 2013, comes twelve more months of cinematic gold, silver and bronzed offal. There will be Supermen, more Hollywood remakes of cult Korean cinema, at least one memorable meltdown and the continuation of Marvel’s epic campaign of terror against bewildered audiences. But amidst the blockbuster …
March, 2011: After their rights to the source material elapse after a failed four year venture, Paramount officially drop their in-development film Dune, ending a frustrating and ultimately fruitless effort that served better as a topic of heated discussion than an actually feasible movie. Such an announcement had been on the cards, and the prospect …
Some people don’t like the first Dune by David Lynch, but of course, they’re crazy. With a stunning cast like the effortless Kyle MacLachlan, badass Sting, the mysterious Jürgen Prochnow, the black-goop-dripping Kenneth McMillan, the incomparable Linda Hunt as Shadout Mapes…coupled with the as-cool-and-strange-as-it-gets-for-1984 effects, not to mention the storyline itself… come on, it rocks! …