Over the last two weeks, I had the distinct pleasure of watching several of David Lynch's films I had previously missed on the big screen at Nashville's Belcourt Theatre. The Belcourt's retrospective on Lynch's work was comprehensive; a true celebration of the man's life and art.
I spoke about seeing Eraserhead/The Grandmother in a previous post, but this past weekend my cousin Charles and his wife Lauren came down to visit us, and Sunday afternoon, the four of us caught The Straight Story on 35mm. I'll talk about that below, but suffice it to say, for Monday night's screening of Wild At Heart, Powermad's "Slaughterhouse" rang EPIC on the Belacourt's sound system. I never got into this band back in the day, but I was definitely aware of them, mostly through ads in Thrasher magazine.
Released in 1989, this would have come at the height of my "Skate or Die" phase; man do I miss that. The last time I rode a board was circa 2011 in San Pedro; the hills almost killed me, and I kind of backed off again after that, only to have a friend accidentally break it a year or two later.
How the hell did I get here from where this began? Oh yeah, Powermad!
The bit with Powermad doing backups for Sailor's Elvis serenade really clues you into Lynch's mindset on this film. There are times when I'd almost liken Wild At Heart to Lynch's version of a Farce. Sailor's singing and mannerisms, Marietta's, well, everything, and Crispin Glover's joyfully insane Del are all so far outside the realm of seriousness for a film that can still take itself very seriously, that they help make this one unique, even among the greater body of Lynch's work.
The two images that stand out on the big screen are the sequences of roiling fire and Bobby Peru's teeth. Nightmare fuel, that.
Watch:
David Lynch's The Straight Story is an underseen masterpiece. I say that as a lifelong Lynch fan who, although I own the film on DVD, had only seen it twice before, and never at the Cinema. That changed this past weekend, and I can tell you that this film is a deeply moving character piece that wet my ocular sockets consistently from start to finish.
Seeing this film on 35 mm was an entirely new experience; Lynch films on the big screen are heightened, almost altered states; few people who have experienced Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive in the cinema would contest that. Those are films that incorporate Neo Noir and Psychological Fugue/Horror elements that lend themselves to inducing altered states. The Straight Story is something else entirely. It is a story about family, love, and redemption. It is firmly rooted in the "real" world, so its altered state is a sharply emotional one. It's a beautiful and slightly disconcerting thing to let David Lynch lead you on a journey like this, but by the end, it makes you feel wonderfully alive.
NCBD:
Finally, after being pushed back several months, we have the finale of James Tynion and Joshua Hixon's The Deviant!
Güs! 'Nuff said!
Playlist:
Sqürl - Third Man Records Session
Melvins - Hold It In
Hangman's Chair - Saddiction
Vinyl Williams - Lansing (single)
Flogging Molly - Swagger
The Pogues - Hell's Ditch
The Pogues - Red Roses for Me
QOTSA - In Times New Roman
Sinéad O'Connor - The Lion and the Cobra
Grimm currently has a Kickstarter running for his ... And the Night Stares Back Vol. 2 coloring book, which features some of the art from the Hand of Doom Tarot. I backed this instantly, but there's no way I would ever apply color to Grimm's beautiful B&W art.
• V: The Hierophant
• Knight of Swords
• Five of Wands
Knowledge (or information) wrested from a perceived opponent can require Will to make work.
This is straight-up on point with my work at the moment, where I actually feel like I have a bit of a "Moriarity" at the moment, and the knowledge they disseminate to me often feels occluded or guarded. Maybe even false.
No comments:
Post a Comment