We hardcore fans of David Lynch's signature blend of West Coast decay and psychedelic phantasmagoria will lap up just about anything the man brews, so long as it's a moving picture. His “Signature Cup Coffee”? That got mypulse racing! Cooking quinoa? Why the hell not? Amateur meteorology? Bit dull, though granted this is LA weather. Now Lynch ups the ante with a batshit music video for “Crazy Clown Time,” the title track from his 2011 solo album (explored by our own Kayla Blatchley last November).

Clocking in at seven minutes (the approximate length of his classic Rabbitsepisodes), “Crazy Clown Time” is described by Lynch as “intense psychotic backyard craziness, fueled by beer.” No Mystery Man nor Frank Booth, though there's plenty of classic Lynchian imagery to enthrall and confuse us. I invite you to cue up the video and join me as I plunge deep into aMulholland Drive-style puzzle box:

0:01 Lost Highway-like onscreen static (also like Rammstein's “Rammstein” music video, directed by Lynch for the Lost Highway soundtrack)
0:04 engulfing flames, uh Twin Peaks...? (and, by title, Fire Walk With Me)
0:07 distant horizontal shot, used in Blue Velvet's drug den (the Roy Orbison “In Dreams” scene)
0:14 Lynch in profile resembling Eraserhead's Man in the Planet
0:32 woman sprawled on the grass looks vaguely like Masuimi Max, who cameoed in Inland Empire
0:40 from this angle, Bobby (with the “red shirt”) resembles Justin Theroux from Mulholland Drive

Pausing to transcribe a choice lyric verbatim: “Danny poured the beer. Danny poured beer all over Sally. Dannyyyy poured the beer. Danny poured the beer. Danny poured the beeeeeeer all over Sally.”

1:57 Sally starts kicking Danny's ass, a la Inland Empire: that part where Laura Dern and Julia Ormond get in a tussle on Hollywood Boulevard
2:10 choreographed jamming to the beat, ditto a cathartic Inland Empire(plus that red-dress blonde recalls Mulholland Drive's Laura Harring “in disguise”)
2:45 choice lyric: “It was crazy clown time. Crazy clowwwn tiiime. It was real fun.”
3:16 Petey (the '80s punk) lights his hair on fire. Taking a cue from Lynch's description of a painting in his exhibition at Jack Tilton Gallery: “It's our world, and all it is is a boy lighting a fire. And here is his neighbor, the neighborhood girl whom he likes a lot.” As in, quit reading so damn much into it.
4:00 echoes, noises, tape effects, jarring camera movement, i.e. all signature Lynchian elements: Eraserhead on down the line, conjuring strobe-lit frights from previous films (Inland Empire: Nikki confronts The Phantom; Lost Highway's videotape; Mulholland Drive's Club Silencio)

If you've listened to the Crazy Clown Time album track, then Lynch's video is incredibly literal. Lines like: “Bobby, he had a red shirt. Susie, she had hers off completely” become just that, the sorta-Justin Theroux-looking dude pounding back two beers, the blonde woman grinding against a Blue Velvet suburban lawn. This leaves the inclusion of a football player (recalling album track “Football Game”?) and the mustachioed guy on the lawn total mysteries. (Perhaps Twin Peaks kingpin Jean Renault?)

But no matter how bewildering it gets, I am heartened by Lynch's own words in an interview about his artwork:

"You are interpreting it very well yourself. It strikes you a certain way, gives you a certain feeling. And that's it. If there was meant to be more, there would be a whole text for it. It is what it is."

Image: two still frames from Youtube, photo-chopped by the author

Prometheus, Ridley Scott's upcoming Alien sorta-prequel, is the only film I care about in 2012. The Avengers? Slag off! The Dark Knight Rises? Only if Marion Cotillard plays Talia al Ghul. OK, so I'll coincidentally be in Tokyo this May for the premiere of Sadako 3D—of Ringu/The Ring fame—but that's neither here nor there.

After a lot of hinting and fanboy-rumoring, Scott unveiled a bonkers Prometheus trailer at WonderCon 2012. Predictably, the blogs facehugged the shit out of it, parsing out each and every detail. Bloody Disgusting, one of my trusted go-to sites for all that is cinematically bloody and/or disgusting, offered a slew of screen-grabs with commentary like “yes, that looks like a Xenomorph to me, too.” (If you're just joining the party, theXenomorph was the primary antagonist of the Alien film series. Quoth Wikipedia,“a fictional endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species.”)

I've been intrigued since a Sky News tip that the Space Jockey, that huge-ass desiccated lifeform from the original Alien, will figure significantly inPrometheus. Also: that H.R. Giger, the Swiss biomechanical alchemist responsible for the Alien design itself, is contributing Prometheus set designs. Corridors that resemble jumbo industrial-design ribcages? A fully-functioning Derelict, the junked wishbone-shaped spacecraft containing the long-dead Space Jockey? “Proper” Xenomorphs or not, I am beyond stoked.

A fan already spliced the Prometheus teaser from this past December withclips from Alien, highlighting the films' respective contextual similarities, down to the repeating, distorted Wilhelm screams. Blogging last month about the rumored Blade Runner redo and the perils of cinematic replication, I included Scott's comment that Prometheus shares “strands ofAlien's DNA, so to speak.” More than that: they exist emphatically within the same universe.

This ain't no Men in Black III, that's for damn sure. Like the Greek god himself, Scott brings us mortals a much-needed dose of “hard sci-fi,” perfected by him in Blade Runner and largely poisoned by American cinema subsequently. I was a kid when James Cameron's Aliens came out, which was awesomely entertaining but lacked that deep-space dread of Scott's original. In spite of a few highlights—like David Twohy's genuinely dope Pitch Black (no small thanks to Vin Diesel) and Paul Anderson's Event Horizon for its glorious gore—there hasn't been a Scott-calibre sci-fi thriller since.

“In space, no one can hear you scream,” says that iconic Alien trailer. Guess what: that doesn't apply to theaters. There's gonna be a lot of screaming, and June 8 can't come any quicker.

Image: courtesy Badass Digest

While I’m not so good at being aware of what’s going on in popular culture, somehow I'm still stubborn and adamant in my judgment of popular culture. This becomes horribly evident every year when it comes time for the Academy Awards and I haven’t seen any of the films nominated for anything, yet I insist on filling out the NYTimes Oscar Ballot along with my family and friends.

The only 2012 nominee I saw was Drive (here's me raving about its soundtrack a few months ago), which was only nominated in the category of sound editing. It did not win. My sister-in-law informed me that Glenn Close was in this film Albert Nobbs about a woman dressing as a man in the 1920s, and I proceeded to pick that film as my winner for every category for which it was nominated.

My brother found my ignorance amusing enough to actually record some of it. In his words, "Watching the 'scars with my sister is the most hilarious thing in the world. She is almost criminally ignorant of movies and popular culture in general." What follows is his edited transcript.

"The Descendants, that stupid movie about the beach?"

"The Artist...it’s fucking silent, it’s not gonna win. Well, at least it’s prestigious."

"The Help... Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz are married?"

On The Iron Lady: "What's that, a movie about the First Lady?"

[Insert unrelated heated exchange between the Blatchley siblings:]

Kayla: "Why does everyone love Sandra Bullock? I mean, why is she even on TV?"

Response: "Well, she won the Academy Award last year."

Kayla: "What?!?! That stupid bitch won an academy award? For WHAT?"

Response: "Blindside."

Kayla: "What?! That movie about a prissy white woman who lets a black kid stay with her won an Academy Award? They don't even have sex!"

My impeccable strategy of seeing as few movies as possible landed me 4 our of a possible 24 on my NYTimes Oscar ballot. My Oscar picks are apparently not Oscar’s picks. But who is the real winner? I somehow suspect it’s me.

Image: Getty images via blog.zap2it.com

For years now, film geeks have hyperventilated at the increasingly likely prospect of Ridley Scott making a new Blade Runner. Now, the addictive film blog Twitch has posted the rumor that Harrison Ford might be returning as well. The Guardian sprinted with it, claiming "Harrison Ford is lining up to make a surprise return to the role of Rick Deckard"—which isn't exactlythe case.

As a lifelong fan of Blade Runner and its neo-noir storyline, I wonder: why touch a classic? Or, if one dares revisit a film as ingrained in film-lovers' psyches as Blade Runner, what constitutes a "good" sequel (or—cringe—prequel)? The way I see it, there are five key factors:

Original director. Blade Runner isn't the only cult classic Scott's revisiting: Prometheus, framed as a prequel to Alien, hits screens this summer. Scott is the only director I trust with these films. Pro: Could anyonebut Peter Jackson have made three epic installments of The Lord of the Rings, plus forthcoming "prequel" The Hobbit? Con: You can't touch Richard Donner's quintessential buddy cop classic Lethal Weapon. But by the third episode, Donner added Joe Pesci and Mel Gibson shed his '80s mullet for increasingly bloody historical dramas. We're all too old for that shit. 

Different director. Pro: Oren Peli achieved something singularly scary inParanormal Activity, a rare gem in the fulminating "found footage" franchise. Yet Paranormal Activity 3—set 18 years prior to the original and directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman—is even scarier. And Alfonso Cuarón's darker touch to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban sealed it as my favorite from the inflated series. (J.K. Rowling loved it too.) Con: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.'s atrocious 2011 prequel to John Carpenter's The Thing, beginning with flash-frozen dialogue and culminating in a shitshow of sucky CGI.

"Same world." Scott says Prometheus shares "strands of Alien's DNA, so to speak." Pro: Whether or not the xenomorphs appear, H.R. Giger's characteristic design most definitely will. Con: That drippy, green-grey palette mildewing the Wachowski Bros' sequels to The Matrix got foul fast. 

Recurring characters. A sticky wicket for Blade Runner 2 (or Blade Runner Reloaded, as one Twitch commenter cheekily calls it) if Ford really does return. Pro: Akira Kurosawa's Sanjuro needed scene-mugger Toshiro Mifune (Yojimbo's rough-housing ronin) to ramp up the ass-kicking quotient. Con:Tron: Legacy did itself no favors recasting Jeff Bridges (acting "like a weary cyber version of the Dude", burns Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman), let alone creepily de-aging his CGI clone.

Totally different characters. The "retrofitted" world of Blade Runner is so vibrant, do we even need a Deckard? Take the Final Destination franchise. Spreading three directors and nearly unique casts over five gory films didn't blunt its box-office success. Evidence: part five has the best Rotten Tomatoes average (61% fresh) and part four grossed the most money. Besides, I loathed the original (Devon Sawa…beurk!).

For now, the “Harrison Ford returning to Blade Runner” scoop remains speculative. But Scott's direction gives me confidence that it'll be dope, no matter who dons that trenchcoat.

Image: GeekTyrant

Cormac McCarthy has finished and sold his script for The Counselor before finishing the novel, and I find the whole situation out of control. Sure, McCarthy has time to finish the novel before the film goes into production, but what if he doesn’t care? What if, by finishing the script, he has created a dead plot for himself that he now only fills in with scribbles and kittens?

On the other hand, how can this script not be the best script ever? From Deadline: “Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.’”

Most disturbing and powerful? Muscular and masculine? Wit and humor make “the nightmare” scarier? How are my bodily fluids even contained right now?

In order to calm down just a little bit and try to find a little focus, I decided it might be nice to come up with a couple of casting ideas. Without even the slightest hint about what these female characters are like, I would like to suggest four women I think would be brilliant. My suggestions are based on who I think would survive in a Cormac McCarthy landscape. You know: can they hack an animal to death? Can they fashion tourniquets out of sheets? Can they kill a man with their silence?

Image: mubi.com

In the film Movern Callar, Samantha Morton played a woman who hacked up her dead boyfriend’s body in the bathtub while listening to the Velvet Underground. Movern Callar is not a horror film. Done.

Image: deadline.com

Because Carey Mulligan looks so damn sweet all the time, everyone thinks she’s child-like and needs protecting. So when she’s quiet for just a little too long, not smiling, there’s an intensity and depth that’s disturbing. Like Kelly Macdonald in No Country For Old Men, Carey Mulligan knows what the hell is going on.

Image: moviespad.com

Have you seen We Need to Talk About Kevin? Yes, it’s the worst title for a film ever, but Tilda Swinton rocks it as the kinda psycho cold-ass mother to the totally psycho wacked out kid. Tilda Swinton could skin babies alive. I don't doubt it for a second.

Image: tvguide.com

Years after the horrifying Requiem for a Dream, my adoration for Ellen Burstyn was renewed in her stunning portrayal of a harsh, clinically upsetting suburban matriarch in Another Happy Day. Have you seenAnother Happy Day? Get out your depression shoes and start walking down sad street. No one alive could kill Ellen Burstyn before Ellen Burstyn kills them with her contempt.

Cormac McCarthy image: twitchfilm.com

There are few things in contemporary pop culture that elicit my fight-or-flight instincts more acutely than My Little Pony and dubstep. Yet Jason Kottke's thorough followup to a New York Times correction—which had misnamed a particular Pony character—magnified my worst grade-school fears by combining the two. Apparently, there exists this horrifying, fist-pumping subgenre called "dubtrot," i.e. My Little Pony dubstep remixes. The sadomasochist in me just had to investigate further.

My Little Pony—specifically My Little Pony: The Movie—tarnished my childhood. The trouble began with an absolutely frightening film poster, depicting this purple ooze monster called The Smooze attacking the Ponies' Dream Castle. Stay with me here. Though I was young, I distinctly remember being coerced into the theater by my sister. Visions of surly, singing ooze consumed my dreams that night. By age 10, I was readingFangoria.

I rewatched My Little Pony: The Movie to see if it carried the same shock value as it had two decades' prior. A: no. The Ponies—with names like Lickety-Split or Shady, denoted by the ice-cream cone or sunglass tattoos on their respective asses—hurl rainbows (though not unicorn poop) at the evil ooze, saving their kingdom. Hell, Danny DeVito gets lead credit, voicing the Grundle King (choice quote: "I try not ta mention it too often! Witches! Smooze! It was terribuhl!"). Granted, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group distributed Maximum Overdrive and Blue Velvet the same year. And that sequence when the witches are rowing a pantaloons-propelled skiff over waves of Smooze, singing "Nothing Can Stop the Smooze" to a barbershop-style chorus…that's still creepily upbeat.

Speaking of creepily upbeat, let's talk "dubtrot." Kottke mentions "Rainbowstep," which I guess is a good primer for newbies. It's a Youtube clip, a blessing and curse to the post-MTV generation, as we get strobey visuals with the seismic beats and chirpy Pony dialogue. "Cuz Dubstep with Rainbows is 20% Cooler!!! XD" writes uploader—and purported My Little Pony fanboy "brony"—ZestyArt, crediting the track (or its inspiration/style?) to Skrillex, dubstep's macho-ass posterboy. Now me, I'm in crooner/producer James Blake's camp, thanks in no small part to my NYC muse's insistence. One might "dub" Blake's enveloping atmospherics as post-dubstep, but if he calls out Skrillex's antics "without naming him," then I'm taking Blake's side.  

Frat boys killed big beat, so it's no shocker those same meatheads took to Skrillex's inelegant steroidal “brostep” like Flutter Ponies to glitter. I can't credit Skrillex for dubtrot's saccharine ear-trauma (he'd sooner produceKorn's new album), and I love me some bass, like Richie Hawtin's classically ferocious live sets, replete with viscera-rearranging throbs and mind-splintering breaks.

Still, Hawtin throwing some credibility at Skrillex's Mickey Mouse beats makes me a bit vexed. The former screamo kid ain't even good enough for the bronies.

Image: DubTrot's SoundCloud avatar

With all the fanfare for the new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, I got to thinking about how no one, absolutely no one gets excited about the release of a book trailer. Why are they so awful and tedious and boring? Why can’t they be as exciting as film trailers? Is an awesome book trailer even possible?

After much laborious research, I’ve concluded that most book trailersconsist of strung together still images (many of which are abhorrently generic) accompanied by emotional music, bad graphics, and clichéd text, plus some blurbs. There is also the author-interview approach, the ignore-the-book-entirely approach (better than most, as we shall see), the blurb onslaught. There is a whole lot of footage of graphics being drawn.

Movie trailers, regardless of how bad they are, provide a sense of a different world; they offer a peek at something you can escape into. Book trailers, for the most part, don't. Certainly there are budgetary restraints, but that’s not the only reason book trailers aren't like movie trailers. Reading is a vastly different experience from watching a film—and while seeing clips of a movie gives you a taste of that movie, seeing a book trailer can only attempt to translate an experience that might someday exist in the reader’s imagination. A successful book trailer should make you want to read the book, not watch a movie of the book.

So how do we do that?

I say book trailers should not address content in any way. They should be sleek, vibrantly edited montages of soft-core porn interspersed with the book’s cover. Maybe clips from an interview where the author says, "Yeah, I’ll tell you what writing this novel was like. It was like *^%ing your sister with a *&^," and then throws a bottle at the camera. Then show the cover of the book again. The point is to get the most eyes to see the cover, to know the title. Maybe we’re in a field where unicorns are eating the grass and it’s super cute and kind of sexy and then the camera zooms in and we see that the unicorns are really eating the book!

Whatever you do, don’t tell me about the fucking book. The book will tell me about the book.

That said, I did come across some pretty impressive book-related film content. I suppose, if soft-core and unicorns and violence aren’t your thing,Electric Literature can show you how good book trailers could be. Now if only Dan LaFontaine were still with us.

Photo: movieweb.com

Could it be opposite day? Jocks are becoming nerds!

James Franco is flunking acting class!

But back in the normal world, Charlotte Bronte is still the most popular of her sisters

Nerds are pleased with the latest Batman trailer

And the masses have replaced planking with avocado-ing

Writers aren't having much luck though, as poet Carl Sanburg's home is being foreclosed

And Maya Angelou calls out Common for being "vulgar and dangerous"

While the writing world experiences a dearth of scathing wit with Christopher Hitchens's death

Similarly, The music world may soon be without the legendary talent of Etta James as well

World leaders have also been in the obits lately, with the deaths of Kim Jong-Il and Vaclav Havel

But there was one bright note this week: Aragorn has started his own indie publishing press!

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As one who listened to the Twin Peaks soundtrack in her automobile on a regular basis, I can assure you that Crazy Clown Time is an appropriate name for a David Lynch album. I listened to the Twin Peaks soundtrack because it made driving that much more frightening and surreal. It added an air of danger, an air of very real threat to my well-being. Why would you want to feel safe in a car? Especially safe from your own mind? That’s for the unadventurous.

Crazy Clown Time is far less dangerous. Why did he make it? Because why wouldn't he. Also, have you listened to his films? David Lynch has been responsible for putting out a fair amount of awesome in the ear department. Just take a minute to listen to "Pink Room" by Badalamenti (Lynch’s composer for most everything). It's actually very similar to the style and tone of Crazy Clown Time.

I am not a music critic, by the way. For an actual legitimate "review," I suggest going here. I do, however, very much like the sexy drawl, strutting drums, and honky tonkish guitar thing happening throughout a lot of the album. Some of the songs are more upbeat, some more slow, but there’s always a little strut—a little sly smooth sexiness.

But then the vocals. Okay okay, the first track with Karen O is pretty damn awesome. I support that track one hundred percent. What I don’t understand—and where I think the true Lynch comes in to poke me, saying, "Hey, this is a David Lynch album. Not another kind of album but a David Lynch album. Beduh."—is the distortion on the vocals. Sometimes it’s like a whisper, other times it’s like a hyperactive computer child? Then it’s monotone and droney? And the effect, for me, is just goofy as all hell. On the other hand, if it weren’t for the bizarre vocals, the tracks would just be kind of okay, enjoyable songs. And I doubt David Lynch wants to make okay, enjoyable songs.

Also, to be hugely unfair, I’ve become obsessed with the soundtrack to Drive. And the main song I listen to on repeat, "Nightcall" by Kavinsky (featuring CSS's Lovefoxxx), has excellent distortion on vocals! So good. The distortion is perfect and the lyrics are just creepy and ambiguous enough. Listen.

It’s not fair of me, in the midst of my lovefest with the Drive soundtrack, to then listen to poor David—alone, without a film to sing for, without a room to furnish with sound. At least I’m keeping it in the family: Johnny Jewel, the man responsible for the Drive soundtrack, pays homage to Badalamenti in this interview.

As they say in "Nightcall," "I'm going to show you where it's dark, but have no fear."

Photo: sabotagetimes.com