Oh, My Stars and Garters! #1

Mark Gonzales, Video Days (Spike Jonze, 1991)

Stars of Stage, Screen and Wax Cylinder

Jimmie Rodgers and Will Rogers

A Glass Darkly

I just learned Freddie Francis died earlier this month. There are a handful of filmmakers and film artists I can point to and say they're the reason I've grown to love the movies as much as I do, and Freddie numbers among them.

It might sound a bit contrived (and, well, it was intended to be), but I remember so vividly the first time I saw Sandy (Laura Dern) step out of the pitch black streets of Lumberton, all a glow in innocence, wonder and love, and into Jeffrey's (Kyle MacLachlan, as the boy detective) world. I was in my girlfriend's room, during a typical snowbound winter afternoon, the smoke from pilfered cigarettes and awkward teenage flirtations hanging in the air, watching a copy of Blue Velvet I'd somehow managed to rent from our town's lone video store (they were mighty strict about film ratings and minors).



Anywho, from opening credits on I was enchanted by the movie's mannered perversity, goofy grace notes, and oh-so-real grotesqueries. But to me, and this might have been the most revelatory aspect, was the damned look of the thing. The movie was tumid with light and life. And it was Laura Dern, in her pretty pink outfit, standing under a street lamp, that brought a slow tingle of understanding of the greater magic that could be found in film. That was Mr. Lynch and Mr. Francis' doing, and for that I will be forever grateful.



Here's a nice obit from the Guardian Unlimited, which sheds some nice light on his directorial efforts as well.

(H/T to Lynchnet for the photos)

Cage Match

Watching the Detectives #1

Lemmy Caution

Larger Than Life #2

The Mayor of Drinkin' Island

"Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers."

HPRL 2007 Draft (3/18/07)

Spread the Disease #1

The last, true, Germs show. Four days later, Darby Crash would be dead from an intentional, and well stage-managed, heroin overdose.

Larger Than Life #1

"The people I like best are those I don't know and who don't know me. Why? Because I can't stand myself. If I did, I'd play the same guy in all my roles. I don't even like my own company." Playboy interview, January 1969

See Ya in the Funny Pages

Fantomah

Get used to seeing the name Fletcher Hanks, as an upcoming collection of his work will be released this summer from Fantagraphics. I haven't seen much outside of what's available on the web, or the stand alone representation in Art out of Time, but I'm already quite taken by the comic (featuring a world of tense, grotesque characters framed in eye-popping primary colored jungles, both urban and wild, spartan diaglogue and severe moralizing). The blunt storytelling, fantastic settings and outrageous situations give it a wonderfully naive, fever dream quality. That's not to say I find it kitschy, quite the opposite really. There seems to be a real sense of personality behind the work, with a unique pen in hand and an unusual creativity unbound. The grave seriousness lends itself to unintentional humor, but the pay-off is in the louder, quirkier and more perverse elements of the adventure. I'm sure it will keep me indoors on many a sunny day. I'm glad Fanta has done so well for itself with the Peanuts property, allowing them to put together great, and risky, collections like this, Pogo and my personal favorite, Popeye.

Terrors of the Deep #2

From Conrad Gessner's Historiae Animalium

Eye Grimace

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing...#1

Terrors of the Deep #1

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.--Tennyson

Passing Attractions #3

The Big Combo(Joseph H. Lewis, 1955)