28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Skitch]

Lost Highway is my favorite Lynch film. The dream-like nature of Mulholland Drive but a bit less head scratchy. What really closes the deal is its circular nature. It might be [

Show Spoiler

a time travel movie.

]

Gets better every time I watch it.

"I'm at your house right now." and tailgating. So many great scenes.

[Dead & Messed Up]

It's one of my favorites, and just as great as Mulholland Dr. in my eyes. Some of the most powerfully evocative filmmaking around. I wrote a combined review of it, Mulholland Dr., and Inland Empire at some point: https://melvillian.wordpress.com/201...inland-empire/

Nice! I'll check out that blog entry later, thanks for sharing.

[TGM]

So after someone had pointed out my tendency to often include at least one particularly peculiar movie in my end of year movie lists, I decided to go back through my various lists over the years and compile together a list of the entries that stood out as probably the biggest head scratchers to most. So for those interested, these movies actually made my "best of year" lists. http://cwiddop.blogspot.com/2017/04/...y-best-of.html

[transmogrifier]

Why isn't Attack of the Clones on there? That is literally one of the Top 20 worst films I have ever seen, and you have it as best of the year.

[TGM]

Because that came out before I was actually making full "best of year" lists.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Hey all, currently working on a video that (digestibly) explains the time-travel machinations of "Primer" - anyone be up for giving some feedback before I put on the final coat of wax?

[Irish]

If you have a rabid enthusiasm and a fine beard, then yes.

If you don't, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

[Dukefrukem]

of course!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Thanks! Sent PMs to you two.

[Dukefrukem]

Nice work James.

[Skitch]

My plates full at the moment, but I will happily watch that when done. I adore Primer.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I may be committing Match-Cut suicide, but does anyone else find David Lynch somewhat overrated?

Watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me last night. Don't get me wrong, it has its qualities--but overall it's kind of a shit movie.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I may be committing Match-Cut suicide, but does anyone else find David Lynch somewhat overrated?

Watched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me last night. Don't get me wrong, it has its qualities--but overall it's kind of a shit movie.

I don't have the love for him that many people here and in the Criterati do, but I'm glad he's around, making his daffy dream movies.

[Dukefrukem]

I still need to see Lost Highway.

[Mysterious Dude]

Inland Empire sucks.

Some of Lynch's movies (Wild at Heart, Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway) actually got pretty bad reviews when they were first released.

[Skitch]

Inland Empire sucks.

x1000. Like, its fucking awful.

Duke see Lost Highway. I love it. Easily my favorite Lynch. Maintains the dreamlike nightmare attributes of Mulholland Drive, but much more...decipherable...imo.

[Irish]

I may be committing Match-Cut suicide, but does anyone else find David Lynch somewhat overrated.

I rolled my eyes at him for a long time. These days it depresses me that he -- and several members of his peer group -- can't get films made.

[transmogrifier]

Lost Highway --> The Straight Story --> Mulholland Dr. is as good a three film run as you can get.

[Peng]

He can't get films made or he is just not interested to make one yet? Really get a feeling it's the latter; already a gap between Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire anyway.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me seems to be a rather divisive film of his. I will get to it after I finish my first watch of the original series (many have recommended that is the order to go).

[Dead & Messed Up]

Lost Highway --> The Straight Story --> Mulholland Dr. is as good a three film run as you can get.

I dunno, it's hard to beat Cherry's run of Ernest Saves Christmas --> Ernest Goes to Jail --> Ernest Scared Stupid.

[Irish]

He can't get films made or he is just not interested to make one yet?

Do you think Lynch is that precious? It's been 11 years since his last film.

Several members of this peer group -- Scorsese, DePalma, Stone, Coppola, Schrader, Scott, etc -- have talked publicly how much more difficult it is to get financing now. (This is googlable, across multiple interviews.) The sort of midlist arthouse film they came up making doesn't exist anymore.

There's a reason why Stone made junk like "Money Never Sleeps," Scorsese is at Netflix, Scott is fiddling around with more "Alien" movies, DePalma has virtually stopped working, and Lynch is doing a "Twin Peaks" redux for TV.

I don't get the sense it's age or lack of interest. It's that there's no money for the films they typically make.

[Peng]

He might be that precious though, although I would say it's typical him more than the word precious.

THR: You haven't made a feature film in a long time. From the outside, it looks like you don’t want to. Is financing the problem?

Lynch: No, no, I have no problem getting financing. I have a problem catching ideas that I fall in love with for the next feature. I think part of the reason ideas haven’t come in is that the world of cinema is changing so drastically, and in a weird way, feature films I think have become cheap. Everything is kind of throwaway. It’s experienced and then forgotten. It goes really fast. And you have to do those things you are just in love with.

There is that expression, “Man has control of action alone, never the fruit of the action.” So you better enjoy the doing of a thing and not worry about the outcome. And I think that somewhere along the line, ideas will start coming and I may make a feature film. But I don’t hold out any hope for an audience. I just make it because I’m in love.

And to add, probably the reason he returns to Twin Peaks, more than the easiness of the medium.

THR: At a time when it was unpopular to “do television,” you were one of the first big feature directors to go there, with Twin Peaks. Why aren’t you in that market now?

Lynch: I’ll tell you. I’m walking down the street. There are people in the street. There is someone you fancy. And you turn a corner. And there she is. No two ways about it. She is the idea. You are in love. And she is the story.

[Irish]

Good quote. He's full of shit, though. Unless we're willing to believe that he hasn't made a film in 11 years by choice and that he's really "in love" with the idea of a TP reboot.

Personally, I don't buy it. (I mean, he can't really reconcile "everything is kind of throwaway" with working on a television show.)

[Peng]

I mean, his type of work make it easy to see how he's the kind of eccentric artist that he looks from the interview, but I guess he can lie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I add in that second quote to point out how he doesn't look down on any medium and think TV inferior to films though (I think the same).

[Idioteque Stalker]

I agree that the cinematic world at large is richer and more exciting with Lynch around--and I do like many of his movies--but a career made primarily of dream logic works only in fits and starts.

Of course I say that yet Eraserhead is my favorite film of his. Maybe it's because it's so divorced from the reality I experience, rather than a middle-ground that I find awkward and unconvincing.