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I remember when I was a young kid watching this really old ('cause it was black & white see) film about the elephant man of who I was aware of because of that bit in Michael Jackson's excellent music video for Leave Me Alone. Anyway, I remember I really enjoyed it but for some reason never saw it again until a few weeks ago - probably after a break of 20 years or so. Thoroughly loved it again, especially Anthony Hopkin's performance. So I watched Eraserhead, jeez. I didn't dislike it, in fact I kinda enjoyed how uncomfortable it managed to make me feel because that's a real rarity when it comes to film. I loved watching ridiculously gory 18+ horror films as a child (thanks mum), hell I found them funny. That scene at the end of Eraserhead where he kills the baby and it starts flying around the room and whatnot though, that had me wincing. Anyway, what would you folks recommend to watch after The Elephant Man and Eraserhead?
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Jan 22, 2016 23:42
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Frankston posted:I remember when I was a young kid watching this really old ('cause it was black & white see) film about the elephant man of who I was aware of because of that bit in Michael Jackson's excellent music video for Leave Me Alone. Anyway, I remember I really enjoyed it but for some reason never saw it again until a few weeks ago - probably after a break of 20 years or so. Thoroughly loved it again, especially Anthony Hopkin's performance. I'd say Lost Highway is closer in tone to those two, but Blue Velvet was made in the same era ("Young Lynch"). Then Wild At Heart for a road trip into hellish landscapes or Mulholland Drive if you want more of a mystery into dreamscapes. At any point, if you're feeling overwhelmed and need a feel-good palette cleanser, watch The Straight Story.
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Jan 22, 2016 23:53
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Frankston posted:Anyway, what would you folks recommend to watch after The Elephant Man and Eraserhead? Every other film Lynch has made.
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Jan 23, 2016 00:15
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Frankston posted:I remember when I was a young kid watching this really old ('cause it was black & white see) film about the elephant man of who I was aware of because of that bit in Michael Jackson's excellent music video for Leave Me Alone. Anyway, I remember I really enjoyed it but for some reason never saw it again until a few weeks ago - probably after a break of 20 years or so. Thoroughly loved it again, especially Anthony Hopkin's performance. as with most auteur directors, chronologically is the way to go so that you can watch his formal and narrative qualities develop. dune is skippable, sort of. the only really interesting thing that it does is introduce kyle maclachlan as the directorial self-insert. blue velvet and twin peaks should be your next stops. they're as straightforward as it gets with lynch -- primarily detective stories. both elaborate on a lot of the hallmarks of eraserhead/the elephant man and introduce new ones that he develops throughout the rest of his career, as well as the aesthetic he sometimes gets (unfairly) pegged with: 50s & 60s americana-inspired suburban facades hiding brutal realities. also, they start his collaboration with angelo badalamenti. he won the palme d'or at cannes for wild at heart. i'm not a huge fan of it, but it's an excellent genre exercise. and while not a feature, industrial symphony no. 1 is fairly interesting and reuses nicolas cage/laura dern. fire walk with me is either the last movie of what i'd regard as his early work, or the first movie of what i'd regard as his late work. it's incredible, my second favorite. it's a major source of contention because it deviates a lot from what's charming about twin peaks, it's unrelentingly bleak. how much you enjoy it probably depends on how much and what you enjoy of the tv series.
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Jan 23, 2016 00:36
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Franchescanado posted:I'd say Lost Highway is closer in tone to those two, but Blue Velvet was made in the same era ("Young Lynch"). Then Wild At Heart for a road trip into hellish landscapes or Mulholland Drive if you want more of a mystery into dreamscapes. I'd second that except I would skip WaH, unless you are Nicholas Cage fan. I'm not.
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Jan 23, 2016 01:50
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lost highway is my favorite lynch but i can't really abide by that. there are so many formal, narrative, and thematic motifs repeated in it from fire walk with me, and lynch is on record as saying that twin peaks and lost highway take place within the same universe. the relationship between these movies is so close that it seems to me no mere coincidence that they're his most misunderstood works. and of course there are motifs from lost highway that are then repeated in mulholland dr which is almost a remake of lost highway. well, there are repetitions of all of these motifs from movie to movie and in each and every movie. but there's a method to what he's doing with all of them by pulling them apart and putting them together over and over again in the order he does it in. you can watch them in any order you want, i suppose, but there are lots of interesting connections that reveal themselves going chronologically. i think you get a much more robust picture of each movie and of his whole body of work when you do. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 02:56
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I specifically avoided recommendkng anything Twin Peaks because, while fantastic (and my favorite TV show), is an investment of time, has its ups and downs, and can be polarizing. If someone enjoys Eraserhead, then Lost Highway is chronologically and artistically close, without compromising weird tangents for plot. It's a strange puzzle that disturbs and challenges the audience. Wild at Heart is fantastic. Nicholas Cage is over the top, but he is overshadowed by everyone else (no one ever talks about the weak link Laura Dern, or her mother). If you're diving into Lynch, I agree to do it chronologically (and skip Dune), but if we're going by what the person wants by taste, I stand by my recommendations.
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Jan 23, 2016 07:18
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Recently rewatched Lost Highway after a really, really long time (last time I saw it was on a rented VHS). It seems to get the short shrift of Lynch's psychosexual thrillers but I think it's possibly the best-shot and best-edited of them. The montage of Fred's breakdown (just before they find him "gone/changed") thoroughly gave me the willies, as did that motel corridor with the flickering lights and about a half a dozen other moments. Also interesting to realize as Radio Spiricom pointed out that both it and Mulholland Drive are a guilty/failed person's elaborate fantasy of innocence/success. In that department IMO Mulholland Drive has the edge because the finished feature can be interpreted to be symbolically about the failure of the TV pilot. Or some poo poo like that, I dunno. Frankston, if you are interested enough in Lynch to chronologically go through his work, which is a good way to do it, make sure you watch his pre-Eraserhead short films ASAP! They are really good, especially The Grandmother. e: Wild at Heart is *kisses fingertips*, do not listen to that MFer who said skip it The Time Dissolver fucked around with this message at 13:50 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 13:46
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The Grandmother, The Alphabet, Rabbits and Premonition Following An Evil Deed are my favorite of his shorts.
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Jan 23, 2016 13:49
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The Grandmother is one of the creepiest things I've ever watched.
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Jan 23, 2016 13:55
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Six Men Getting Sick is pretty cool, too. I saw it at a Lynch-inspired art exhibit where they had a room set aside to project his short films. Seeing that one on a huge screen and with those sirens really blaring really gave me a better appreciation for it.
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Jan 23, 2016 17:22
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Franchescanado posted:I specifically avoided recommendkng anything Twin Peaks because, while fantastic (and my favorite TV show), is an investment of time, has its ups and downs, and can be polarizing. that's fair enough. i would say that fire walk with me (and inland empire) are his two closest to eraserhead in terms of tone and thematics but i can understand not wanting to suggest them to newcomers. (although i think there's an argument to be made that fire walk with me can stand on its own, especially for someone who hasn't seen the series, so in that way their opinion of it isn't shaded by their perception of the series.) i'll stand by chronological order, though. as you said in his movies there are weird tangents and i sometimes think that they get pegged as being "weird for the sake of weird" which not only misinterprets surrealism but also denies lynch's work the incredible level of self-reflexivity it exhibits. take wild at heart for example, the scene where lula's mother smears lipstick all over her face seems out of nowhere but if you've seen blue velvet then you're aware of lynch's obsession with lips and lipstick, and it echoes the scene of confrontation between frank and jeffrey. and then lipsticked lips feature again prominently in lost highway. or the parts in wild at heart where it cuts away to crispin glover as lula's cousin seem to me to echo the part in blue velvet where jeffrey describes his neighbor who had the biggest tongue in the world. or like in twin peaks how sheryl lee is cast as both laura and maddy which continues the bifurcation of female identities into blonde/brunette from eraserhead & blue velvet, and is then carried through into lost highway. also interesting is how he claims to be ignorant of movies but his work features so many intertextual references to other movies it's hard for me to take that as anything other than a put on. there's the stuff that he's a noted fan of: the wizard of oz, vertigo, sunset blvd, carnival of souls, monsieur hulot's holiday, otto preminger's laura, jerzy skolimowski's deep end, and lots of fellini (whom he shares a birthday with) but wild at heart makes explicit reference to sidney lumet's the fugitive kind, pierrot le fou, and breathless (both godard and mcbride.) and mulholland dr is steeped in so many references: gilda, persona, 3 women, celine and julie go boating, the limey, contempt. those last two are especially interesting: in 1996 steven soderbergh made schizopolis, whose plot is a fun house mirror reflection of lost highway's (unbeknownst to lynch or soderbergh) so his referencing of the limey feels almost like homage. and in mulholland dr justin theroux's character, the obvious lynch avatar, is done up to look like jean-luc godard (or guido anselmi from 8 1/2. take your pick.) and when betty first encounters rita, rita covers up using a deep red towel like bardot in contempt. also funny is casting angelo badalamenti as the obvious de laurentiis stand in that the director is clashing with. The Time Dissolver posted:Also interesting to realize as Radio Spiricom pointed out that both it and Mulholland Drive are a guilty/failed person's elaborate fantasy of innocence/success. In that department IMO Mulholland Drive has the edge because the finished feature can be interpreted to be symbolically about the failure of the TV pilot. Or some poo poo like that, I dunno. i'm probably in the minority but i prefer lost highway. i understand why mulholland dr is recognized as better but i think lost highway mines the same territory in a much stronger way. plus the level of ambiguity over what is fantasy/what is reality is higher in lost highway imo aided by the mobius strip like structure edit: to me mulholland dr is less about the failure of the tv pilot and more about the death of celluloid in lynch's cosmology, but the two tie into each other. like, fire walk with me opens with a tv being destroyed. in lost highway televisions and videotapes are the source of fred's anxiety. mulholland dr is elegiac for a bygone era and concerned with the artifice of film, and that it's a film remade from pieces of a failed tv pilot makes this even more potent; the dream hollywood has about itself as you mentioned earlier itt. all of this ultimately predicts the shift he makes into digital filmmaking with inland empire which was interestingly enough printed to 35mm film for its initial exhibitions. i guess the endpoint of this discussion is that frankston really should just watch them all because david lynch is probably the most sui generis filmmaker of his generation and if you like one or more of his works you'll probably like all of them. also i saw the unified field exhibit at pafa when i was living in philly and it loving ruled. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 18:09
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The lipstick all over the face is also, obviously, another Wizard of Oz reference to Margaret Hamilton's green make up. I'm pleased to hear such positive opinions of Lost Highway and Fire Walk with Me.
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Feb 4, 2016 10:04
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Two Worlds posted:The lipstick all over the face is also, obviously, another Wizard of Oz reference to Margaret Hamilton's green make up. There's a behind the scenes feature on the DVD of the actress explaining her thoughts, emotions, and intention with the scene and her character. In her words (though I'm paraphrasing), the character has become so obsessed with beauty, but has become so reprehensible and evil that she's trying to clutch onto any sign of beauty. But no amount of make-up can hide her true ugliness, and instead cakes her face into a red devilish mask. She sees that everything's irreversible, that even make-up can't hide it, and has a mental breakdown. It's a cool feature, because it's about Laura Dern and her mother acting in a painfully twisted mother-daughter relationship, and what they did to really pull out the experience. I remember Dafoe also talking about the character of Bobby Peru coming from the teeth. I wish they had a feature on Nicolas Cage.
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Feb 4, 2016 15:48
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Everybody always forgets about The Straight Story 
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Feb 4, 2016 17:50
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Quote-Unquote posted:Everybody always forgets about The Straight Story The Straight Story and The Elephant Man are the only two Lynch feature films I haven't seen. I haven't seen Industrial Symphony #1 or any of his short films either, just due to lack of access.
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Feb 4, 2016 19:27
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:The Straight Story and The Elephant Man are the only two Lynch feature films I haven't seen. Rectify this immediately. Both of those movies are emotional suckerpunches for me. I can't watch The Straight Story without tearing up, and I mean that in the best way possible. They are also the two movies that I show to people who think that Lynch is only about self-indulgent weirdness.
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Feb 4, 2016 20:02
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Big Bad Voodoo Lou posted:I haven't seen Industrial Symphony #1 or any of his short films either, just due to lack of access. Most of his shorts, and his webseries "Dumbland" are on Hulu Plus. That alone makes Hulu Plus worth it. "Dumbland" is Hilarious.
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Feb 4, 2016 20:12
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Franchescanado posted:Rectify this immediately. Both of those movies are emotional suckerpunches for me. I can't watch The Straight Story without tearing up, and I mean that in the best way possible. yeah, exactly. i think there's a convincing argument to be made that the straight story is his most radical movie because of how much it diverges from what a typical lynch movie is and in how much it still manages to feel like a lynch movie. it's probably his saddest and his most human, but also his most sincere and is incredibly revelatory not in just in the sense of disproving claims of "self-indulgent weirdness" but in understanding that his affection for small towns and middle america (the milieu in which he came up) is anything but cynical or ironic. what's more interesting, though, is how all of those qualities feed into how mulholland dr was received vs how lost highway was received when preceded by fire walk with me. also it has a similar subtext to tarkovsky's mirror which is cool
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Feb 4, 2016 21:05
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The Straight Story owns. It might be my favorite film of 1999.
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Feb 4, 2016 21:08
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I'm a dumbass and I just realized The Straigjt Story was a David Lynch movie. I loved when I watched 15 years ago with my family. I should rewatch it.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:03
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MonsieurChoc posted:I'm a dumbass and I just realized The Straigjt Story was a David Lynch movie. I loved when I watched 15 years ago with my family. I should rewatch it. It's so damned good. It's also the only Lynch production my wife enjoys. It being so un-Lynch-like being possibly the only reason.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:12
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Seriously, watch The Straight Story. It still has a very dreamlike feel that gives it away as a Lynch movie, but it's very different to his other work (The Elephant Man is probably the closest) and if you don't tear up a little watching it then you're probably not human.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:22
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It was also filmed in sequence and filmed along the same route that Alvin Straight actually travelled. And no one talks about Sissy Spacek's amazing portrayal as the daughter. The dream-like scene where she watches the child play breaks my heart.
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Feb 5, 2016 01:47
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Radio Spiricom posted:
yeah, i've been saying this for so many years. people needed to see that lynch could successfully make a "normal movie" before they would herald something like mulholland drive. heck, even ebert came around!
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Feb 5, 2016 10:23
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I knew a guy that hated Ebert's Lynch reviews. He hated him for giving negative reviews to Blue Velvet and Lost Highway and then he hated him even more for giving positive reviews to Mulholland Dr. and INLAND EMPIRE and was glad when Ebert died a few years ago.
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Feb 5, 2016 13:30
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Sounds like kind of a simpleton.
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Feb 5, 2016 16:48
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Quote-Unquote posted:Seriously, watch The Straight Story. It still has a very dreamlike feel that gives it away as a Lynch movie, but it's very different to his other work (The Elephant Man is probably the closest) and if you don't tear up a little watching it then you're probably not human. I am a huge Lynch fan and, maybe because I am getting older, I am starting to like the films of his that are outside his control or his wheelhouse. I would say that of The Straight Story, Elephant Man, even Wild At Heart & Twin Peaks were a little out of his zone to a point. I like when his weirdness is forced into our reality, crammed into a box it doesn't belong in, where it bubbles just under the surface and escapes in bursts.
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Feb 5, 2016 16:55
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Escobarbarian posted:Sounds like kind of a simpleton. Bright dude otherwise, though when it came to movies he kind of dropped the ball.
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Feb 5, 2016 17:18
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blue velvet is getting a theatrical rerelease for its 30th anniversary. it opens on march 25 for a week at film forum in nyc, with more screens tba (and uk in the fall) dcp restoration unfortunately, and prints aren't too hard to see, but hey here's the new trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_BybDB_phY Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 4, 2016 |
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Mar 3, 2016 22:37
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Radio Spiricom posted:blue velvet is getting a theatrical rerelease for its 30th anniversary. it opens on march 25 for a week at film forum in nyc, with more screens tba (and uk in the fall) dcp restoration unfortunately, and prints aren't too hard to see, but hey This is tremendously exciting. I'm a recent convert of Lynch's (only really got into him in the last year), so I've only been able to see most of his films (Mulholland Dr. being the exception) on my computer. Which he'd chastise me immensely for, but. I'm not a huge fan of Blue Velvet in particular, but maybe a theater showing would make me come around. Also - glad to see lots and lots of love for FWWM in this thread. It's my joint-favorite, along with MD, because I think it hits on the gaps inherent in overarching systems better than any film I've ever seen. That first half-hour HAS to be pointless because it shows the futility of treating the symptom rather than the disease. Laura dies because Chet Desmond and really-pretty-underrated-in-this-movie Kiefer Sutherland are focused on the case itself rather than Teresa Banks as a person. Procedural cop dramas don't fix incest. They don't fix the bus full of screaming kids in the earlier scene who are helpless onlookers ignored by the police as their driver is arrested. God, I love that film so much. It's got an amazing score, career-best performances from literally every cast member in the thing (Moira Kelly is criminally underrated as Donna), and it just looks incredible. The scenes in the contrasting bars may be my favorite thing Lynch has ever filmed, next to Club Silencio. That it was so widely panned is a travesty.
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Mar 17, 2016 08:48
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oneforthevine posted:That it was so widely panned is a travesty. You know, beside the Cannes audience that booed it or whatever. gently caress those people.
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Mar 18, 2016 07:59
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I wasn't there, admittedly, so I can only go off of what Metacritic says...and it's sitting with a miserable 28 at the moment. "A disgusting, misanthropic movie," says Jay Scott of The Globe and Mail (Toronto). Christian Science Monitor's David Sterritt claims that the film "contains not a single moment of genuinely felt emotion." Most of the other reviews mention the TV show as if the writer had seen it, so I don't know if they're exactly what you're looking for. Anecdotally, I've read comments on blogger Lostinthemovies's great video series "Journey Through Twin Peaks" from people who saw the film without having watched the show and loved it as a piece of surrealist horror. I also know the thing did super well in Japan, of all places.
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Mar 19, 2016 07:38
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oneforthevine posted:Anecdotally, I've read comments on blogger Lostinthemovies's great video series "Journey Through Twin Peaks" from people who saw the film without having watched the show and loved it as a piece of surrealist horror. I also know the thing did super well in Japan, of all places. I've heard the movie and show both did super well in Japan, though I'm not sure I've heard a singular explanation as to why this is.
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Mar 19, 2016 08:27
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Raxivace posted:Yeah this is more the kind of thing I'm wondering about. It's a good show and Japan had it's own avant garde film movement as well.
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Mar 19, 2016 09:35
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there was a high barrier for entry to watching twin peaks in japan, it required subscribing to a satellite channel or paying like $500 for vhs tapes. when the movie came out it became a sensation there because lots of people were finally able to see it in a more accessible distribution channel. its all described in this article http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/02/movies/film-export-news-twin-peaks-mania-peaks-in-japan.htmlRaxivace posted:This has me curious- does anyone know how people back in 1992 that hadn't seen the show generally rated the movie? I understand show fans being disappointed by the dark tone of the movie, but I wonder about how other people reacted. http://sensesofcinema.com/2001/french-cinema-present-and-past/rivette-2/ Jacques Rivette posted:Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)
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Mar 19, 2016 16:58
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It's also funny to see how Japanese creators got inspired by Twin Peaks. For instance, the Persona series of video games is basically a mix of Twin Peaks and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
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Mar 19, 2016 17:34
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While the story about the Cannes audience is oft-repeated, it's worth noting that their booing and cheering of movies doesn't mean a lot, and their track ready is spotty at best. CRASH, TAXI DRIVER and PULP FICTION were also booed. By comparison, CLERKS 2 got a standing ovation.
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Mar 19, 2016 23:57
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Who boos at movies?
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Mar 20, 2016 01:25
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CelticPredator posted:Who boos at movies? Man, seriously
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