Vinegar Syndrome's freshly released, lovingly restored blu ray of Slava Tsukerman's LIQUID SKY is a must see. I'm not even sure it looked this good when I saw it screened in 35mm, during its first run in the 80s (at Electric Shadows!), making this a solid contender for hottest home video release of the year. As for the film itself, it's aged like a fine wine. LIQUID SKY now serves as a valuable time capsule, a window onto a moment of the New York art punk/new wave scene (albeit a hyper-stylised version of it) that today's kids try to emulate, but which is in truth irretrievably lost to time.
More than just a document of a forgotten subculture, the film also transports you to a Manhattan that no longer really exists, not just the skeezy old Broadway and 42nd Street that so often gets the attention when people talk about the old NY, but the city as a whole. There's probably ten minutes of footage in this that have to rank as some of the most stunningly beautiful images of NYC ever shot.
If you had to choose a single movie to call the quintessential example of a "cult film", LIQUID SKY would be it, and Vinegar Syndrome's blu ray is cult film preservation at its finest.
No comments:
Post a Comment