Entertainment Weekly June 7, 2002

New To DVD: Blue Velvet

BLUE VELVET SPECIAL EDITION (1986, MGM, 121 mins., R, $24.98) Short of including a scratch-and-sniff bit of nitrous oxide, MGM couldn't have done a better job repackaging writer-director David Lynch's ultra-kinky tale of sexual awakening. A voluptuous digital-video transfer makes every white picket fence and bug-infested blade of grass in the fictional town of Lumberton shimmer with the full, found-object mystery the director had in mind. The movie hasn't lost its power to shock as well as mesmerize, with a juiced-up surround-sound mix delivering each psychotic pronouncement from funny-scary sadist Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) like a blow to the chest as he snorts relaxants and abuses poor,confused chanteuse Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini) and her would-be young rescuer, Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan). A just-right smattering of supplements features a gallery of production photos, on-camera testimony from the crew and cast (says Laura Dern, who plays MacLachlan's sweet second love interest: "Why are there people...in this world...like Frank [Booth]? I mean, that's the question we're all asking now, man!"), and further interview snippets hidden as Easter-egg treats. More rigorously dream-logical than Lynch's latest, Mulholland Drive, and more intense and sustained than the new Twin Peaks boxed video sets, Blue Velvet remains a tearstained fabric swatch for all seasons. A
- Steve Daly

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