The View Beyond Parallax… more reads for the week of April 1

A pair of profiles salutes a trio of academics whose insights and straightforward, punchy writing have deservedly brought them wider fame than most university types scribbling away on film theory. Before they leave Madison for New York (so that Thompson can expand her second career as an authority on Egyptian sculpture), David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson talk with Laura Jones about the love of movies that brought the couple together. (“At the core of their reputation is Bordwell and Thompson’s passion for the art of film. ‘The pleasure of moviegoing is not something that has gotten lost,’ says [Wisconsin Film Festival director of programming Jim] Healy. ‘You can talk to them for hours about movies. Then you want to go off and watch all the movies they’ve talked about. But they also give you the feeling that it’s mutual. They want to know what you’ve discovered; what you like. They have that unending curiosity.’)

While Peter Monaghan describes the crucial work Barbara Flueckiger has done in amassing a history of color film, which has made her an invaluable resource to recent restoration projects trying to determine what color, exactly, was originally intended—or even possible, given technologies of the time. (“Working in film production, she had become well acquainted with the differences among film stocks, and with the capabilities of modern-day, high-definition “digital image acquisition,” and saw how that could permit her to lend fresh perspectives not only to film history and aesthetics, but also to restoration practice—the science of how, among other things, the distinctive “look” of various films is faithfully reproduced. ‘All the digital technologies were very familiar to me,’ she says. Her “selling point,” she adds, has been that ‘I have a background in engineering, so now I’m trying to combine the two, with research in film colors.’”) Via Mubi.

“The shock of the new fades by definition, but if it has hardly done so in the case of Blue Velvet, that may be because its tone remains forever elusive. To peruse the early reviews is to sense the emergence of the slipperiest of sensibilities, one that no one quite knew how to talk about. To encounter or revisit the film now, decades later, is to realize that we still don’t.” On Blue Velvet’s 30th anniversary, an excerpt from Dennis Lim’s David Lynch: The Man from Another Place revisits the initial reception of this timeless film, even as he situates it firmly in its era as Reaganism gone gonzo; while also clearing up why that notorious robin wasn’t, in fact, “mechanical.” And Violet Lucca wonders how much this “powerful counternarrative to the usual [cinematic] homecomings” would have changed if its deleted scenes were included (while making the mechanical robin gaffe). (“By making these tendencies explicitly present before Jeffrey crosses paths with Frank and the wrong side of Lumberton’s tracks, his character seems more duplicitous than curious about or tortured by his sexual urges. This Jeffrey is someone who’s been willfully misrepresenting himself to everyone—meaning that there’d be no homecoming transformation.”)

“’I always wondered if Zebraman has any idea that he was famous,’ says former Nirvana roadie Mike Dalke, one of many rock and roll lifers who can recite lines from the movie the way David Koresh could quote Revelation. ‘Does he understand that he’s this epic superstar to so many people in rock and roll, that he’s the Olympic decathlon champ of teenage idiots, that he’s Zebraman, a legitimate superhero?’ We tracked down Zebraman, too—he’s a plumber outside Baltimore now—and asked those very questions. Spoiler alert to this Deadspin exclusive: Yeah, he kinda knows.” Also celebrating its 30th, and not entirely a world removed in its milieu and concerns, Jeff Krulik and John Heyn’s Heavy Metal Parking Lot, whose making and slow evolution to cult status is chronicled by Dave McKenna—and who also tracks down several participants who look back fondly on their silly teenage rowdiness under the setting Maryland sun.

“Pakula brought the best of the old school sensibility to the project. He pulled Redford away from his idea of copying the reality of a certain kind of documentary. This could never be a documentary, he said, and even if it could nobody’d want to watch it. Hollywood has made an art of elevating the mundane. That’s what movie stars do for a living, make the everyday transcendent. Grab what you’ve got. Don’t dye your hair. Use being Robert Redford. Watergate was an epochal moment for America. Let’s feel its importance in every frame. Yes, the audience had to believe. But it also had to be transported. That was Hollywood’s art form.” Jon Boorstin looks back on the making of All the President’s Men with the observant, exhaustive appreciation for every aspect of the process you’d expect from an ambitious young filmmaker who snatched on to the job of Pakula’s assistant as his toehold in the industry.

“You cowardly bastards ran away last night without facing the music on the mask and other ancillary nightmares connected with the Jupiter shot. Please brace yourselves for this, figure out what to do next and I’ll be calling you later in the morning. Thanks. Stanley.” Bruce Logan recalls his first major gig as an animation artist and cameraman on 2001, and remembers his boss a man with a “great sense of humor” and a filmmaker that was “intensely driven and ruthless”; a mix captured in some memos from Kubrick that Logan includes. Via Movie City News.

“Hawks makes keen use of Morley’s derisive face and her grating, accusing voice and the entirely singular brand of toughness these things signaled, so much so that the paperback edition of Manny Farber’s classic book of film criticism Negative Space uses a photo of Morley frowning as Poppy as its cranky, disapproving emblem.” Dan Callahan celebrates Karen Morley, a striking, awkward fit in Hollywood movies even before her ban under the blacklist.

“Both sides of the Cold War often depicted the other’s citizenry as victimized, but the Soviet Union elevated it into an art, much in the way that the American mainstream developed the Soviet super-villain into a fetish object. Instead of portraying Americans as eroticized torturers, inhuman strongmen, or sinister ringleaders, the few Soviet movies that do pit Soviet and American characters against each other mostly portray Americans as misled or misinformed.” Ignatiy Vishnevetsky offers an intriguing take on why, anti-American as their movies could be, the cinema of the Soviet Union never offered up its equivalent of those flint-eyed, steel-jawed commies who murdered their way through low-rent American action pics.

“Dear Wheeler, you provide the prose poems I’ll provide the war.” “That’s fine, Mr. Kane.” “Yes I rather like it myself.” Orson Welles always believed that the Hearst papers’ attack on Citizen Kane was carried out by overzealous foot soldiers, Hearst himself barely even involved. As Dalya Alberge reports, new research shows the media baron was directly involved from the start, making this one instance where the director’s paranoia didn’t go far enough.

“LIKE: Bond has to escape on a motorcycle through the streets of Saigon while handcuffed to a beautiful woman? Excuse me while I cross my legs to hide my erection. DISLIKE: Pierce Brosnan dresses like a Holiday Inn hotel manager.” The get-an-expert-to-review-movies-in-his-profession trend reaches its zenith as the James Bond films are reviewed by Sterling Archer. Promotional fluff, sure, but with its fair share of laughs. Via Alex McCown.

“She had her hand in [the dog’s] mouth down its throat. Its tongue had wrapped itself around her fingers a number of times. Pretty soon I just put my hand in there too. It was so slippery and warm in there. I couldn’t even tell what was her fingers and what was the dog. I was sort of looking into her eyes and before we knew it, the dog and its owner were gone and she and I were just sitting there with our slobbery fingers interlocked. I said, ‘Isabella Rossellini, I’ve got a script for you.’ We went back to her place and watched some movies and now she’s in the movie.” At a recent screening of The Saddest Music in the World Guy Maddin recounted its making for the audience, and gave an interesting description of his hopes for his recent series of séance movies to boot. Paula Bernstein offers the highlights.

Even as a new generation of film composers emulate the icy, hypnotic grace of John Carpenter’s soundtracks, the old man shows up (again) to show them how it’s done, with his new album Lost Themes II. NPR has the whole thing up and streaming, from the tense rush of “Distant Dream” to the clanging echoes and strutting guitar—splitting the difference between ethereal and ominous—of “Real Xeno.”

The redesign, and increased functionality, of his favorite movie poster website provides justification enough for Adrian Curry to gather a collection of Czech and Polish posters that feature cats.

Obituary

Patty Duke became the youngest performer to win an Academy Award when she took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for playing the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962) at age 16. A year later, she became a TV star playing two roles (“They’re cousins / Identical cousins!”) in The Patty Duke Show, for which she received an Emmy nomination, and the starred in the cult showbiz melodrama Valley of the Dolls (1967) in part to play against the sweet, squeaky-clean image of her TV work. As she aged into adulthood, most of her work was on TV but she was constantly busy, especially as a star of TV movies. She won Emmy Awards for the telefilm My Sweet Charlie (1970), the mini-series Captains and the Kings (1976), and for the TV movie revival of The Miracle Worker (1979), this time playing the role of teacher Annie Sullivan. She passed away at the age of 69. More from Margalit Fox at The York Times.

Earl Hamner Jr. drew on his own life to create the popular family drama The Waltons. His 1961 novel “Spencer’s Mountain” was made into a movie starring Henry Fonda, which could have been an initial rough sketch for the series, and he wrote scripts for The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train, and Gentle Ben, and screenplays for Palm Springs Weekend (1963), the animated Charlotte’s Web (1973), and Where the Lilies Bloom (1974). He died at age 92.

The glamorous Rita Gam was a founding member of The Actor’s Studio. She made her Broadway debut in 1946 in the Ben Hecth play A Flag is Born and appeared on television before making her big screen debut in a wordless performance oppositye Ray Milland (also unspeaking) in The Thief (1952). She co-starred in Saadia (1953) with Cornel Wilde, Night People (1954) with Gregory Peck, Sign of the Pagan (1954) with Jeff Chander, Edgar Ulmer’s Hannibal (1959) with Victor Mature, and Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings (1961), and she won the Silver Bear at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival for No Exit (1962), sharing the award for Best Actress with co-star Viveca Lindfors. She continued to appear on television and movies (including Klute, 1971) but was busier on the stage for the rest of her career. She passed away at age 88. Mike Barnes for The Hollywood Reporter.

Ronnie Corbett, one of the most beloved British TV entertainers for 50 years, made his TV debut on David Frost’s The Frost Report, where he collaborated with John Cleese and first worked with Ronnie Barker, who became his comedy partner in the long-running sketch comedy series The Two Ronnies. He died at the age of 85. Mark Brown at The Guardian.