Tag: David Lynch

Writer’s Desk: Avoid Interruptions

On By chrisbarsantiIn Books, Film - Repertory, WritingLeave a comment

It seems so obvious and yet turns out to be so difficult in practice. Finding a good writing space is one thing. Carving out the time on a regular basis is another. Ensuring an uninterrupted run of minutes and hours is always harder than you think. But without those blocks of time, creating something new is next to impossible.

Again, let’s go to David Lynch:

Every interruption just is like a knife stab in the middle of a thought. And you gotta start again. You start again. It’s horrible. These days, there’s interruptions around every corner, almost every second. You have to be somewhat selfish…

And if anybody asks why you are acting so withdrawn, just say that Lynch told you so.

Screening Room: ‘Lynch/Oz’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film-DocumentaryLeave a comment

My review of the new documentary Lynch/Oz is at Slant:

Is  that an Oz narrative?” asks director Rodney Ascher in the second chapter of Alexandre O. Philippe’s trippy, tricky, and obsessive cine-essay Lynch/Oz. Ascher is clearly being a touch dishonest with the question because he’s at that moment referring to Beverly Hills Cop. He follows up that query by wondering in tongue-in-cheek fashion, “Is everything?” …

Here is the trailer:

Screening Room: ‘Lucky’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - NewLeave a comment

In Lucky, Harry Dean Stanton plays an aged loner coming to terms with mortality in a small desert town. He smokes, wanders, sings in a beautifully ragged way, and dispenses whacked-out Zen koans about life. In other words, a not-so-out-there version of Stanton himself. Also, David Lynch plays a man in a white suit who is upset over losing his best friend, a tortoise.

All in all, it’s a fitting sendoff for the great actor, who passed away earlier this month at the age of 91.

Lucky is opening this week in limited release. My review is at Film Journal International:

…there is something in [Stanton’s] wide, seeking eyes, hollow cheeks and storyteller’s presence that made him seem like some wasteland troubadour long before Wim Wenders had him amble out of the sandy flats at the start of Paris, Texas. It’s fitting, then, that he spends most of John Carroll Lynch’s directorial debut, Lucky, walking the streets of a small desert town and communicating as little as is absolutely necessary. Sure, Stanton might be from Kentucky originally, but he wears a cowboy’s hat, jeans and boots as though he were born in them…

Here’s the trailer:

Now Playing: Ryan Gosling’s ‘Lost River’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New1 Comment

Iain De Caestecker tries to leave 'Lost River'
Iain De Caestecker tries to leave ‘Lost River’

Lost_River_posterA fantastical baroque about a mother and son fighting for survival in a slowly dying rust-belt town, Lost River is playing now in a few places.

My review is at Film Racket:

The best way to approach Ryan Gosling’s debut as a writer/director is to imagine what might happen if David Lynch were ever to shoot a nature documentary. Or if a consortium of mumblecore filmmakers dropped acid and decided to make a horror film. Something that Terence Malick might have tossed together after bumming around Detroit for a few weeks. The worst way would be to watch the film and try and determine afterwards what that was all about…

Here’s the trailer:

New in Theaters: ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’

On By chrisbarsantiIn Film - New, Film-ForeignLeave a comment

dune1

Back in the 1970s, when midnight movies were still a potent cultural phenomenon, Alejandro Jodorowsky was the king of them. In 1974, after blowing the minds of cult cinephiles with El Topo and The Holy Mountain, Jodorowsky took on another project: adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune. Eventually he gave up.

The documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune is opening in limited release tomorrow. My review is at Film Journal International:

As Jodorowsky—84 and still impeccably spry, with the follow-me eyes of either a prophet or very happy madman—tells it from his sun-filled Parisian apartment, he immediately put together his team of creative “warriors.” The visual unit reads like a dream team of 1970s science-fiction visionaries: French comic-book wizard Moebius (Heavy Metal), writer Dan O’Bannon (Dark Star), dark-sex-gothic fantasist H.R. Giger, and spaceship-specializing pulp-novel cover artist Chris Foss. He also claims to have roped in Pink Floyd for the soundtrack and a cast that would have included Mick Jagger, Orson Welles, and his fellow trickster surrealist Salvador Dali …Their director was convinced that this wasn’t going to be just another sci-fi epic; it was going to change the course of human history itself…

The trailer is here, dig it: