In the magazine this week, I write about the DVD release of “Frownland,” the first feature film by the young New York-based director Ronald Bronstein, which is about Keith Sontag, a young, traumatized man (hardly) living in Brooklyn. I discuss it in the clip below. It’s one of the first releases from the new company Factory 25, which is offering it in two editions—the regular DVD, and a DVD/LP limited-edition package. I don’t have a turntable anymore—I got rid of it when I sold my thousands of LPs about a decade and a half ago—and the only member of the magazine’s Goings On About Town department who’s got one is our intern Liz Dosta, who gave a listen and sends word about what’s on it:
Alarming and unsettling, indeed. “Frownland” is one of the greatest nerve-jangles in the history of cinema; it’s also one of the best American independent films ever made. Its scant release is a scandal (one of many to afflict the independent-film scene in recent years); its home-video availability, cause for celebration.
P.S. The other side of the LP is blank of music (but inscribed with cartoon-like drawings). It reminds me of my favorite one-sided LP, Albert Ayler’s “Bells.” It, too, is available—on CD, and also, once again, on vinyl, from ESP-Disk.
