by Tom Lea
Artwork of the Day: Chaplain
Monthly Archives: May 2017
This Week’s “Peaks” : Parts Three And Four (Spoilers Abound)
Once upon a time, there was a school of thought in various quarters of the largely self-appointed “intelligentsia” that posited that David Lynch was something of a fraud. It was never more than a minority opinion, of course — certainly nowhere near as large as the chorus of voices that said much the same about Lichtenstein, Warhol, John Cage, or even James Joyce — and it’s one that pretty much disappeared in the wake of the near-universal praise heaped upon The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive, but it was something that dogged his tail for a good couple of decades prior to reaching his currently-enjoyed plateau of (more or less) unanimous acclaim . The argument, such as it was, essentially boiled down to this : the guy simply slaps a bunch of weird imagery up on the screen and none of it actually means anything, but it’s done in…
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Music Video of the Day: She’s A Mystery To Me by Roy Orbison (1989, dir. David Fincher)
Seeing as I did In Dreams yesterday, I felt it was necessary to follow it with She’s A Mystery To Me, since they are connected. I’m going quote Wikipedia below about how the song came to be, and it’s ties back to both In Dreams and Blue Velvet (1986) because me paraphrasing it doesn’t make any sense.
During a restless night of sleep in June 1987 in London during U2’s Joshua Tree Tour, Bono slept with the soundtrack to the film Blue Velvet CD on repeat. The CD had been given to him by the Edge’s wife. When he woke the following morning, he had a tune in his head which he assumed was from the soundtrack. He soon realized it wasn’t so he wrote down the basic structure of the song. Later that day he sang the unfinished song to the band at their pre-concert soundcheck at Wembley Arena. After the concert, Orbison paid the band an unannounced visit backstage, where a perplexed Bono played the song for him. Bono and Orbison worked again on the song in mid-November in Los Angeles. The album Mystery Girl was named after the song.
I haven’t seen all of David Fincher’s music videos, and I might be a little biased since I like Orbison so much, but I think this is the best one I’ve seen. I love that he did it with almost no one in the video. It’s all done as if we are a detective arriving on a series of scenes, and trying to piece together what happened.
According to Wikipedia, there are two versions of this video. This is the popular one where it is a grown woman that is planning on leaving, who we assume is Orbison because of the boots. In the other version, it’s a mother who is pursuing her young daughter who is about to board the plane. The woman is played by the same person in both videos. The big difference is that the second version has the one leaving return to the person showing up at the end rather than being left standing alone.
The only other video that I can think of that is quite as beautiful, or is at least very similar, is Butterfly, where Mariah Carey got veteran cinematographer, Daniel Pearl, to co-direct it with her.
The video was shot by Marc Reshovsky. He worked mainly as a cinematographer. However, he did get behind the camera for a few music videos like Nothin’ But A Good Time by Poison and I Remember You by Skid Row.
I’ve included the trailer below for the documentary made about the album, Mystery Girl, that was directed by Orbison’s son, Alex Orbison:
Also, assuming it is still up, here is Bono singing the song:
It’s amazing how much it sounds like something Bono would write, but it’s still inextricably linked to Orbison’s voice.
Enjoy!
A Movie A Day #139: Operation C.I.A. (1965, directed by Christian Nyby)
Saigon, South Vietnam. A CIA agent stands on a street corner when a young man parks his scooter in front of him. The young man runs away and the scooter explodes, killing the agent. Another agent, Mark Andrews (Burt Reynolds), is sent to Saigon to find out why the first agent was killed. From the minute he arrives, Mark finds himself in the middle of a web of betrayal, intrigue, double agents, and a communist plot to assassinate the American ambassador. Only Mark can prevent the assassination but first, he is going to have to survive a series of death traps. He will also have to wrestle a boa constrictor. If you have ever wanted to see Burt Reynolds wrestle a boa constrictor, this is the movie for you.
This low-budget James Bond rip off would be forgotten if not for three reasons.
First, this was one of the few American films to be made about the Vietnam War during the time of America’s involvement in that conflict. Operation C.I.A. was released in September, a month after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Soon, the Vietnam War would become so unpopular that very few mainstream movies would even acknowledge it. Originally, Operation C.I.A. was going to be filmed on location but, because of the rising hostilities, filming was instead done in Thailand, with Bangkok filling in for Saigon. That Bangkok and Saigon had absolutely nothing in common was not considered to be a problem.
Secondly, this was one of the few films to be directed by Howard Hawks’s longtime editor, Christian Nyby. Nyby is credited as directing The Thing, though many assume that Hawks actually directed that film. Post-Thing, Nyby had an undistinguished directorial career, working mostly in television. The black-and-white Operation C.I.A. has little in common with The Thing but it could pass for an episode of I Spy.
Finally, Operation C.I.A. was Burt Reynolds’s first starring role. Burt is miscast as an American James Bond and he spends the majority of the movie looking stiff and uncomfortable. The first time that Sean Connery left the role of James Bond, Burt Reynolds was one of the actors considered to replace him. Judging from Operation C.I.A., everyone should be happy that George Lazenby got the role instead.
Especially Burt.
Happy Birthday Vincent Price: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (AIP 1960)
I’ve covered Vincent Price’s film work 17 times here, which must be some kind of record. Can you tell he’s one of my all-time favorite actors? Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. was born May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, Missouri. The elegant, eloquent Price was also an avid art collector and gourmet cook of some note. He’s justifiably famous for his film noir roles, but Price etched his name in cinematic stone as one of filmdom’s Masters of Horror.
Price starred in his first fright film way back in 1940 with THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS . But it wasn’t until 1953’s 3-D outry HOUSE OF WAX that he became tagged as a horror star. Later in that decade, he made a pair of gimmicky shockers for director William Castle ( THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL , THE TINGLER), and in 1960 began his collaboration with Roger Corman on movies based (loosely, mind you) on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The first…
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Artwork of the Day: Two Thousand Yard Stare
By Tom Lea
Music Video of the Day: In Dreams by Roy Orbison (1987, dir. Leslie Libman)
Since I missed the day of the premiere of the Twin Peaks reboot, I’m doing my Twin Peaks tie-in video today. If Wikipedia and Songfacts are to be taken at face value, then there’s an interesting story behind this music video.
As hard as it is for someone like me who grew up on Orbison to hear, his career apparently stalled in the 1970s. Maybe people really didn’t like The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967), and held it against him.
The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967, dir. Michael D. Moore)
I wonder how he ended up agreeing to be in that. Maybe he saw that Marty Robbins was starting to appear in movies such as that years Hell On Wheels, and decided he’d take a crack at it the same way Elvis did. His career probably stalled because it was eclipsed by the revolutions in music during the 60s and 70s.
Then Blue Velvet (1986) came along. Orbison didn’t authorize the use of the song in the movie or know how it was going to be used. Lynch went ahead and used it anyways. Since it was used so effectively and is one of the most important parts of the film, it stirred up renewed interest in Orbison. At the time, Orbison didn’t have access to the master recordings of many of his hit songs because of legal issues. Orbison changed his tune about its use in the movie at this point, and asked Lynch if he could use some footage from the movie in the music video for the song. To solve the legal problem, Orbison went back into the studio to re-record his hits for the 1987 album In Dreams: The Greatest Hits. Lynch not only was fine with him using scenes from the movie, but offered to help with the re-recording of the song for the greatest hits album, which he did.
The video is nice and simple. It captures the surreal feeling of the song, the film, and combines the two into a single music video. I love that it starts with Dean Stockwell lip-syncing the song before slowly fading to Orbison actually singing it. It uses Stockwell several more times during the video, but that initial part is like peeling back the curtain to see what is really behind it–a theme of Blue Velvet.
I am going to believe mvdbase when it says Leslie Libman directed this. It, and IMDb both say that she directed some videos for him. The only thing that throws me a bit is that Wikipedia says 1987, but mvdbase says 1989. I think that’s probably an error. Still, they did make videos after Orbison’s death in 1989. That’s why I’m making special mention of it.
You may or may not recognize one of the backup singers in the video. It’s Denise Vlasis, who is best-known as being a prominent Madonna lookalike.
Let’s put this all together here. You have David Lynch who used In Dreams by Roy Orbison in Blue Velvet. The video was directed by Leslie Libman. Leslie Libman would go on to direct Britney Ever After (2017). Britney Spears famously kissed Madonna onstage, and collaborated with her. Denise Vlasis is such a famous Madonna lookalike that she has worked with Madonna. Denise Vlasis is in the music video In Dreams, which brings us back to David Lynch.
You know, as bad as Britney Ever After was, this has me thinking it would have been appropriate for Libman to use She’s A Mystery To Me after the film’s attempt to explain away it not really having the rights to tell the story by saying that people only knew her through video clips–usually from TMZ.
Enjoy!
“The Normals” Are Anything But
Well, whaddya know — sometimes those three-and four-page previews they run in the back of comics actually work.
Case in point : the new Aftershock Comics series The Normals is probably not something I would have picked up from my LCS shelves armed with little to no foreknowledge about it. Its writer and creator, Adam Glass, is not somebody I’m terribly familiar with beyond some vague awareness of the fact that he’s a “Hollywood guy” (specifically he’s currently employed as an executive producer on one of the numerous Criminal Minds shows) and that he’s the brains behind the Rough Riders series (and its recently-published sequel) which, rightly or wrongly, strikes me as being more or less a League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen rip-off featuring historical, rather than literary, personages; artist Dennis Calero is a name I vaguely recall seeing credited elsewhere from time to time but I couldn’t tell you specifically
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4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Twin Peaks Edition
Look, I’m just going to admit the truth.
I am obsessed.
Right now, I am totally obsessed with Twin Peaks. Even as I spent the last few days watching movies off the DVR and writing the reviews that I posted on this site today, I still found my thoughts continually returning to Twin Peaks.
So, in honor of that obsession, here’s a special edition of 4 Shots From 4 Films.
It is happening again.
4 Shots From 4 Films
Twin Peaks 1.1 — The Pilot (dir by David Lynch)
Twin Peaks 2.22 “Beyond Life and Death” (dir by David Lynch)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (dir by David Lynch)
Twin Peaks: The Return Part 3 (dir by David Lynch)
International Weirdness : “Kedi”
I’ve never been there, so I had no idea, but apparently Istanbul is a city of cats. I mean lots and lots of cats.
Which means two things : my wife would probably love it there, and there’s a heck of a documentary just waiting to be made about this whole situation.
Okay, fair enough, I probably wouldn’t have guessed the latter to be the case, either, but Turkish director Ceyda Torun knows better than I, and late in 2016 he proved it by releasing his new film Kedi, which has gotten some pretty strong (and frankly well-deserved) notices from around the world, and recently made its way to the eclectic discount house (that would be the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis) just up the street from our house, so any excuses I may have once had for giving it a pass are, obviously, long gone.
I freely admit to…
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Through the Shattered Lens 