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Quote-Unquote posted:I really like Lost Highway, though there's one thing that bugs me: the soundtrack. I love all of the original music from Trent Reznor, Angelo Badalamenti and Barry Adamson (all three rank amongst my top 10 favourite artists), but the actual songs included, with lyrics, are really jarring and throw out all the atmosphere for me. 'This Magic Moment' kicking in when Alice pulls up is so stupidly on-the-nose. Killer guitar riff from Rammstein when Pete starts losing it in Andy's apartment? Great. Works perfectly. But then, all of a sudden, the lyrics scream "RRRRRRAMM. STEIN." and make an otherwise disturbing and intense scene almost funny. 'I'm Deranged' during the opening and closing credits is great, but otherwise it smacked of Reznor just inserting his favourite lyrics over the top of the film and killing all the tension that the score and cinematography had worked so hard to create. have you seen it theatrically? the sound design and soundtrack work better than almost any other lynch movie (except eraserhead naturally) in that setting. with the volume at punishing levels on a system that can handle it (as lynch intended) the otherwise kind of cheesy industrial metal soundtrack takes on a whole new character. it's immersive and terrifying. in slavoj zizek's indispensable essay on lost highway, the art of the ridiculous sublime, he calls attention to it. it's through his lacanian theoretical framework though so it's not really for everyone. The Time Dissolver posted:There's a whole lot of easier ways than those questions to get to "failed actress dreams idealized version of her life". Maybe they point out some nice attention to detail but nothing that is gonna blow the movie wide open. I love the poo poo out of Mulholland Drive but it's got a following that misses the forest for the trees very much like The Shining does. yeah, those clues are more or less red herrings. reading his movies as puzzles that need to be solved or decoded is kind of pointless, most of those elements (besides 7 which is the key scene in the entire movie) are just there to be evocative. it's really all right in front of you HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:My favorite interpretation of Mulholland Drive is that it is the dream that Hollywood has about itself. reading it this way provides some interesting parallels with inland empire in re: hollywood's creation myth/the myth creating hollywood and two sides (light/dark, dream/nightmare) to the same coin, but i prefer to read it as the successful but ultimately inferior version of lost highway with similar binary oppositions. of his three late works i think it's the worst--it's still excellent but it really shows its seams as a failed tv pilot. anyway huge david lynch fan here, i am obsessed with his movies and have read virtually every book about him. dennis lim wrote a new one which i bought and i am finally reading. it's only ok. but in honor of the book's release he programmed a retrospective series at the film society at lincoln center. so far i have seen projections of: wild at heart, eraserhead, blue velvet, lost highway, and mulholland drive. tonight i will be seeing inland empire projected for the first time. i am told it looks bad projected (since it was shot digital and printed to film) and i know lynch's preferred exhibition format is a bd, but i am excited nonetheless. i missed fire walk with me, which is my second favorite of his movies but i'm sure i will have another chance. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 20:27
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upon watching inland empire twice in the past 24 hours i have come to the conclusion that it's lynch's attempt to remake sartre's no exit and in fact i think all of his work is ripe for sartreian readings, as the key theme of his career is the horror of subjectivity
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Dec 24, 2015 00:47
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Lord Krangdar posted:Those aren't really the same though,right? there's an extent to which i agree because accusing a single signifier of being meaningless runs the risk of accusing the whole movie of being meaningless which obviously isn't true as we're discussing it on here and it means something to the viewers, and also that everything in his movies means something to lynch himself... but some of those clues seem like a self-aware put on by lynch poking fun at people that like to overthink his work. it's like the use of the rabbits footage in inland empire, or the mystery man in lost highway, where they serve a narrative purpose, but more serve to unmoor the viewer from our reality and put us into the movie's so that when the emotional climaxes come they pack even more of a punch. speaking of which, i'm disappointed to see the ambivalence towards inland empire. i think it's probably my third favorite lynch movie. when i saw it theatrically last week it was only my third time seeing it and i watched it again within 24 hours of that. if you're a fan of his work i don't really see how you could dislike it unless you're 100% opposed to digital filmmaking or whatever since it's probably his freest work since eraserhead. but i understand not wanting to commit 3 hours to watching a movie that frequently. seeing it projected was certainly something -- i was sitting in the fourth or fifth row and watching a dv movie printed to film has a really uncanny effect when you can see the wear of the print contrasting with the ungainly digital footage. plus there's something gained watching an exhibition where you can see the changeover cues because the reels have a function in the narrative structure. lots has been made about the structure operating like hyperlinks and the movie operating in a self-reflexive web within lynch's entire filmography but i think that if you've seen lost highway or mulholland dr. the narrative is pretty straightforward (another recapitulation of the vertigo/an occurrence at owl creek bridge style story)
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Dec 31, 2015 18:04
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Full Battle Rattle posted:I thought IE was genius the first few times I watched it, but it's far too long for one sitting. It would have been better to cut it up into a fake TV show. i disagree, i think that a very strong part of the movie is how it sustains its atmosphere over the entire runtime. i think it would have less impact if it was serialized. also it's bullshit that laura dern didn't win every award ever for that performance. she has such masterful control over the contortions of her face, its like julianne moore level acting. and luckily lynch knew how to exploit it. this is all especially impressive to me considering the improvisatory nature of a lot of it
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Jan 22, 2016 18:49
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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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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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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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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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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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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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also watch kiss me deadly, carnival of souls, and vertigo if you haven't i think i've mentioned this itt before but if you like lost highway check out steven soderbergh's schizopolis, made in 1996 as well, it's essentially the same movie as lost highway (except not as lurid) and both soderbergh and lynch were inspired by the oj simpson trial unbeknownst to each other. and then in mulholland dr lynch paid tribute to soderbergh's the limey. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Mar 24, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 23:45
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i was inspired to rewatch fire walk with me because of this thread and honestly i think it might be the best edited of his movies besides inland empire. lots of cool dissolves and superimpositions also if anyone is interested ron garcia who dp'd a bunch of twin peaks, including the pilot and fire walk with me did an interview for the american cinematographer podcast http://www.theasc.com/site/podcasts/twin-peaks-pilot-1990-ron-garcia-asc/ and critic violet lucca has a new essay on the 30th anniversary revival of blue velvet that opens today http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/blue-velvet-homecoming/ Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 16:35
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andrew o'hehir in conversation with martha nochimson, who wrote the books wild at heart in hollywood, and david lynch swerves (which are two of the better books about lynch that aren't lynch on lynch or beautiful dark, the latter of which features the best sustained discussion on lynch's late movies) for salon http://www.salon.com/2016/03/28/blue_velvets_mystery_of_masculinity_how_david_lynchs_masterwork_reshaped_american_consciousness/ probably gonna see the restoration tonight
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Mar 29, 2016 21:53
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FalsePriest posted:I bought INLAND EMPIRE a few months ago and tried watching it but only made it about halfway through before I was so confused and lost I shut it off and haven't tried watching since. I know it's a 'difficult' movie but I love a good difficult movie and I haven't really been that lost on any other Lynch movie before. well, you should finish the film, first off. watch it through to completion and then watch the deleted scenes on the second disc (note that they're titled "more things that happened.") the tagline ("a woman in trouble") sheds some light, and laura dern answered, while doing press for the film, that it's about "a woman's journey back to herself." whenever lynch presents it, he describes it using a passage from the upanishads, "we are like the spider, we weave our web and move along in it. we are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives in the dream. this is true of the entire universe." it also helps to know how the film was made. it was shot on a sony pd-150 which freed lynch up to essentially improvise the film. the anchoring piece of its "screenplay" is a 14-page single spaced monologue recited by dern (to the man in glasses in the office above the nightclub) and the rest of the film was shot piece-meal over two or three years and intermixed with footage from webseries' that lynch was working on at the time (rabbits and axxon n in particular) i also think fredric jameson's description of blue velvet explains what i perceive the narrative of inland empire to be: "the boy without fear of the fairytale can set out to undo this world of baleful enchantment, free its princess (while marrying another), and kill the magician." as with anything operating at its level of abstraction i think that it's difficult to come to grips with any one interpretation of the film and part of why i think inland empire is such a powerful experience is because it's basically a signifier soup in which content, form, theme, and reception all reflect and refract each other. it's one of the few films i can think of (eraserhead being another) where every reading of it is valid. a few such popular readings: - the film is a non-narrative feature, a collection of semi-interlocking vignettes that work with themes, motifs, and moods that lynch has been working with for his entire career, and as such it evokes connections intertextually from everything from six men getting sick, the grandmother, and eraserhead to itself. - it is a theme driven work, centered around three stories all about infidelity/adultery, which is one of the key themes of his entire career - it is a theme driven work, centered around three stories all about karmic retribution cycles, redemption, and "debts unpaid." - it is a theme driven work about film, the relationship between fiction and reality, art and artist, performance, acting, rehearsal, spectatorship, and a director's moral responsibilities these readings are all fine but they betray the sense of structure that the film has. some more popular readings would be (i'm putting these under spoilers in case anyone hasn't seen it yet) - the film is a bit like lost highway/mulholland dr in that it is about a person who commits adultery, is "punished" for their crimes, and in order to cope with the severity of what they've done escapes into a fantasy. susan blue commits adultery with billy side and is murdered by doris side for it at the intersection of hollywood and vine. in the last moments of life she imagines a reality where she is a famous hollywood actress named nikki grace, and the plot moves from this point (which comes at about 2h30m in) - nikki grace, susan blue, and the lost girl are all generated by the unnamed laura dern character in her dictation to the man in the office. she describes in great detail all the grotesque things that have happened in her life and this is her coming to terms with them. - the central character of the film is the lost girl, a polish prostitute who commits adultery, is found out, and is killed for it and then sits in a purgatory waiting to be guided to heaven, watching the events of the film we are watching. laura dern plays nikki grace, a hollywood actress who's star has faded and is cast in a comeback role in on high in blue tomorrows, a tennessee williams pastiche about adultery. an interpretation is that nikki is a spiritual companion of the lost girl, asked by her neighbor to essentially go on a quest with the lost girl guiding each other to enlightenment and freeing the world of evil by killing the phantom, a being of pure evil sort of like BOB or frank. nikki also has an overbearing husband, a polish man named piotrek krol. nikki and co-star devon berk begin rehearsing for their roles of susan blue and billy side in on high in blue tomorrows, and find out that it is a remake of a film titled 47 which is reportedly cursed, and in which the lead actors were murdered. devon, at the behest of his friends and agent is urged to not commit adultery with nikki, (because he will be killed presumably by piotrek if found out) but does so anyway. the "fiction" of on high in blue tomorrows begins infecting the "reality" of nikki's life and vice versa until they eventually collapse in the blue room scene. from there the movie becomes centered around nikki/sue's and the lost girl's symbiotic quest to guide each other to enlightenment (i'm keeping this brief but i can elaborate if you want) there are reams and reams of inland empire analyses out there, but as with any lynch analyzing it a posteriori does the film a disservice. you really must sit with it, it took me about three viewings to come to terms with it. it is far and away his densest work, and as a result his most underrated, but also one of his best and most rewarding. good luck. edit: if you haven't, watch maya deren's meshes of the afternoon, andrei tarkovsky's mirror, and alain resnais' last year and marienbad. i think these films also help to illuminate inland empire, especially formally. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 01:32 on May 29, 2016 |
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May 20, 2016 18:20
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when i worked at the ifc center a few years ago the management let me know that david was adamant about INLAND EMPIRE being capitalized in all programming material (and also mulholland dr being stylized as such a la sunset blvd) the more i sit with it the more i think its easily his best movie, and a turning point in digital filmmaking. its probably the only american movie shot digitally which advances the project of european modernism into the 21st century. Radio Spiricom fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Jan 19, 2017 |
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Jan 19, 2017 03:05
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happy birthday david 
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Jan 20, 2017 23:01
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DrVenkman posted:LOST HIGHWAY is about the OJ Simpson case. this
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Jun 26, 2017 21:28
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Raxivace posted:I'm 90% sure Lost Highway was inspired by Edgar G. Ulmer's Detour and hell the lead actor of that murdered his wife too. people always say this which is understandable but for me its biggest and clearest influences are vertigo and kiss me deadly. its also worth noting that something wild (1986) is essentially the midpoint between vertigo and lost highway
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Jun 26, 2017 21:41
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Raxivace posted:I can see the Vertigo relation (And it seems I'll have to check out this Something Wild movie now), but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts in regards to Kiss Me Deadly and Lost Highway. some significant imagery and situations are echoed: the openings (except of course lost highway shoots it with a subjective camera), nick the mechanic stuff, the exploding cabin. lost highway subsumes the sort of freefall narrative and morally desolate setting of kiss me deadly into fred's mind. both essentially depict noir masculinity at its most savage, and to me its always felt like lost highway fits into the same place in its respective canon (80s/90s neo-noir) as the most hysterical and nihilistic (i.e. double indemnity:body heat :: kiss me deadly:lost highway) lynch makes his connection to kiss me deadly even more apparent in mulholland dr with the blue box
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Jun 29, 2017 02:41
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