I finally watched Dune on New Year's Eve. I kept putting it off as I knew it wouldn't be my cup of tea. There's some great cinematic moments that only Lynch could give, but it isn't my fave. Lynch is my fave American director and Twin Peaks is my fave show ever (in fact, today is Twin Peaks Day! The day Special Agent Cooper arrived in Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer. (Not the anniversary of the show's first airing which is in April.)
Lynch is definitely one of my fave American directors. I’m Dune-resistant though.
HBO or Max or someone at Discovery has a new deal with A24 so a lot of their films will be on Max, which we get free with El Chico's mobile plan.
I watched a lot of A24 films on Showtime over the past few years when they had a multi-year deal. Now I expect to watch plenty of A24 films on Max/HBO. I heard about that new deal — and yet — I just watched Past Lives on Showtime. So the Max deal must not be exclusive or all A24 films. I’ll watch them wherever they show up, including at a theater near me.
It would have been so cool to have seen these at the cinema. I remember seeing La mala educación at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington 2005 and driving to Cincinnati (hour and a half) to see Volver at a independent cinema there in 2006.
I’m lucky to still have a few independent theaters nearby that screen both foreign and indie films. But there are nowhere near as many of those theaters as there were in the past. And definitely no double features.
I've been curious to just how popular these directors actually were in the 1950s and 60s in the US. I mean, were they household names? Or just for the serious film lovers?
I don’t think foreign films/directors/actors were ever household names in the US. If they weren’t household names in an international city like NYC, I doubt they were anywhere in the US. Probably more of a serious film lover thing. If anything, foreign films are more available to American audiences everywhere now via DVD and streaming. Still probably not household names in Oshkosh or NYC though.
