"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

That would be true if we were talking about David.
 

I mean I agree with him concerning David. Dune blows but Id rather watch it than a Fast and the Furious or something.

...as for Jennifer and BH...Id rather watch the Fast and the Furious trilogy consecutively than that film.

And that's exactly what I meant by a lack of..., excuse me, a matter of taste.

It was a joke...dont take that seriously.

Still though...I think people have "David Lynch goggles" on when they critique this film.

If it was made by some no name person, this film wouldnt register in peoples opinions AT ALL!

I liked Boxing Helena. It was supposed to be a comedy and it was.

Helena: Do you love me as a possession or as a woman.

Julian Sands: Of course I love you as a woman, that's why I hacked off your limbs and put you in a box.

I have no idea what he really said because after Helena's line I was rolling on the floor laughing for ten minutes. 

I'm looking forward to her next film Surveillance, if it ever gets made.

For all the Helena haters, listen to Oddio for ten minutes, consider it a peace offering. 

Yeah, that character had a raging case of man vaginitis. You'd think a healthy looking surgeon with an accent would have no problems in the women department, premature ejaculation issues or not.  (In the original script, he was Italian even!) It's started to bother me that they never explain what that thing in his ear is.

Okay I haven't watched BOXING HELENA and yes, I know the diff between the Lynchs- David and Jennifer. But you might give Jennifer the benefit of a doubt. First as someone said, she was 19 yr old when she made the film. Second, do any of you have experience getting your movie made? In case, you don't, it is very difficult to get a film made. This from someone who's tried. One of my fav lines from the movies comes from THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, "About two million things could go wrong with this stunt." And that is true in spades about making movies, any kind of movie. That a 19 yr old got a film made is an achievement. That anyone gets a film made is an achievement. As a result of my experiences I have a great deal of respect for all film makers.

 Pretty sharp eh, CCC?

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

I said that I have respect knowing, or rather, having a pretty good idea, what can go wrong when making a film and that's everything. And no, we aren't going to like every film out there. And no, the public (as Hitchcock called the audience) may not want to watch it. But there are great movies people aren't going to get to watch. I know, I've seen them at various film fests. And why? Because someone made a rule that if (insert abitary rule here) is broken, we can't sell your picture.

One of the great things that critics do, those who practice real film criticism and aren't employed to write something for the papers and TV to sell certain moveis- thumbs up or down anyone?- is to take an orginal film, like say MULHOLLAND DR to pull one out of a hat, and explain why it is a great film. Discovering the true greatness of DL's films, or any films, is why we talk on forums like this. We were touched collectively and want to explore why this DL project or that one got to us.

I'm not saying BH wasn't a bad film, or that it is really good. I'm saying give JL credit for getting it done. Believe me, I know lots of film makers who won't. And that may include me- sigh. Even big ones like DL don't get to do all the projects they want. Anyone know the status of SEVERED? That'll be DL's Black Dahlia project.  

I too respect anyone who puts it all together and makes a film.  I too have experience (not my own but close to me) with the painful process.  Filmmaking is a near impossible task, I'll grant you that. 

But what I don't understand is this mathematical equation where Jennifer Lynch was 19 in 1993 when Boxing Helena was made.  Okay, I know there was a time lapse of some kind after Kim Basinger pulled out of the project but Jennifer was born in 1968 which makes here 25 in 1993 according to my calculator.  A small point, but a point all the same.

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

 I heard that...been working on one short film for over 2 years, based on a short story of mine that was published in 2000! I can see many reasons for films not getting finished...in my case, it just wasn't turning out..."right"...I wasn't happy with it, conversely, the film I just sent off to Slamdance and Cinequest was done in two months, lol.

All this talk has made me want to rent BH, so I will.  Speaking of director's daughters, I just watched "The Heart is Deceitful..." written, directed by, and starring Asia Argento. I thought it was a good film. Bleak and depressing, but I am definitely going to watch her next flick. It was great.

I'll say it -- no movies are bad. Some movies are liked by some people, some movies by others; some movies are liked by a lot of people, some by only a few. No movies are bad. I'd be surprised if we could all come up with a consensus on what a "bad" movie is...

I haven't seen BH yet, so I can't comment specifically. But while I might use "bad" in casual conversation to describe a movie I didn't like, I would never seriously state that any piece of art was "bad".

(I'm not picking on you, by the way, you've just stumbled across a pet peeve of mine... )

eh...it was just okay to me.  I saw it once and that was enough.  I enjoyed it but can't really  remember much about it now so it mustn't have made that much of an impression :)

"watch out for my cousin.."

Would the film "I am Jane's Vagina" shown in health class be called art?

Depends on who you ask... 

Art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Just put "Boxing Helena" at the top of my Netflix queue!

She did wrtte the script when she was 19. Still a noble feat. 

Wikipedia says BH has attained cult status.  Don't we give usually give cult movies (and incidentally anything that came out of the 80's) their own standards of bad and good anyway?    

I love Jennifer and think she's a complex, funny, and deep thinking lady. Pretty funny that the idea percolated so long in her young mind, isn't it?  There must be something genetic in that amputee motif.

Susan 

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

And the appearance of the Venus DeMilo. Jennifer mentions her grandmother's Venus staute in an interview, quoted here

http://www.overground.be/article.php?code=8&lan

The author draws a comparison to The Collector, which was a similar story sans amputation. 

Gawd, I loved the Collector when it came out! I had seen Terence Stamp as Billy Budd.
He was beautiful and I had a teenage crush on him. (We had to see the film for an English class) He was dating the top model of the era, Jean Shrimpton. I thought the two of them were the coolest people on the 60s planet! So even though they tried to make him unattractive in The Collector, I still saw Terence Stamp. 

Samantha Eggar, the 'collected" butterfly in his collection dated California artist, Ed Ruscha and now lives on Mulholland Drive, or so I understand.

Think I'll add that to my Netflix queue!

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

That I can't say, and there would be interesting arguments to be had over quite a few candidates. But I would say that all movies deserve the benefit of being considered as art, such as those benefits might be...

I know that there are films that would fit my own subjective categorization of "not good", but some of those films are also quite popular, which forces me to confront the necessary possibility that I could be missing something. So I couldn't bring myself to say something is aesthetically bad, especially given that "aesthetically" and "bad" are two hard-to-define words crammed right up against each other while trying to describe a third ("art").

I'm not dogmatically leashed to the idea that all movies are art, but I'm sympathetic to the idea.