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Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet

List Price: $19.98
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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Unseemly, Nasty and Rank
Review: If your taste runs towards the morose, then David Lynch's "Blue Velvet" is for you. Unfortunately, there is little in this widely acclaimed film that makes it watchable or enjoyable. It's a depressing exercise in non-humanity, and is better left on the shelf. The director shocks us into thinking his characters have a real raison d'etre, when in fact there is little to explain why they behave the way they do. A waste of talent, time and critical support.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: one minuscle complaint, but what a film!
Review: One of the first things I looked for in this dvd was the infamous deleted scene in the bar where a topless woman strikes a match and lights her, um, sensitive areas on fire. The deleted scenes couldn't be found so stills are put to music. That is the only complaint about the entire package. There is a very entertaining review by Siskel and Ebert included, a great documentary about the film, and hidden extras. As for the film itself, it definately isn't for everyone. For those who enjoy Lynch, this is one of his better films if not his best. The plot is more linear than Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, though that's not necessarily a good thing to fans of Lynch's more recent work. Basically, this is the film where Lynch's obsession with darkness lying under the surface of innocence manifested itself. Everything, from the super saturated colors to the deliberately fake looking robin signifying hope, contributes to this beautifully horrifying comedy about growing into manhood and discovering the world for what it really is. I can't recommend this film strongly enough, though I must say if you haven't seen it yet you should rent it before buying it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Smooth as Blue Velvet,,,
Review: Although Lynch began as a painter his touch stone as a film director is really Hitchcock. No, we're not talking about the Hitchcock of North By Northwest but the Hitchcock of Vertigo, The Trouble With Charlie, The Birds and Shadow of a Doubt. In Many respects, Blue Velvet is an updating of Shadow of a Doubt; Lynch digs at the hidden underbelly of suburia and discovers the haunted dreams and corruption at its soul.

The kudos that were directed to Blue Velvet are very much deserved but the film viewer should be warned; Blue Velvet is a graphic film full of emotional violence and bizarre images. Ironically, Blue Velvet was one of Lynch's most successful films (and certainly truer to his vision than The Elephant Man). When Hitchcock mined similar terrain with Vertigo he found an unresponsive audience. When it was first released, Blue Velvet provoked as much as it entertained; the bizarre, surreal opening sequence by itself makes the audience sit up and take notice.

It took nearly thiry years for the audience to catch up with Hitchcock (by the mid-80's Vertio was recognized as a classic). No doubt, Lynch's best work will be rediscovered again by audiences. Roger Ebert's outraged review of the film (included on the DVD with the late Gene Siskel's more even tempered take on the film)was typical of critics and audiences at the time; how dare Lynch bait and provoke his audience this way! The responses weren't so different from Hitch's films Vertigo and Psycho when they were released (in the case of the Psycho much of the same critical reaction appeared in print).

The transfer to DVD is beautiful and captures the rich use of color as metaphor for various characters. The interviews with the stars and technical crew are interesting but, perhaps what is most interesting, is the fact that Lynch isn't interviewed. Instead, we see older interview footage shot around the time of the release of the film. Perhaps Lynch felt he had nothing to add but it is a rather strange. I would have been fascinated to hear what Lynch's observations were about the film now. Regardless, it doesn't effect the overall value of the extras.

Unfortunately, there are no outtakes. Evidently most of the outtakes were destroyed so a variety of stills are used to create the impression of what these outtakes would have looked like. The dissolves between various stills creates a subtle surreal effect that actually would have worked (in a limited fashion) quite well in the film.

One of Lynch's most complete films, Blue Velvet demonstrates all the interesting quirks that make his films worthwhile before the post Twin Peaks gimmicks. The only film that truly hinted at what Lynch was capable of was Eraserhead (a bit of trivia Jack Nance the star of Eraserhead and bit player in many Lynch films was my apartment manage when I lived in Los Angeles. At the time he was about to start work on Lynch's Dune). Both Elephant Man and Dune demonstrated that Lynch had the skill to make BLue Velvet but neither film belonged completely to Lynch.

Although Lynch would stumble with later films (Wild at Heart for example provokes like Blue Velvet but subsitutes vision weirdness), his vision matured with Blue Velvet. Blue Velvet is Lynch's Psycho. Lynch manages to create a bold, provocative new world with Blue Velvet. In stripping away the veneer of middle America, Lynch creates a striking portrait of the darkness that drives us all.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Special Edition is an improvement
Review: Blue Velvet Special Edition is a nice addition for fans of the film. The documentary is 70 minutes long and has a lot of current interview footage with Kyle, Isabella, Dennis and Laura edited together with older interview footage of David Lynch. The attempt at showing us deleted scenes are interesting, but not great as they are still photos. It is a beautiful transfer. The widescreen presentation is the ONLY way to see it. Having watched it on video for years, the widescreen DVD shows so much it is like watching a new movie. Now maybe a version of Wild at Heart comparable to the Special Edition will be released on DVD!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A True DVD Delight for the Lynch Purist...
Review: Recent Lynch films that have been released on DVD hardly live up to this one. I bought both "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" and "Muholland Drive", and was satisfied that I at least had stunning digital transfers of each (the sound being nearly perfect on both... profound sound being, after all, a Lynch trademark), but the Special Features left more to be desired. The "Blue Velvet: Special Edition" DVD, however, remedies these regrets tenfold. A completely absorbing documentary about the making of the film, entitled "Mysteries of Love", allows the viewer a rare and wondrous glimpse into the great director's actual filmmaking process. Testimonials from the likes of frequent collaborators Kyle Maclachlan, Laura Dern, Angelo Badalamenti and cinematographer Frederick Elmes are so rich and insightful, you really begin to feel as if you've passed through the red velvet curtains where the gum you're chewing has gone out of style. I wasn't crazy about the attempt to re-construct "deleted scenes" with mere photographs and moody music, but the Siskel and Ebert review from way-back-when is a real hoot. You just can't help but miss Mr. Siskel. Commentary-wise, Lynch himself is nowhere to be found. Fair enough. As far as I'm concerned, the man need not "explain" anything. As for the film itself, words fail me. It is a bad, brutal, beautiful dream I will certainly not mind having over and over again. This is what the DVD medium is all about.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Deleted photo stills...?????!!!!!
Review: I was as excited about this SE release as anyone. The extra I was most looking forward to (like anyone else) were the "deleted scenes". I got the disc early and that's the first place I went. When you select this feature you get some diatribe about how two hours of footage was lost. You then get a montage of studio stills set to creepy music. No dialogue, no explanation, no commentary, nothing. It's nice for novelty sake, but I think it's misleading to call them "scenes" which were deleted. It should have been called "stills from scenes which were deleted". The documentary is GREAT which features new interviews with the stars spliced with old interviews with Lynch. The transfer is beautiful and the sound (5.1) is a definite improvement over the previous release. At the end of the day, the transfer, sound, and documentary is Heineken. The deleted scenes are Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Weird
Review: As usual David Lynch is weird as hell. Dennis Hopper is weird as hell. Kyle MacLachlan is weird as hell. Isabella Rosellini is beautiful... and weird as hell. Severed ear... ants...Frank Booth... "what's your name neighbor?" If you like weird movies and want to count how many times Dennis Hopper says the F word then this movie is for you. Lynch is a very, very strange man. Dennis Hoppers as the gas sniffing, mommy fetishist with a thing for blue velvet (the song and the cloth) is very menacing. One "F'd" up movie.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: WELL...IT'S GOT ALOT OF PRETTY COLORS.
Review: and that's about all it has.After reading countless reviews for this i gave it a try..needless to say it did not impress.
The cinematography is exceptional...however it is relied upon to heavilly...this movie was like looking at a shiny penny,at first it dazzles then you realize it is just a penny.
lynch seems to prefer style over substance as every scene could be a still picture(then be called art),but in trying to evoke a story he relies on the viewers ability to read between the lines and hoping that the pretty colors will be enough to make the B-movie writing thought-provoking.
If you feel like zoning out for awhile,looking at some pretty colors and giving your brain a little rest then rent this.
other than that there are numerous movies out there that rely on sound writing and stories than visual flair.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Dennis Hopper swears a lot.
Review: David Lynch is a very unconventional storyteller. There is nothing wrong with that, but one must at least make sense of the story. In 'Blue Velvet', Lynch explores the sexual underworld of a clean-cut suburban town. A young man finds some suspicious things happening in an apartment complex. What he finds out is quite distrubing; Dennis Hopper has a fetish for blue velvet and performes some bizzare sex acts. It was interesting, but the story is ruined by Hopper using the f-word for every other word. The young man falls in love with the victim of Hopper's sex acts. Other than that the story is not very interesting. The characters are more like robots and once again there are scenes that are obviously stolen from Alfred Hitchcock, specifically 'Vertigo'.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Get Mullholand Dr. instead
Review: I like Lynch. Dune-good. Wild At Heart-good. Twin Peaks-good. Mullholland Dr.-great. Blue Velvet-BAD. Now most Lynch fans would hate me. They would say i dont know what i'm talking about. Well i dont know why but i almost couldnt finish this film. It was just awful. It was werid and some parts were interesting but in the whole there are other lynch films i would rather watch. I think Mullholland Dr. is his best picture. It requries many viewings in order to figure it out so i would suggest gettin that instead. I do think that this movie is definatley worth a watch. I just think it was one of lynch's poorer films.


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