Nearly 40 years after Roger Ebert’s one-star review of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, in which the late critic alleged that Isabella Rossellini was “degraded,” the film’s star is speaking out on how incorrect she believes Ebert’s assessment was.
Speaking with IndieWire, Rossellini said she didn’t read Blue Velvet reviews when the film came out — which she avoids for any of her work — because “even if [the review is] good, there is always one sentence that is negative and stays inside you forever.” However, Ebert’s words were unavoidable, as she was told his review mentioned that Lynch, who was Rossellini’s partner at the time, “exploited” her.
“I was surprised, because I was an adult,” she recalled. “I was 31 or 32. I chose to play the character.”
In the film, Rossellini plays Dorothy Vallens, who is raped and abused by gangster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has also kidnapped her husband,...
Speaking with IndieWire, Rossellini said she didn’t read Blue Velvet reviews when the film came out — which she avoids for any of her work — because “even if [the review is] good, there is always one sentence that is negative and stays inside you forever.” However, Ebert’s words were unavoidable, as she was told his review mentioned that Lynch, who was Rossellini’s partner at the time, “exploited” her.
“I was surprised, because I was an adult,” she recalled. “I was 31 or 32. I chose to play the character.”
In the film, Rossellini plays Dorothy Vallens, who is raped and abused by gangster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who has also kidnapped her husband,...
- 3/28/2024
- by Tatiana Tenreyro
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Isabella Rossellini transitioned from her modeling career to an acting career through David Lynch’s 1986 film, Blue Velvet. Rossellini was praised for her role and the film achieved a cult status in the following years, but Blue Velvet was a controversial film at the time of its release. The explicit content was a major problem for critics, including Roger Ebert, who accused Lynch of exploiting the actress. However, Rossellini has defended Lynch in her recent interview.
Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet
David Lynch worked on Blue Velvet‘s script after the commercial failure of his epic sci-fi project, Dune. While the critical response was divided, Lynch received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the film.
Isabella Rossellini Defends David Lynch For Her Exploitative Scenes In Blue Velvet Isabella Rossellini and David Lynch on the sets of Blue Velvet
Isabella Rossellini played the role of...
Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet
David Lynch worked on Blue Velvet‘s script after the commercial failure of his epic sci-fi project, Dune. While the critical response was divided, Lynch received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director for the film.
Isabella Rossellini Defends David Lynch For Her Exploitative Scenes In Blue Velvet Isabella Rossellini and David Lynch on the sets of Blue Velvet
Isabella Rossellini played the role of...
- 3/28/2024
- by Hashim Asraff
- FandomWire
One of the most infamous reviews for David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” to publish when the film opened in 1986 came courtesy of Roger Ebert, who gave the movie one star. Then the most prominent critic in the United States, Ebert criticized how Lynch’s casting of Isabella Rossellini in a role where she gets “humiliated.”
“[Rossellini] is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve … She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera,” Ebert wrote. “And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.”
Rossellini stars in “Blue Velvet” as the tormented nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, who is held emotionally and physically captive by the sociopath gangster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). At one point in the film, Dorothy shows up naked on the front porch of Jeffrey...
“[Rossellini] is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve … She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera,” Ebert wrote. “And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.”
Rossellini stars in “Blue Velvet” as the tormented nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens, who is held emotionally and physically captive by the sociopath gangster Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). At one point in the film, Dorothy shows up naked on the front porch of Jeffrey...
- 3/27/2024
- by Zack Sharf
- Variety Film + TV
In Roger Ebert’s one-star review of David Lynch‘s “Blue Velvet” in 1986, the film critic had strong words for the director he never softened through the rest of his career, even as Ebert came to appreciate some of Lynch’s later films. Ebert wrote that Isabella Rossellini “is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve… She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.”
But Rossellini, who at the time of the controversial landmark’s release was in a relationship with director Lynch, today doesn’t necessarily agree with Ebert’s takedown of the movie. The daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini had by then gathered some modeling and film credits, but “Blue Velvet” proved to be her big breakout.
But Rossellini, who at the time of the controversial landmark’s release was in a relationship with director Lynch, today doesn’t necessarily agree with Ebert’s takedown of the movie. The daughter of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini had by then gathered some modeling and film credits, but “Blue Velvet” proved to be her big breakout.
- 3/27/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
The story goes that Belgian bartender Gustave Tops invented the Black Russian cocktail back in 1949 to honor the U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, who was visiting Brussels at the time. Sources vary, but it is estimated that sometime in the '50s or early '60s Tops, or some other mixologist, later added cream to the blend and gave birth to the White Russian. The drink never made the A-grade of cocktails and might have died out altogether if it hadn't found its moment in the spotlight as the preferred tipple of Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) in "The Big Lebowski."
Nowadays the White Russian is synonymous with the film and you can get it in just about any cocktail bar. Has anyone ever ordered one without seeing the movie first? Only a handful of movie characters are so well-known for their choice of alcoholic beverage. Of course, there's...
Nowadays the White Russian is synonymous with the film and you can get it in just about any cocktail bar. Has anyone ever ordered one without seeing the movie first? Only a handful of movie characters are so well-known for their choice of alcoholic beverage. Of course, there's...
- 3/7/2023
- by Lee Adams
- Slash Film
David Lynch, Red Zig-Zag (2022), © David Lynch, courtesy Pace Gallery.I imagine that everyone who came to see David Lynch’s “Big Bongo Night” exhibition at the Pace gallery in New York last autumn was probably already familiar with Lynch’s movies and television. Though he has been making paintings for decades, the word “Lynchian” typically applies to films like Eraserhead (1977) and Lost Highway (1997), for which he is far better known. You, too, have come across this article because you are reading a film journal. In this sense, the exhibition did not disappoint. The large-scale paintings featured motifs recognizable from his cinematic worlds: multiplied and sometimes exploded heads, snippets of banal yet unnerving dialogue, dream worlds collapsed into waking ones. Despite the shift in medium to canvas, heavily caked paint, and at least one Band-Aid, these works were familiar and creepy, creepily familiar. Blunt, smudged, and lumpy, all the works appeared deliberately handmade,...
- 1/17/2023
- MUBI
Kyle MacLachlan is one of the great actors part of David Lynch’s company, turning up in some of his most famous—and infamous—works in both film and television.
But that doesn’t mean Kyle MacLachlan is a David Lynch scholar. Even the star of Dune, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks is a little confused by the perplexing works of Lynch. In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, MacLachlan said, “I don’t pretend to understand much of what David does, but I do recognize that I’m his conduit through these worlds, and that’s a challenge—and also, I feel pretty good about that. There’s a confidence that I understand what’s necessary for me to do with David.”
He continued, “There’s still the large chunks of data that I don’t understand, and I don’t need to understand, honestly. His movies are experiential,...
But that doesn’t mean Kyle MacLachlan is a David Lynch scholar. Even the star of Dune, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks is a little confused by the perplexing works of Lynch. In a recent interview with The A.V. Club, MacLachlan said, “I don’t pretend to understand much of what David does, but I do recognize that I’m his conduit through these worlds, and that’s a challenge—and also, I feel pretty good about that. There’s a confidence that I understand what’s necessary for me to do with David.”
He continued, “There’s still the large chunks of data that I don’t understand, and I don’t need to understand, honestly. His movies are experiential,...
- 10/2/2022
- by Mathew Plale
- JoBlo.com
“Don’T Look At Me!”
By Raymond Benson
“Don’t look at me!” shouts Frank Booth, the sociopath played by Dennis Hopper, but that, of course, is exactly what David Lynch wants you to do.
Lynch was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this singular, extraordinary film that shook audiences around the world in 1986, and it’s the picture that solidified the filmmaker as perhaps the heir to the surrealists of the 1920s. It’s a polarizing film that makes audiences uncomfortable and sometimes outraged, and yet it possesses signature stylistic and thematic aspects to which Lynch has returned many times in such fare as the more mainstream (but also surreal) television series Twin Peaks, and the dreamlike fugues of pictures like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.
After the box-office and critical failure of the sci-fi extravaganza, Dune (1984), Lynch exercised his option with producer Dino De Laurentiis to make a smaller,...
By Raymond Benson
“Don’t look at me!” shouts Frank Booth, the sociopath played by Dennis Hopper, but that, of course, is exactly what David Lynch wants you to do.
Lynch was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for this singular, extraordinary film that shook audiences around the world in 1986, and it’s the picture that solidified the filmmaker as perhaps the heir to the surrealists of the 1920s. It’s a polarizing film that makes audiences uncomfortable and sometimes outraged, and yet it possesses signature stylistic and thematic aspects to which Lynch has returned many times in such fare as the more mainstream (but also surreal) television series Twin Peaks, and the dreamlike fugues of pictures like Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive.
After the box-office and critical failure of the sci-fi extravaganza, Dune (1984), Lynch exercised his option with producer Dino De Laurentiis to make a smaller,...
- 5/28/2019
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Before we say goodbye to the month of May, we have one final day of Blu-ray and DVD releases ahead of us, and it’s an eclectic bunch of titles, to say the least. If you missed them in theaters earlier this year, Gaspar Noé’s Climax as well as Neil Jordan’s Greta hit both formats this Tuesday, and for you David Lynch lovers out there, Criterion is showing Blue Velvet some much-deserved love with their brand-new release of the cult classic as well.
Scream Factory is doing the dark lord’s work with their new Blus for both When A Stranger Calls Back and The Alligator People, and Severin Films is bringing home The Uncanny in HD for the first time ever this week.
Other home media releases for May 28th include Double Impact, Near Extinction, Splatter Farm, and a Shark Attack 3-Pack.
The Alligator People
Terror in the Bayou!
Scream Factory is doing the dark lord’s work with their new Blus for both When A Stranger Calls Back and The Alligator People, and Severin Films is bringing home The Uncanny in HD for the first time ever this week.
Other home media releases for May 28th include Double Impact, Near Extinction, Splatter Farm, and a Shark Attack 3-Pack.
The Alligator People
Terror in the Bayou!
- 5/27/2019
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
La’s Finest is go! Canadian broadcaster Bell Media has revealed that it has struck a deal with Sony Pictures Television for the Jessica Alba and Gabrielle Union-fronted spin-off of the Bad Boys film franchise. It will air the 13-episode series on one of its specialty entertainment channels.
As Deadline reported yesterday, Sony is in serious negotiations with Charter Communications to become the U.S. home for the series after NBC passed on the $12M pilot.
The series stars Union as Syd Burnett, last seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel, having left her complicated past behind to become an Lapd detective and pursue all the fun La offers. But things get a little crazy when her new partner, Nancy McKenna, played by Alba, a working mom with an equally complex past, learns that Syd’s unapologetic lifestyle might be masking a greater personal secret. These two have...
As Deadline reported yesterday, Sony is in serious negotiations with Charter Communications to become the U.S. home for the series after NBC passed on the $12M pilot.
The series stars Union as Syd Burnett, last seen in Miami taking down a drug cartel, having left her complicated past behind to become an Lapd detective and pursue all the fun La offers. But things get a little crazy when her new partner, Nancy McKenna, played by Alba, a working mom with an equally complex past, learns that Syd’s unapologetic lifestyle might be masking a greater personal secret. These two have...
- 6/1/2018
- by Peter White
- Deadline Film + TV
A horde of David Lynch devotees descended on New York venue Brooklyn Steel this weekend to drink Log Lady Lager, watch Blue Velvet with an intro by its stars and soak in some avant-garde ambiance via a stacked lineup of musical performances.
The first New York–based, Lynch-curated Festival of Disruption featured talks with Lynch-approved actorsKyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Naomi Watts, a keynote speech by thefilmmaker himself and performances by Animal Collective (who used a psychedelic, biology-inspiredbackdrop), My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Flying Lotus (whoperformed a Lynch-themed DJ set) and Rebekah del Rio,...
The first New York–based, Lynch-curated Festival of Disruption featured talks with Lynch-approved actorsKyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini and Naomi Watts, a keynote speech by thefilmmaker himself and performances by Animal Collective (who used a psychedelic, biology-inspiredbackdrop), My Morning Jacket's Jim James, Flying Lotus (whoperformed a Lynch-themed DJ set) and Rebekah del Rio,...
- 5/21/2018
- Rollingstone.com
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