DAVID LYNCH (1946-2025)

by Cláudio Alves

David Lynch as John Ford in his last big-screen appearance, in THE FABELMANS (2022).

Somewhere in LA, in the middle of a concrete nowhere, an open door beckons. It tugs, a jerky motion that makes you fly through space, into Club Silencio. The insides are old, the red velvet memory of a place that is no more. And yet, despite the unease, it's time to sit down and attend the MC's lugubrious presentation, a swirl of lies and jest, fakery that denounces itself in a spectacle that's a bit like a threat, a lot like a spell. Blue swaths over red, it glows, and then, at long last, the diva makes her entrance – Rebekah Del Rio will be singing "Llorando." But of course, it's not her voice, for she falls, and the ghostly tune persists. Somehow, that doesn't matter. In a palace of illusions, the false still rings true. And look, truthful tears stream down your face.

Watching this scene in Mulholland Drive feels like falling an endless fall, free-floating across the void, suspended in nothingness. It feels like pure beauty born of nightmares, pain and ravishment. It feels like nothing else in the world. Like something only David Lynch could have imagined. And what can we do other than surrender to that feeling on this day of all days when we must say farewell to the man, the artist, and the great? David Lynch has died…

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Happy Birthday, Laura Dern!

by Cláudio Alves

Laura Dern has been blessing us with her existence for 55 years. The Oscar-winning actress started young, being the daughter of two screen titans in their own right – Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd. Indeed, one of her earliest big-screen roles was by her mother's side in Martin Scorsese's 1974 Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Since then, Dern has flourished into one of American cinema's most important modern performers. Often driven to auteurs with bold visions, she's a director's actress whose commitment to her roles is never in question. She's never in danger of dispassionate acting, giving it her all 100% of the time and often twisting her visage into terrifying extremes. She really is 'The Face.'

To celebrate the occasion, a list of favorite Laura Dern film performances…

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Laura Dern Week: INLAND EMPIRE.

We're celebrating the great Laura Dern all week in honour of her 50th birthday. Here's David on the film that sent her down a rabbit hole...

It would be easy for an actor to be a puppet in a David Lynch film, lost as they are in a labyrinthine maze of the mind. The chronology is distorted and the characters’ consciousness is constantly splitting and merging in a kaleidoscope fashion. Laura Dern, though, knows the director better than most, and their most recent collaboration, 2006’s INLAND EMPIRE., places at her at the centre of an intricate puzzle of which she is all of the pieces...

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Take Three: Grace Zabriskie

 Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Grace Zabriskie

It was Grace Zabriskie’s 71^st birthday last week. She’s achieved a lot in her vast career over the 34 years she’s been acting: she had a daughter with oversized thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues); paid River Phoenix for sex (My Own Private Idaho); been killed by Chuckie (Child’s Play 2); ran on a brothel  (The Brothel); evangelized about vampires (Blood Ties); had a asteroid named after her (Armageddon); performed a voodoo sex-killing (Wild at Heart); fought for worker’s rights (Norma Rae); navigated b-movie space horrors (Galaxy of Terror); and turned mourning into a mad maternal art (Twin Peaks). And that's just ten of her 93+ screen roles.

Here are three performances that I feel deserve highlighting.

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