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Dominique Laffin in Tapage nocturne (Nocturnal Uproar, Catherine Breillat, 1979)

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CLEAN AIR For Ever!

What a shot. Remember My Name (1978), directed by Alan Rudolph, cinematography by Tak(ashi) Fujimoto

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Tight summer plans.

Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)

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"I'm sorry, Phil, I couldn't let you do it. I flipped the bird." - Hypolita Laveau Kropotkin

Dennis Hopper in Witch Hunt (Paul Schrader, 1994)

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The Heart of Justice (Bruno Barreto, 1992) cold opens with Dennis Hopper enjoying lunch with Vincent Price (in his final acting role), Hopper lovingly calling Price an "old catamite" and surprising him with a sweet goodbye kiss on the head. It's all downhill from there of course, but in a wonderfully weird uphill fashion, like a TV version of an Escherian stairwell. A good case of bad taste.

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"Well, I sure turned into an interesting driveway."

When the unsuspecting screenwriter drives up to the silent star’s seemingly deserted mansion in Sunset Boulevard (1950), the garage immediately reminded me of photos I'd seen of the stables at the Greystone Mansion, located on a hill just above Sunset Boulevard, in which David Lynch set up his makeshift studio for Eraserhead (1977). Billy Wilder’s classic is a famous favorite of his and Lynch must’ve noticed the similarity? Could he have sensed though that the mansion, where he ended up working for four years and even temporarily lived after his first divorce, would come to trap him in a similar way to Joe?

There’s a grim, deeper connection between the two mansions, an almost Lynchian ‘twinning’ and/or reverse of sorts. During the late 1920s, when talkies were taking over Hollywood - sorry, Norma -, an oil tycoon’s son named Ned Doheny, who had just moved into Greystone, was shot and murdered there by his close childhood friend and personal confident Hugh Plunkett, who then committed suicide with the same gun. Some consider the two to have been lovers and the case to remain unsolved. The Los Angeles Examiner headlined: ‘Crazed secretary kills millionaire and himself’.

Sources: - https://thesageowlblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/favorite-la-spots-greystone-mansion/ - https://www.robertloerzel.com/2019/09/26/looking-for-hollywood-history-and-david-lynchs-los-angeles-part-1/ - https://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/the-continuing-mystery-of-the-greystone-mansion-murders/

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Vonetta McGee and Max Julien as Thomasine & Bushrod (Gordon Parks Jr., 1974)

- I wonder what history's gonna say about us. - I guess it just depends on who writes it.

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Burnt by the Sun (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1994)

Russian title: Utomlyonnye solntsem / French title: Soleil trompeur

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Nelly Frijda in My nights with Susan, Olga, Julie, Piet and Sandra (Mijn nachten met Susan, Olga, Julie, Piet en Sandra, Pim de la Parra, 1975)

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Dark dreams and desires, bright windows and screens

The Silence (Tystnaden, Ingmar Bergman, 1963, DoP Sven Nykvist) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982, DoP Fred Schuler) Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983, DoP Mark Irwin) Amateur (Hal Hartley, 1994, DoP Michael Spiller)

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'Tirar', besides 'to pull', in Spanish also means 'to shoot'. More foreshadowing in Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986) as the character of María, seen here, enters the movie theater to meet up with Diego and they catch the ending of Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946).

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When people ask me if I've been enjoying the sun after spending most of the time inside a cinema or at home watching movies.

Eraserhead Stories (David Lynch, 2001)

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The Signalman (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1976)

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Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) Cinematograhpy by Fritz Arno Wagner & Günther Krampf

Vermiglio (Maura Delpero, 2024) Cinematography by Mikhail Krichman

The distinctive shot of Lucia at the beach between the crosses, echoing a similar one in Nosferatu (1922, recreated in the 1979 and 2024 versions) brings me to this quick comparison: a war-crazed stranger plagues a local village and causes one of its young women to sacrifice herself - “She used to be so pretty”, an older woman comments. There are secrets, lies and loss of innocence (blood). Though, in Vermiglio it is suggested they aren’t much better off with Cesare, the authoritative, dedicated scholar to Murnau’s Professor Bulwer / Stoker’s Dr. Van Helsing. Prone to violence, he preys upon them through patriarchal dominance.

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"When cherries blossom, people become cheerful and gather to walk under the trees, drinking sake, eating dumplings, uttering phrases like ‘What a sight!’ or ‘Spring is here!’ But it��s all a lie."

Crossfades from: Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956) Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Masahiro Shinoda, 1975) Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)

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Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Masahiro Shinoda, 1975)

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Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Masahiro Shinoda, 1975)