Todd Haynes first caught the film industry's attention with SUPERSTAR, a film where Barbie dolls acted out the life of Karen Carpenter. Blending the dolls with stiff yet humorous documentary style film making, Haynes was able to weave an insightful and humorous movie. The dolls do create drama, the camera work is good, and my God... the script is certainly quotable.

After Superstar, Todd made POISON, a feature which interwove three shorts whose plotlines only have parallels that Haynes force on the audience through editing. One short is about a doctor who injects himself with an anti-aging serum he is sure will work, only to discover it's horrible side-effects. This would have been the strongest indepent short out of Poison; it shows that Haynes has a real sense of composition, and that he is a student of film--the style is lifted from early horror films. The second short is the life of a man who has been in and out of prisons, and the romances he has found there. The third short is a documentary style short which has now become very attached to Haynes' filmmaking. In this segment, a young boy murders his step=father and then flies out the bathroom window.

After Poison won awards and acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, Haynes made [SAFE], starring Julianne Moore. [SAFE] uses Haynes cynical humor to dissect the current state (even though the film is set in the '80s) of American suburbia--an area of the world Haynes seems to have much anger for...not as much as Todd Solondz, mind you, but enough none the less.

Finally, Haynes madeVelvet Goldmine. The styles of all his previous films have emerged in this, his best picture to date. Christian Bale's homelife in suburbia is stifling to say the least, there is a semi-documentary feel to the piece, homosexuality, heavy handed artistic direction a la early horror/circus films, and of course, the wonderful Curt Wild-Bryan Slade Barbie Doll romance scene.

For more information about Todd Haynes and his films, you may want to journey to Todd Haynes' Black Couch