Word: velvets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...writer, co-director and star of everyone's favorite Italian-food film, Big Night, has created a shipful of fools in his farce The Impostors. Todd Haynes, known for his furtive, paranoid parables Poison and Safe, goes wide-screen and handsome to summon the ghosts of glam-rock in Velvet Goldmine...
There's nothing sinful about a hefty budget. That comes with big stars, special effects, a large crew, gourmet catering. Even on the indie circuit inflation is a fact of life. Haynes' 1991 Poison cost $350,000; the 1995 Safe came in at $1 million; and Velvet Goldmine is about a $9 million production. But what a production! There hasn't been such a smartly gaudy spectacle of musical raunch since Ken Russell's Tommy back in 1975, when the road to excess was carpeted in spangles...
...brilliant, what are they? Welsh. That IS a selling point--how many Welsh indie-rock bands do you know? We know this because the title track International Velvet is a noisy thanksgiving that proclaims "Everyday I wake up, I thank the Lord I'm Welsh." The other verses go, "Deffrwch Cymry cysglyd gwlad y g,n" --which could be an elaboration on said religio-nationalistic gratitude, or, you know, something else altogether. Either way, the Welsh group is bent on going international, and in that velveteen, strangely alien way that European groups have of taking over...
Finally, early this year, Mulder and Scully, by far Catatonia's most well-known and popular song (with no little credit to the cunningly-penned name), strode into the UK charts at three. International Velvet was then released to scramble into the charts at 11, subsequently moving to three. And that explains why Catatonia were finally picked up by American label Neil Young's Vapor. Potential moolah, not amazing artistry...
Otherwise, you would never have known that thing about the Baba Papa. And, you would have been fed some other inanity by some other pop band. My theory is that International Velvet got to three the same other inanity by some other pop band. My theory is that International Velvet got to three the same way that Sartre won the Nobel Prize for Literature--because somebody had to. It (either the album or Sartre) is not something you want to take to a desert island with you. Unless you are certain that you are going to die soon, and want...