MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) David Lynch has never been what you’d call a mainstream director -- his last feature film, if I recall correctly, began with him videotaping old Polish factories -- but despite his reputation as an artsy iconoclast, he’s also got a streak of razzle-dazzle showmanship and the ability to hook an audience like nobody’s business when he puts his transcendental mind to it. Perhaps owing to the relatively commercial nature of the film’s origin as a pilot for ABC (infamously ordered and then canceled by network muttonheads for being too “Lynchian”), Mulholland Drive kicks off with a psychedelic jitterbug scene that gets the adrenalin pumping like any good overture, then moves into an opening sequence freighted with intrigue, atmosphere and dramatic possibility like a master class in cinematic storytelling: a beautiful woman in a limousine at night...a man with a gun about to kill her...a doomed car full of hedonistic teenagers screaming towards them, and then...CRASH! The man with the gun is killed, the beautiful woman staggers off into the Los Angeles night, her memory obliterated...and I’m ready and willing to follow Lynch wherever he wants to go. (AO)
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One of the oldest and most respected independent distribution houses in the United Kingdom, Tartan Films, is taking down its shutter. Plagued by financial difficulties and distribution concerns, Tartan has closed down its offices, dismantled its American arm (Tartan Video USA), released all of its employees, and begun the process of selling off its highly respectable catalogue to other distributors. In recent years, Tartan had been best known for its "Asia Extreme" series, which brought movies like Oldboy and the original Japanese version of The Ring to the West, but the catalog of the 26-year-old company included everything from Bergman's Wild Strawberries to The Death of Mr. Lazarescu.
