David Lynch's "Eraserhead" Debut

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019. We've been discussing two of the honoraries: Directors Lina Wertmüller and David Lynch. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff...

Having just retrospected Mulholland Drive, David Lynch’s penultimate film (to date at least), let’s venture back to 1977’s Eraserhead, the debut film of American cinema’s enfant terrible ne plus ultra. 

To say that Eraserhead is weird would be a profound understatement. Not only is it deeply weird, but it’s wildly inventive. Made for a tight (even for the mid-‘70s) $10,000, Lynch’s first feature, shot in glorious black and white, seems like both a precursor and a post-script to the legendary director’s storied career...

Click to read more ...

The Honoraries: David Lynch's masterpiece "Mulholland Dr"

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them.

by Eric Blume

The decision to give David Lynch an honorary Oscar this year is among the Academy’s smartest and most inspired choices.  Lynch’s movies are so singular, so not-conceived for commercial consumption, that he was never likely to gain enough popular majority to actually win as Best Director. But he has garnered three nominations over the years: 1980’s The Elephant Man, 1986’s Blue Velvet, and 2001’s Mulholland Dr.  Each of these films contains stunning and memorable images, a feverish sensibility, a subversively compassionate worldview, and a mastery of storytelling... even when the story feels incomprehensible.  

Mulholland Dr truly merits the term overused word "masterpiece".  Lynch is in complete control and it’s a film that could only have sprung from his mind and heart.  While we’ve seen many versions of the American Dream story, none has ever emphasized the “dream” portion of that term in the way that this film does...

Click to read more ...

Love & Anarchy: Lina Wertmüller's unruly tragedy

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.

by Cláudio Alves

Lina Wertmüller's films always feature great faces. They're not classically beautiful, but rather interesting to look at, like the visages sculpted by shadow in Caravaggio's paintings. In Love & Anarchy, Giancarlo Giannini is a storm of freckles, his green eyes lighthouses guiding us through the waves into his soul. Contrastingly, Mariangela Melato is a spectacle of powdered pallor, a vampiric Jean Harlow or perhaps a tarted-up marble statue, gorgeous and obscene in equal measure...

Click to read more ...

D.A. Pennebaker

by Glenn Dunks

D.A. Pennebaker, aka Donn Alan, the legend of documentary who famously captured the growing counter culture music scene, American presidents and a particularly memorable Original Cast Recording, died this weekend at age 94.

Like many of his contemporaries who are today regarded as among the most influential of the form like Albert Maysles and Frederick Wiseman, Pennebaker was never really embraced by the Academy. He was nominated alongside his wife and frequent collaborator Chris Hegedus in 1994 for The War Room about the 1992 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton, but was eventually awarded an honorary statue in 2013 for his undeniably immense contribution to film...

Click to read more ...

Honorary Oscars to... Davis, Lynch, Studi, and Wertmuller

by Nathaniel R

Just this weekend we loved you all anew for that robust conversation about worthy Honorary Oscar recipients. News broke yesterday that the Board of Governors has named the four 2019 recipients. Honorary Oscars will go to the actor Wes Studi (who many thought should have been nominated for Last of the Mohicans in 1992, his starmaking role), and two previously nominated directors, David Lynch (who we've been campaigning for) and Lina Wertmüller who was famously the first woman ever nominated for the directing Oscar for her total masterpiece Seven Beauties. In addition to those three artists, the actress Geena Davis will receive this year's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. That's a special subdivision of the Honorary that's not actually about the movies but your "outstanding contributions to humanitarian causes"...

Click to read more ...