Waitin’ for a Factory Girl

In theaters Friday: Charlotte’s Web, Eragon and The Pursuit of Happyness.

New on DVD: The Devil Wears Prada and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Finally, with less than three weeks before the New York/LA premiere, the much-awaited (by me at least) trailer for Factory Girl is online here and over at YouTube.com. The trailer looks well shot and evocative of both the era and Andy Warhol’s no frills film style. On the other hand, just about anything looks cool with David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” playing over it (Would Bill Murray’s contemplative gaze across the sea in The Life Aquatic held half as much sway without it?). But I have a creeping suspicion that both Guy Pierce and Hayden Christensen are extremely uneven in their portrayals of Warhol and the Bob Dylan/Bob Neuwirth amalgam, Billy Quinn. Pierce was great in the confessional scene, but “You’re the boss, apple sauce?” Maybe Warhol really did say things like that, but I doubt he said them with such sly disregard.

On the whole Dylan/Neuwirth controversy, it is obvious the filmmakers have taken liberties here, so I just hope the film is billed as a dramatized fairy tale version and not a straight, factual Sedgwick biopic. By all accounts she and Dylan never consummated their mutual obsession with one another. He married model Sara Lownds instead, though much of his longing for Sedgwick poured out in song on my favorite Dylan album, 1966’s Blonde On Blonde (Wink, wink, get it? Warhol and Sedgwick as the blond icons). But Sedgwick did have a long-term relationship with Dylan’s first mate Bob Neuwirth. Factory Girl’s Billy Quinn is a combination of Dylan’s poetic protectiveness and insistence that Sedgwick must flee Warhol’s enclave of sycophants, and the torrid love affair she had with Neuwirth.

Here is one blogger who is not too thrilled with what has been changed from alleged history. Me, I’m not bothered by it. The truth is right here in American Girl. Why not have a movie that throws some facts out the window for the sake of pure entertainment? Andy would have loved that. So who has best portrayed Andy Warhol on film? The contenders are:
Jared Harris in I Shot Andy Warhol, Crispin Glover in The Doors and
David Bowie in Basquiat. I’ll hold off on my vote until I see Factory Girl. Think it over, and in January I’ll officially open voting for the Warhol Challenge.

I saw David Lynch’s Lost Highway last weekend. Even though it was on a worn-out VHS tape (apparently the film has yet to see official DVD release in the U.S.), Lynch’s dramatic use of lighting and staging were as readily available as his surrealist plot devices. Though its filled with just as much—and maybe more—disturbing imagery than any of his films, it is also his most accessible in a strange, mid-‘90s way. It has the standard “try to figure out which part is a dream, which part is reality, and why the main character is losing his mind” format that all of his films fit into. This may excite you, or it might just wear thin.

Basically, Bill Pullman plays a jazz saxophonist whose wife is murdered. A videotape revealing him as the murderer turns up, and he is arrested for the crime and put on death row even though he has no recollection of killing her. The tide turns the next morning when the prison cell is not occupied by Pullman’s character, but by a young mechanic who has no idea how he got there. The story starts to follow the younger man, who gets released from prison and gets involved with a local crime boss. Soon brunettes become blondes, characters merge, are reinvented and revived, until Pullman’s character returns for the finale. Explaining any more than that would be far too fruitless and time consuming. But if you’re a fan of Lynch’s work, or that of Stanley Kubrick, and don’t get scared in the dark, Lost Highway might be worth the ride.

Here is the trailer for David Lynch’s latest headtrip Inland Empire. Lynch’s movies always mix dreams with reality, but let’s face it, more often then not, they are a nightmare. “It’s strange what love does,” goes the trailer song, and it’s always strange to see what Lynch will do next. He shot Inland Empire on consumer grade digital video, then transferred the results to film resulting in a look I’ve never seen before in a theatrical release. Some early reviews have been calling the film a self-parody of the Lynch model. Maybe the esoteric writer/director has reached the point in his career where self-plagiarism is the only place he has left to explore artistically. Or maybe the film is so incomprehensible the only proper adjective to describe it is “Lynchian.”

Here is the advance poster for Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End. I guess “at world’s end,” means the Far East because this poster has a decidedly Oriental flare. The first Pirates sequel was a little bit of a drag and about 30 minutes too long. Maybe the final installment will return to the spirit of the original.

And remember my positive review of Stranger Than Fiction? Here is what can happen when that premise goes horribly wrong. The film is called The Number 23, and instead of Will Ferrell rocking out to Wreckless Eric and falling for a playfully anarchist cookie-slinger, we’ve got Jim Carrey going homicidal bonkers over Michael Jordan’s digits. I know Carrey ditched his longtime agent (the one that made him a household name and a gajillionaire with Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber), and he has lost his taste for juvenile comedy, but has he also lost his mind?